Windbelt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Windbelt is a device for converting wind power to electricity. A windbelt is essentially an aeolian harp except that it exploits to motion of the string produced by the the aeroelastic flutter effect to move a magnet closer and farther from one or more electromagnetic coil(s) and thus inducing current in the wires that make up the coil.

A famous example of aeroelasticity is the fall of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which became known as Galloping Gertie and is commonly shown to engineering, architecture, and physics students as a cautionary tale.

Prototypes of the device are claimed to be ten-to-thirty times more efficient^[1] than wind microturbines, even though greater than 100% efficiency is not physically possible. One prototype has successfully powered two LEDs, a radio, and a clock using wind generated from a household fan. The cost of the materials was well under US$10, giving a cost of 10s of dollars per watt.

The Windbelt's inventor, Shawn Frayne, was a winner of the 2007 Breakthrough Award from the publishers of the magazine, Popular Mechanics.^[2]