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Wind-powered Wi-Fi Sensors
Glenn Fleishman writes "According to an article at Indolink a 10-centimeter diameter windmill can produce the 7.5 milliwatts needed for a wireless sensor. The paper was published earlier (available as a PDF), but Nature magazine has apparently picked up the tidbit. The process flexes piezoelectric crystals to create a current. Although flywheels aren't mentioned in this article, it seems like a windmill, a flywheel, and a solar cell could in combination produce effective power in a range of conditions for remote wireless devices, including network relays obviating batteries entirely."
First, these aren't wind powered sensors that transmit over wi-fi -- they're wind-powered sensors that detect a wi-fi node nearby. There's a big difference in power levels there. The first sounds really nifty, and with lower-power radio systems would be really cool. The second sounds like something ThinkGeek will have on clearance in about two years.
I have no concept of electrical quantities. What I see here is "tiny windmills make electricity."
So, for someone with more of a clue: does this sound like something that could be scaled up? Like, could you put them all over your roof and generate green power, or would there not be enough juice?
Will people stop applying this term to everything? Wi-Fi is referring to wireless LAN, not to any device that happens to use the radio spectrum. Use "wireless", or "radio", or "remote".
You missed my flywheels reference! See the Wired article in May 2000 (it's free online) that talks about the future of flywheels as battery replacements. It's not that far out there that you could have a tiny windwheel and a tiny flywheel that would provide enough storage for a day's worth of power, say.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
I should have been slightly more clear. Its 77J series for each capacitor (for a total of 154J series) and 309 J for each capacitor in parallel (for a total of 617 J parallel).