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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."
This is as impressive as last year's winner. It was a foldable paper biker helmet. Genius.
The biggest blunder lies in thinking that any form of nuclear is needed in the first place. ... And then subsequently, that blunder being compounded by completely and very conveniently ignoring the astronomic externality costs of all nuclear energy technologies.
It seems that the ability of electricity from renewable sources to travel along wires from where it's currently plentiful to where it's currently needed is completely unknown to nuclear advocates.
(Hint: when renewable energy is harvested widely enough, not even the energy loss with distance matters to any great extent, especially when regional providers give and take among themselves on demand --- it all evens out. What's more, we're nearly there already, as the cost of electricity has been dipping below zero periodically in many countries because of the impact of renewables. Not only is nuclear not needed, it's not even a viable business anymore as the cost of energy plummets and the hiding of externalities is disallowed.)
Excellent, now they can harvest all that vertical wind...
Unfortunately this is not their design, it was designed a long time ago and even tested on a NASA Rover toy..
More unfortunately, itcoversion efficiency, it's mass efficiency AND it's area efficiency all suck, and the idea of a 25cm model generating anything more than trivial power is a joke. A standard self directing propeller is much better efficiency.
It's only 'special' feature is dealing with non horizontal wind, which it does at even lower efficiency and which doesn't exist with any useful level of energy.
It could perhaps be deserving of a high school science fair win.. Maybe.
It winning any sorry if international award? If this was the best submission they should have just rolled the award over for next year.
I thought they were the only things he made that didn't suck and his fans were the only things he made that didn't blow.
Time to offend someone