The Windbelt – a Cheap Wind-Power Generator

dominique_cimafranca writes "Shawn Frayne, a 28-year old inventor, has developed a small wind-powered generator that can be used to power small appliances in developing countries. Unlike the typical propeller design one expects of wind generators, the windbelt uses the oscillation of a membrane that follows the vibration of bridge. The oscillation drives small magnets which generate the electricity. From the article: 'Frayne's device, which he calls a Windbelt, is a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines. Frayne envisions the Windbelt costing a few dollars and replacing kerosene lamps in Haitian homes.'"

Comments

The simple things in life.

[BitterOldGUy]

The thing looks like a Physic 102 experiment and to think, it'll do so much for people.

It's simple - cheap to manufacture and I bet it's as reliable as hell.

This guy is genius.

Re:The simple things in life.

[GameMaster]

Hrm, please provide references for your "Saving the Third World requires gigawatts" estimate.

One of the primary goals of most people who look to develop tech for improving quality of life in the third world is to find ways to increase efficiency so that the "gigawatts" you reference aren't needed. The first world has been spoiled by it's wealth and access to cheap energy (both mostly due to work done in the last few centuries to subjugate the rest of the world, thus creating the third world). People who don't have access to something at all are much more willing to put up with, what people in the first world would consider, inconveniences in order to get it. The idea is that a family in Haiti would be willing to put up with the inconvenience of only having a single, bare, LED bulb for their shack as opposed to the risk of burning to death using an oil lamp, candle, or open fire for light.

I realize that for most people in the first world its hard to imaging having to make that trade-off. For me, it would be unthinkable that I'd have to use anything less than a raft of high lumen light fixtures with diffusers/shades to completely light my living space. I'll gladly replace my incandescent with high efficiency compact fluorescents, but I would never think of downgrading the brightness. Likewise, I would consider it barbaric to have to install oil lamps/torches in my home for light. Of course, I'm not the target market for this product.

Re:The simple things in life.

[mikael]

The idea is to power simple devices like radios for public health and education and replace kerosene lamps with milliwatt LED's, not to power an entire household with PS3's, plasma displays and game rigs.

Re:The simple things in life.

[NoobixCube]

These things seem pretty well scalable for only the cost of the parts. The little desktop one he's got generates milliwatts, imagine what several of these, lined up on a roof would do. Put in just as many at 90 degrees to those just above them, and you're covered for winds from four directions. Work out a weather vane system that keeps the fabric edge-on into the wind all the time, and it can use any light breeze from any direction. I'd probably put up with those to light my house just to lower my power bill. Considering the size of the average roof in the developed world, I'd probably have power to spare if I lit my house with LED nests.

Another factor to consider is that it's another power source for a Mars colony. The dust storms could blot out the sun, and these would still work, assuming the coils are protected and the fabric is strong enough. I don't think the inventor has considered just how important this could be to the whole world, not just the third world countries.

Re:The simple things in life.

[mypalmike]

If your prototype makes milliwatts and Saving the Third World requires gigawatts, that makes you 10^(-12) of a genius.

No. If your inexpensive prototype makes milliwatts, and there are real world applications that require cheap milliwatts, that makes you a genius.

But tell us about your prototype power generator for the 3rd world. If you don't have one, then by your own "math", you're a complete idiot.

Re:The simple things in life.

[goodmanj]

Hrm, please provide references for your "Saving the Third World requires gigawatts" estimate.

Suppose just one watt of electricity per person is all you need to make a huge difference to peoples' lives. One watt per person times 3 gigapeople in poverty = 3 gigawatts.

Your LED light bulb, by the way, is going to draw around a watt. A compact fluorescent, ten times that.

But tell us about your prototype power generator for the 3rd world. If you don't have one,

I don't have one, but I'm not the one getting headlined on Slashdot. However, I will say that if a $5 40-mW power generator could save the world, we'd all have gotten to Happyland in 1980, when we gave every man, woman, and child a pocket-sized solar cell and a D-cell NiCd. Oh right, that didn't happen, because milliwatts per person gets you *nowhere*, even if you could distribute the generators, which you can't.

But I do have a better idea, but it's not for a power generator. Wanna save the developing world? Build them some good roads and rails. China did, and look what happened. Sure, China's no bed of roses, but your average Ghanaian would kill for a Chinese standard of living. No time to go into detail here, but transportation and access to markets is what separates the developing world from the rest.

Re:The simple things in life.

[famebait]

Yeah, that used to be the big stumbling block for all those micro-generator ideas, right up until genetically enhanced rocket scientists with brains the size of your house figured out that hair dryers are really energy intensive, and not really all that important.

Re:The simple things in life.

[moosesocks]

The big "gotcha" is the 10mph wind.

Go pull up your local weather station on the Weather Underground, and take a look at what percentage of the time the wind was blowing at above 10mph.

It's not terribly *rare*, but also not terribly *common*. The reason why wind turbines and sailboats both tend to be extremely tall is that the winds become both stronger and more reliable at higher altitudes.

Think about it: Air currents are going to be substantially lower at low altitudes, especially when surrounded by houses, trees, and other obstructions that block the wind.

It's a really cool energy source, particularly for devices that don't need to be constantly (or reliably) powered. However, I have some serious doubts as to whether or not this can be used as a primary power source.

On the other hand, if we can make wind power cheap (cheap turbines, which might not be quite as efficient, but still work, and towers constructed out of locally-available materials), a huge impact will be made.

Like it or not, abundant cheap energy will be the quickest route for the 3rd-world nations to eradicate extreme poverty. If we solve this problem, many other problems will be solved very quickly along with it. If we can't provide a solution, there are alternatives, though none are quite as attractive.......

Re:The simple things in life.

[SQLGuru]

One of these windbelt machines will light up only two 20 milliamp LEDs

That's only in the current configuration he's using.....

What happens if:
1) you put magnets at both ends, does it double the output?
2) you make coils "all along" the belt? Does that drastically increase output?
3) you lengthen or shorten the belt? It changes the harmonics, but how does it affect the output?

Other questions:
He's using a desk fan *ON HIGH*. What are the wind requirements needed to generate what level of output? What is the minimum wind speed to initiate the harmonics (watching the video, you see simple vibration until a point where it breaks out into the full "tear up the bridge" mode). How does faster or slower wind affect it? Is there a point where too much wind causes it to lose the harmonic generation mode? Does a commercial system need to be able to adjust tension based on wind speed (added complexity and added cost).

It's a very good start of something, but there are a lot of things not really covered in the short video. I'd love to see this taken several steps more.

Layne

flashback to last year

[Joe Snipe]

dupe: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/14/1240206

Re:flashback to last year

[Joe Snipe]

Heh, not only is it a dupe, it's a dupe to the exact same article!

Re:flashback to last year

[akgooseman]

Well, hey, it's not like /. linked to a five year old newspaper article about a certain airline's pending bankruptcy filing ...

Question.

[DoctorDyna]

The air needs to pass over this resonating piece at a particular speed to start it resonating (flapping). Is there some sort of way to adjust the tension of the band during use to account for faster / slower winds or is it only good at 7.9563 mph winds?

Re:I don't think this is new

[Wampus Aurelius]

Yup.

Math for scaleup...

[nweaver]

40mW in 10 MPH wind for $5: Scale to 1W would take an array of 25 at a cost of $125.

This would be, looking at his prototype, about 50cm x 100cm...

The cost/watt however, is just astronomically bad. A 1 kW wind turbine is $3000 (which would produce ~400W at that windspeed)...

Its really a clever idea, but just not efficient enough to be economical, even to just glow an LED lamp.

Re:Math for scaleup...

[peacefinder]

It would appear that the design goal is to scale down, not to scale up.

Re:Math for scaleup...

[GameMaster]

Ah, yes. But if you were actually a member of his target audience (dirt poor people in countries like Haiti making $2-$4 per day) then you couldn't afford that fancy $3000 turbine in your wildest dreams. Smaller, more affordable turbines grow dramatically less efficient due to friction forces at small sizes. In order to actually make your point valid, you'd have to find a wind turbine of the same wattage range that is cheaper.

The whole point here is very specific. Poor people, like the ones in Haiti don't have many things that need electricity. The problem is, the only source of light they have is fire based causing an increases risk of burning to death in a hovel fire. The problem is compounded by the fact that third world shanty towns usually don't have much in the way of municipal fire codes. Assuming LED bulbs come down in price far enough (which the look to do eventually) they have the energy efficiency needed to run off this thing, the ruggedness to last in that kind of environment, and the long life to make themselves truly economical. They could, completely, replace oil lamps, candles, and other fire based light sources. It has the added bonus of eliminating one of the motivating factors in the deforestation of Haiti, which, in turn, is one of the reasons they've had such horrible flooding in this last hurricane.

This thing still has a lot of things to prove before it can be said to be useful (durability is one of them) but cost/watt isn't an issue for the application being envisioned. As for first-world applications he can use to fund his third-world goal, he just has to look long enough for similar places where a microturbine might have, otherwise, been the only option.

Re:Math for scaleup...

[david.given]

Ah, yes. But if you were actually a member of his target audience (dirt poor people in countries like Haiti making $2-$4 per day) then you couldn't afford that fancy $3000 turbine in your wildest dreams.

I remember reading about this last year; it's very, very neat. Not only is there a very low up-front cost to get started with a single unit, but they also have low maintenance costs.

A wind turbine, even a small cheap one, is a fearsomely complicated device that requires all sort of exotic tooling to build and maintain. Think of all those bearings, the gearbox, the generator coils, etc. The windbelt is an inert frame containing an inert ribbon, a couple of magnets, and a voice coil. The only bit of that you can't build by hand, using low technology, are the magnets, and they don't wear out. Possibly you might have trouble finding the right wire for the voice coil; but rewinding the failed one is a tricky but perfectly manageable job to do by hand.

So what these will do is not just provide accessible power, but rapidly bootstrap a complete power economy based around the technology. Which is the point...

Re:Math for scaleup...

[wooferhound]

Wind turbines are fairly easy to make
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind.html

Can this scale up?

[mlts]

Some things can scale, but there are other things that really can't be enlarged. For example, ionizing air currents. Yes, it works on a small scale to move air through a Sharper Image filter, but you couldn't effectively push the air through a house's HVAC system with just thin wires and a high potential difference.

If this belt technology can be scaled up to generate kilowatts as opposed to milliwatts, it would have a real use. Otherwise, its similar to small solar panel technology in the 1980s -- will power a small motor or a clock, but that's basically it. It may at best end up a niche product as something to power remotely located low-wattage computers, such as weather stations in heavy forest.

Re:Can this scale up?

[againjj]

The point of this technology is not to scale up, but to scale down. In the first world, yes, it will be a niche product. However, the idea is to use it in poor areas without electricity in the third world. If it did end up costing $10, then this could provide light very cheaply in places where they need it.

Re:I don't think this is new

[dgatwood]

So basically this is a large scale version of a ribbon microphone? Except backwards? Wouldn't it work much better if it actually worked exactly like a ribbon magnet, i.e. fixed magnetic bars on either side of a conductive ribbon? You'd certainly get less drag on the ribbon if it isn't trying to move heavy magnets around. Who wants to build one and find out? :-D

Focus on the developing world uses.

[RustinHWright]

I know that he talked about scaling up. Put that down to usual inventor exuberance. All of us who've gotten an invention working have experienced that. What matters is that is entire apparatus of about ten parts can be built of scrap, in a couple of hours.

Yeah, sure, he's using optimized materials. But anything thin and flexible could be tested, have its optimal shape for flutter in a given environment determined, and used to make these. I knew some guys who did the sensors for their thesis using strips of mylar from potato chip bags.
Magnets are the one hard part and even those can be pulled from dead speakers or whatever.
Wound wire? We've all built our own generators as kids, yes? Winding enough for an electromagnet like that is no big deal. And wire turns up in waste streams all over the place. That's why so many baskets and such from rural craftspeople are made of it.
Rigid frame? Whatever's around. I'm not entirely sure just how rigid that frame needs to be but worst case scenario we're talking about a chunk of iron cut out of a dead car.
And so on.

What this does is enable illiterate people with a few hours of training to make a device from things they don't have to pay for that can power basic things like lights. And from what I'm seeing, it's the kind of thing that will propagate. UNESCO staffer teaches Jose. Jose's brother comes by and asks about it; Jose teaches his brother. Brother's wife wants one to sew better; she makes one for herself. The wife's friends drop by . . .

Excellent. All we need to do is provide superbright LEDs and whatever parts turn out to most be in demand and soon, count on it, there will be innovations by the dozens turning up that the inventors and NGO folks never even knew about.

You've got that wrong!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Scaling power is hardly ever linear. Does a car engine cost 100x as much as a chainsaw engine? I think not.

Website

[creativeHavoc]

The main website for the technology is http://www.humdingerwind.com/ Last press release is almost a year old, and the developer kits which are promised on their website for "middle of 2008" are non-existant. Shame.