New Invention: Windbelt Electricity
Today we are featuring an article on an exciting new invention by Shawn Frayne, a gifted young man with a desire to help third world countries with cheap electricity. Shawn is fascinated by windmills and their ability to create electricity.
Shawn says that he realized early on that windmills are limited in their usability options because they require strong wind conditions (over 20 mph) which rarely occur for sustained periods of time. Shawn decided that he did not want to try to join the rest of the innovators who are trying to miniaturize windmill technology. This decision was mostly because ball bearing, rotors and other heavy metal parts used in windmill designs are expensive. Shawn needed a solution that was cheap and capable of producing a small 50 milowatt current with extremely low wind conditions.
Photo from Popular Mechanics
What he arrived at was an entirely new way of creating electricity. He created an electric generator that operated through a movement known as “aeroelastic flutter,” and described the device as “windbelt technology”. When a paper-like strip of material is held taut between two clamps, a tiny bit of wind can cause the material or “windbelt” to flutter up and down rapidly. Attaching two sets of electro magnets on either side of the strip generates an electrical current when the strip flutters up and down.
Originally designed for small devices like lamps, clocks and other gadgets, the technology could be modified to create larger currents by multiplying the number of strips and hooking the currents together. This would be economically possible because each unit is incredibly cheap to produce, and can also be fixed by someone with little or no experience in electro-mechanics.
Check out this video from Popular Mechanics. Windbelt Electricity [www.popularmechanics.com].
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