Slashdot Mirror
Inventors of Omnidirectional Wind Turbine Win James Dyson Award (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A spinning turbine that can capture wind traveling in any direction and could transform how consumers generate electricity in cities has won its inventors a prestigious international award and ~$38,000 prize. Nicolas Orellana, 36, and Yaseen Noorani, 24, MSc students at Lancaster University, scooped the James Dyson award for their O-Wind Turbine, which -- in a technological first -- takes advantage of both horizontal and vertical winds without requiring steering.
O-Wind Turbine is a 25cm sphere with geometric vents that sits on a fixed axis and spins when wind hits it from any direction. When wind energy turns the device, gears drive a generator that converts the power of the wind into electricity. The students believe the device, which could take at least five years to be put into commercial production, could be installed on large structures such as the side of a building or balcony, where wind speeds are highest. Dyson, who chose the winners, hailed it as "an ingenious concept." He continued: "Designing something that solves a problem is an intentionally broad brief. It invites talented, young inventors to do more than just identify real problems. It empowers them to use their ingenuity to develop inventive solutions. O-Wind Turbine does exactly that. It takes the enormous challenge of producing renewable energy and using geometry it can harness energy in places where we've scarcely been looking -- cities."
O-Wind Turbine is a 25cm sphere with geometric vents that sits on a fixed axis and spins when wind hits it from any direction. When wind energy turns the device, gears drive a generator that converts the power of the wind into electricity. The students believe the device, which could take at least five years to be put into commercial production, could be installed on large structures such as the side of a building or balcony, where wind speeds are highest. Dyson, who chose the winners, hailed it as "an ingenious concept." He continued: "Designing something that solves a problem is an intentionally broad brief. It invites talented, young inventors to do more than just identify real problems. It empowers them to use their ingenuity to develop inventive solutions. O-Wind Turbine does exactly that. It takes the enormous challenge of producing renewable energy and using geometry it can harness energy in places where we've scarcely been looking -- cities."
I modded you up but my mod point vanished into the ether - not for the first time on slashdot. So screw it, i'll reploy. Jim Dyson is a master of marketing - he had one ok idea in his life which was a bagless vacuum cleaner and he's been dining out on it with ever diminishing returns ever since.
All his latest "inventions" are useless junk which are more expensive and worse than the alternatives - eg the bladeless fan which blows about as much as as a knats fart and the "blade" hand dryer which blows water in your face, can only dry hands, collects muck in its u-bend design and because the 2 vents are so close together you often end up touching the filthy thing which your clean hands.
Oh, and he loves to wave the union jack flag when it suits him for sales purposes and trumpets the UK - even voted brexit - then the fucker went and opened his new factory in singapore last month citing staffing issues in the UK. IMO he can go swivel on it.