But then you're going to get those people that will bitch about "marring the beauty of the landscape." I for one think that wind farms are beautiful.

I think you are missing the point marine. These are micro generators. Small devices that are used on individual homes. At larger sizes I doubt that they would be any more efficient than a normal wind turbine.

Looking to buy a house, And I'd like Eco power for it very much. Interesting Tech.

clever people are brilliant

Yeah, but eventually there is going to be a community that wants power generation from something like this, then they will be forced to scale up.

Very cool concept!

I said 'woah' right when I saw him holding it. You could vertically arrange a lot of these along a roof, especially a flat roof like a commercial building, or along the sides of whatever existing structures (parking garages, large buildings,etc.). Real-world ones would have to be made of something pretty sturdy; people wouldn't want to have to replace strips more than once a year, if that (and the the rest of the structure would have to be more robustly engineered as well).

A simplified, all-in-one system with arrays of these and arrays of solar panels coupled with the electronics and the batteries, installed and ready, starting at around $2k US would make some company very, very wealthy. Imagine if you could get a basic modular 'green' system installed for a few grand, and have more modular components added whenever money was available... maybe with a tax incentive...

Consider this installed on a roof, two rows, vertically aligned strips (so lots of strips). The rows are aligned E/W such that the sun traversal goes between them. This means they cast very small shadows, relative to being N/S aligned. The space between, you use for solar capture, either as electricity generation or heat capture for water heating/storage, or both in a hybrid.

Then use nets/clay on the walls, and plant greenery. Alolw rainwater to be recycled feeding it. Saw a documentary showing such buildings and they looked great and had a big positive impact on people, visually etc. Masked the building and looked like a jungle canopy. Almost completely self sustaining and low maintenance too.

We are going to be technically able to do lots of interesting engineering things in construction. But will we on mass? Thats a cultural question, and hard to predict, and is probably reliant on mass production techniques, and financial incentives to start the investments.

[edit]
I was referring to this:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2006/gb20061004_381966.htm?chan=search

Have sifted a related vid.

When there is no wind, you can just use the fan!

Seems he, maybe unknowingly, has already found the ideal place for a 'farm' of these types of generators: bridges. How many thousands of these could be mounted on a bridge and remain practically invisible?

Put one on the roof of your car, and you'll only need the battery for the starter. Even on a bicycle it would power blinking LEDs.

Noise could be a downfall. I wonder how much noise a bank of these would make.

Dag,

This is a great post. It's a riff on the aeolian harp. I wonder if the "flutter" would also "sing" given the right conditions.

Sc

Umm, messenger,
Your car has an alternator. You only use the battery for ignition anyway.

i dunno, i'm thinking the sound it generates would be pretty Low, or very much just a base line. their frequency might be a little low for us to hear, that is a maybe of course. dogs and cats and birds would hates us tho. i wonder what kind of music a hillside off of the coast would play with all the changing wind speeds... you could build them like lego, tak a bunch on the side of buildings downtown where the wind tunnel effect is pretty strong

Just line the inner wall's of congress and the White House with these and there'd be enough wind power in there to run the world.

'revolutionary wind generator'... also the short definition of a guy I know.

that genious.

but this has been thinking about it since middle school, kinda weird

I wonder how many of them you would need to produce the 50kwh that the average household uses every day.