Image of the day: Meet Vortex, the silent, bladeless wind generator

Although current climate models brand wind energy as “sustainable energy,” contemporary wind turbine design does not favor wide scale proliferation. Simply put, turbines are extremely noisy, massive, and inefficient at impacting the national energy grid unless entire states are smothered with them. 

Here’s where Vortex comes in: as a compact, bladeless wind-powered generator, whose design is the next evolutionary leap of the wind turbine, producing virtually zero sound pollution and costing a fraction of the price to manufacture and maintain. 

Unlike the other “bladeless windmills” on the market, Vortex does not require hydraulic actuation of pistons to generate electricity, thus, making it one of the few devices on the market to generate energy from the repeating patterns of the vortices that are produced when air separates to pass around a blunt body; in this case, the Vortex itself. The incoming air vortices cause Vortex to oscillate its mast, which in turn moves a series of magnets located in the joint near the base to produce electricity.

Of course, an individual Vortex unit will never be as efficient as a high speed turbine, but to a large extent, this is offset by the smaller spatial footprint each units occupies as a result of lacking blades, a feature which permits multiple units to be clustered in closer proximity to potentially increases the amount of electricity generated per square meter. 

Vortex will be initially available as a mini 4kW, 12.5 meter (41ft) tall unit intended for residential purposes, with a larger one-megawatt model, known as the “Gran,” being developed for large-scale operations.

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/vortex-bladeless-wind-turbine-generator/37563/