Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Miniature Windmill Generator

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but somebody came up with a miniature windmill generator that looks like a small electric fan. At peak output, it appears that it can do 1 amp with a potential difference of 12 volts, which could be used to recharge a cell phone.

Big deal? Yeah. But, it interested me because of my thoughts a while ago of using arrays of micro-generators, like these, in order to produce significant levels of power (maybe enough for your house):

http://jasonf-blog.blogspot.com/2005/10/pressure-generator-array.html

One caveat, though: The huge electric generating windmills with the 30-foot blades continue to spin after the wind has stopped. This is because they store energy as angular momentum, like a flywheel. So, that benefit would not exist with the array of micro-generators (essentially, when the wind stops, so does your electric generation).