Saturday, September 8, 2007

An urban backyard wind generator


You may want to get off the grid, or the grid may just go away. In either case, you'll need to make your own electricity. Having a wind-driven power supply in your backyard - that the neighbors will allow and that doesn't kill off the local songbird population - is one solution. So here's the Windspire, an interesting model that Treehugger directed me to:

With its sleek, bladeless design and capacity to produce nearly 2000 kilowatt hours per year, the Windspire might just inspire some YIMBYism -- that's Yes, In My BackYard -- about wind power. At 30 feet tall and 2 feet wide, the propeller-less design is bird-safe, relatively quiet -- it produces about 25 decibels of noise at five feet, roughly equivalent to the average noise of a residential neighborhood at night -- and doesn't take much breeze to get it spinning; it fires up at 8 mph, and is rated to survive 100 mph gusts. It comes with a wireless modem that connects to your computer, so you can sit back and watch the energy in action at any time.

No comments: