Wind belt generator
Posted by Laird on Jul 6, 2008
Shawn Frayne invented an inexpensive non turbine wind generator called the wind belt. I have no specs other than what you see on the video. I imagine it’s use on the roof of an electric car but obviously it can be used anywhere there is wind. The bennefit is that it is very inexpensive to build as opposed to a standard turbine wind generator.
The fan simulates the wind which moves the belt which moves the magnets through the coils to make electricity to power the clock and LEDs. I don’t know how much the output voltage is.
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 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 savings of 10s of dollars per watt.
