Incredible Wind Power Innovations

Guest Post at Ideas, Inventions and Innovations by Maria Kruk, an author for Patentsbase.com 

Wind power generation is one of the basic parts of alternative energy industry that develops rapidly these days. It is clear as a day that innovations in this field play a significant role considering wide-scale distribution of wind farms and wind power plants in the world. Certain countries and companies have succeeded a lot and presented nice examples of effective and profitable wind power usage introducing new technologies and innovations. 

Credit:  Maria Kruk, Patentsbase.com 

It is a common opinion that wind strength and speed depends on the altitude: the higher wind turbine is – the bigger amount of energy is generated. However, such companies as Joby Energy and Alataeros Energies proved the opposite in some way. In fact, these companies invented a flying wind power generator, which is going to be equally effective to wind turbines operated on gradually high altitudes. Specifically, Joby Energy offered to optimize a shape of wind generator, so it could be lifted on the height, where winds are stronger. On the contrary, Altaeros Energies have introduced a flying wind turbine that can reach the altitude of 350-1000 feet. To design such an improvement technologists of the company used a donuts’ pictures that resemble a model.

Australian company Katru Eco-Energy has also invented a new type of wind turbine – IMPLUX. An initial goal of this invention is to employ winds blowing over the roofs of skyscrapers and high buildings. Its peculiar advantage features catching winds blowing from different directions, while IMPLUX itself has steady and unchangeable location. A central chamber of the turbine is designed to catch wind of any orientation and push it to the top with some acceleration, preventing the air flow passing the unit.

Credit:  Maria Kruk, Patentsbase.com 

The alike improvement was presented by ZENA Company that introduced an innovative project of a wind tower. It catches winds from different sides and with different speed, pointing them at first into a speeding tunnel and then into wind turbine itself, which generates electricity, as one could guess. By the way, this object might be managed as a tourist attraction as well. The same idea was chased by Karim Mahmoud Elnabawy Balbaa on Land Art Generator Initiative Design Competition in 2010. In particular, he designed a project of Dubai twin towers 140 meters high, entirely equipped with solar panels and wind turbines. The project is a true wonder of architect art and renewable energy technologies. 

Besides natural wind motions, why not use air currents produced by human activity? In this context, one of the possible options is to use winds caused by train carriages. Constructors Qian Jiang and Alessandro Leonetti Luparini developed a project of T-Box system, which is a set of wind generators embedded between railway sleepers that produce electricity when trains passing over them. Potentially this power might be generated both on railways and subways. According to creators’ claims, the railway 1 km long can manage 150 T-box systems; each of them generates little energy, but the total amount might surprise its users.