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Windbelt Wind Energy

June 21, 2008 – By Raymond T. Hightower | 1 Comment

How do you make a wind generator for less than five dollars? Turbines won’t work because small turbines require high-tech bearings that add to the cost. The solution is something that looks like a violin bow. Wind power could potentially be ten times cheaper than ever before.

Harder Problems, Better Inventions
Shawn Frayne first saw the need for cheap wind power while working in Haiti. Frayne was inspired by the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The long, thin bridge succumbed to the effects of wind and resonance only four months after it opened. Frayne reasoned that he could leverage the positive effects of wind and resonance in a wind generator. The Windbelt was born.

1 Comment

Good luckJune 21, 2008

I started a dissertation for a new method of extracting energy from wind at ASU in 1975. Financial pressures and an attractive job offer in Radio Astronomy (the VLA program) stopped my plans. Now that I am retired I started again however this time my wife’s pancreatic and live cancer has me tied down.

Hope you can get something going while you are still young.

Henry Richards
Chandler AZ

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