Good Vibrations Promise Cheap Wind Power

I want to know the instuctions on how to make the little one at home. Itll be an interesting timekiller and its a good idea.Still wished the big one would generate more power but, its cheap and it looks cool. I wonder how much construction will cost.

Now that's cool; basically running a buzzer in reverse. I wonder how well it scales; what would a megawatt installation look (and sound) like?

The more efficient they make it the cooler and quieter it will become, heat and noise are caused by wasted energy.

I'd imagine a MW installation would look like a huge array of wide ladders, with the steps being the magnetic vibration thing...

You can bet it would end up fairly loud, but I imagine the sound would just be a hum type sound, so it wouldn't be too intrusive.

If they could be made sturdy enough, imagine these lining the walls of highway dividers in high traffic areas, plenty of "wind" generated by the traffic

"...will produce 100 watts..."
Yeah, but you'd need 10 of those to power a PC with some real muscle. I'd be more excited if it produced more electricity...
On the other hand they are small enough that they could but an outlet on these things and let the general public buy it and just plug something into it on a windy day.

"(6m/s or 13mph)" this looks like a typo

Although the power produced per unit ins't amazing, they are small can you can put them practically anywhere. and they appear MUCH less intrusive than turbines!

interesting.....but not gona happen thx to the big energy corporations....wich i hope all die

I know exactly what you mean. I like the innovation, but I'm still waiting and hoping for the next big breakthrough in energy generation technology. Something along the lines of zero-point energy, or fusion, or even just self-sustaining hydrogen production from seawater.

That's my biggest problem with the whole "alternative energy" movement. People go on and on about needing to break our dependence upon foreign oil, and fossil fuels in general... great, I agree and am all for that. Problem is that we don't have that technology yet. Wind, solar, biofuels, etc. are a bust. They simply don't produce enough power. The United States currently consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day! That's 840 million gallons per day! That doesn't even include coal usage. The only way we're going to move past that is with a revolutionary new technology. A merely evolutionary technology just won't cut it.

This has to be one of the dumbest comments I've read on Toms in a while. This technology isn't designed to power a tripple SLI gamming rig in the middle of the ocean. It is designed produce 100 watts to trickle charge a battery source of some kind, or auto transfered into the existing power of a building to reduce the overall cost from the electrical company.

I love how nieve people assume that this technology should somehow instantly replace all the outlets in their parents basement allowing them to pay less rent to said parents when they should have already moved out 12 years ago. Expand your imagination on the possibilites of what this technology can do and you will be impressed. Try to look outside of your tunnel vission.

I'm kind of scared of the noise this could make. A flapping strip like that is fairly noisy, even the small ones.

No, it is correct.
6m/s = 6 meters per second
13mph = 13 miles per hour

I can only imagine some guy blowing into one of these things to power his netbook, then passing out.

Can you imagine the noise if we actually start using it in the cities? It will be like a bee hive only 100 times louder!

Nice, but what happens when there is snow and the vibration thing gets all clogged up ?

Typo? did you want 13.4216178 mph?

I wonder how snow effects these units.

...But will it play Crysis?

ummm no... there is almost no heat generated by wind energy and noise isn't a waste of energy... the drag and friction that are responsible for generating the heat and noise are what needs to be cut down for efficiency.

Well good vibrations can generate a lot of good things!

Good Vibrations is a sex toy shop in the SF area. I was seriously confused reading that headline.

I like that the dude is sitting next to a fan..

"Look just plug in your fan, put it on high power, point it at this little devise and there we go! Renewable energy! Any questions?"

"What about the electricity that powers the fan?"

"Next question?"

The sad part? I bet the gov't gives this guy a billion in tax dollars to build prototypes that never see production...

Yours was dumber.

very cool stuff if practical versions can be developed.

Dude's sitting next to a fan to show generation on demand. The wind is not generally available inside at speeds approaching 13 mph. Do you expect to put these indoors, or have them generating at all times? C'mon.

That's yesterday's news and so is the Chevy Volt. I'm going to blow everybody out of the water with this little honey. http://www.thumbpower.net/images/windcar.jpg I'll be RICH!

As an engineer, I need to ask the obvious question. You title the article "Good Vibrations Promise Cheap Wind Power". Okay, how cheap? What price per KW/h are we looking at here? The article doesn't say how much these units cost compared to their power output. Fixed costs of dollar per KW/h and operating costs are the only important numbers when it comes to MW scale power production. So, fill me in. Nothing here looks cheap or expensive to me, and, in fact, I can't determine if this is a cheap source of generating electricity or not. I don't understand the title of your article at all!

If you're going to use the metric system, you may as well do it the Canadian way.
6 metres per second.

The device is a curiosity, a toy. Unfortunately so are the 400' tall ones. There are efforts to bring windmills into to my rural neighborhood. It's a sad thing to watch the community and friendships being torn apart by the disagreements over them. This little gaget is the most useful wind energy device I've seen. At least it's good for a laugh.

The link in the article says that the cost of a 1 sq. meter panel is $1/watt, not $1. So the panel costs $100.