Sunday, July 22, 2007

Wind Power For Campers

I recently made a post on this blog about inflatable wind turbines. Trudy commented that it would be nice if there was a smaller version for campers. Orange clearly thought the same thing and commisioned a prototype tent mounted wind generator. The resulting device charges up a battery which in turn can charge up another device. Here's a picture: -



  • The good news is that it only weighs 150 grammes.
  • The bad news is that to generate enough energy to fully charge a mobile requires 24 hours of 12mph wind (I guess it won't run a cool box).
Still it is only a prototype and may improve. Find out more here and here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a start!

I wonder if there is anyway to improve the efficiency of them, so they can produce more electricity with less natural energy? Not sure on the theory behind this one :/

Antony said...

The energy you can get out is proportional to the area swept by the blades and the square (?) of the windspeed. I think the max efficiency is about 40% or so; if you try to take any more energy out of the wind than that the air doesn't have enough energy to get out of the way !