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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."
https://newatlas.com/2018-dyso...
Seems a little premature to get excited about
The team, from Lancaster University, tested their prototypes with a hairdryer, which was enough to prove its initial efficacy and win the UK national Dyson award a month ago, before being announced as the global winner today.
No. Wind blowing across the turbine on the outside of the roof moves the turbine blades and by design draws air out of an attic. There is no way thermal heat in an attic would move anything reliably. The only real difference between a roof turbine driven by the wind and this article is the expectation of "universal" power factor no matter the wind direction either horizontal or vertical.
http://www.winddriventurboventilator.com/use_of_ventilator.htm
Nope. At least not in general - there's a lot of vertical wind vane designs. In general though a vertical wind will not cause such a device to spin, which is something this is specifically designed to do, since unlike steady winds, turbulent winds among tall buildings can blow in any direction, not just parallel to the ground.
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Is this device subject to the same problem, which is that at any moment half your vanes are moving INTO the wind?
With that much money, they could afford to purchase both a Dyson fan AND a Dyson vacuum cleaner for each of their dorm rooms!
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Nifty idea and I can see a lot of potential applications, especially when these are used in groups of small or medium size turbines.
Props to these guys for working this out.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
At 25cm diameter, we can't really go calling it a Dyson Sphere.
First decent design in quite some time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Vertical axis wind turbines that work with wind coming from any side have been around for a while (though not as large-scale commercial installations.
The new feature here is that this turbine also works with wind coming from below or above.
Dyson is an innovator, not an inventor. He invented none of the things that make his famous products possible: the bagless vacuum, the bladeless fan, and the airblade hand dryer all existed previously. What he did was made them practical and/or apply a little design and turn them into premium products. Kind of what Apple did with the iPhone.
I'll say this for his vacuums though: we've tried quite a few different bagless designs from various A brands (we provide them to our tenants and we wanted the most maintenance-free option), and so far I would only give the Dyson a passing grade. With many of the others you will spend more time cleaning the air filters than doing any actual vacuuming.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It's obviously revolutionary - it's a turbine! Wouldn't be much good if it didn't revolve.
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