Look Ma, No Blades!

Have you heard about Vortex Bladeless Ltd.? It’s a Spain (just outside Madrid) based tech company developing a wind power generator without rotating blades. 

STRUCTURE & OPERATION
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There is a fixed base and a cylindrical mast that oscillates freely perpendicular to the wind direction, jointed by a carbon rod.

Inner parts never collide with each other, but interact to generate electricity.

ENERGY HARNESS
When the wind passes around a structure, vortexes of pressure are created.

The frequency of vortexes depends on the wind speed, and if the structure has a similar natural resonating frequency, it begins to oscillate and harness their energy.

This phenomenon of aeroelastic resonance is called Vortex Shedding, and happens regularly in nature.

ENERGY CONVERSION
Similar to a traditional alternator, our device gets an interaction between coils and magnetic fields, generating electricity by electromagnetic induction without need for rotation on a shaft nor a gearbox.

Read more here.  Totally geek out about it here. 

The skybrators, as some wits have amusingly dubbed them, stand at a hair over nine feet (2.75 metres) tall.

“Our technology has different characteristics which can help to fill the gaps where traditional windfarms might not be appropriate,” says Yáñez (Inventor, Founder and Co-CEO of Vortex Bladeless). 

These gaps could include urban and residential areas where the impact of a windfarm would be too great, and the space to build one would be too small. It plugs into the same trend for installing small-scale, on-site energy generation, which has helped homes and companies across the country save on their energy bills.

This could be wind power’s answer to the home solar panel, says Yáñez. (source) 

Then there’s Alpha 311, a British tech company in Aylesford, about 40 miles south of London.

Theirs is a small wind turbine that attaches to extant street, highway, and railway lighting columns. It collects the airflow from passing cars, trucks, trains, and such and turns that into electricity. AWESOME!

The Alpha 311 vertical axis wind turbine creates power where it's needed most: locally.
 Every road, bridge, building or tower can become a wind farm. (source) 

How absolutely wicked cool is this?! Hint – VERY!

In the US (Houston, Texas and Irvine, California), Aeromine Technologies is making “motionless” rooftop wind generators (for commercial and industrial use only). Their website touts that they operate more or less silently, take up 10% of the roof space as solar panels while producing up to 50% more energy. Neat.

A Scottish firm , Katrick Technologies based in Glasgow, has created a honeycomb-shaped design.

Unlike traditional wind turbines, our innovative Wind Panel does not use rotations to capture wind energy. Instead, our Wind Panel uses oscillating aerofoils that sweep the entire duct to capture wind energy from low-level turbulent and gust winds. This motion allows our technology to quickly react to instantaneous changes in wind speeds found in ground-level wind conditions.
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Our Wind Panel consists of numerous channelling ducts, where multiple independently working aerofoils are located. The aerofoils convert kinetic energy from wind to mechanical oscillations which are converged and converted into electricity. Our Wind Panels capture vast amounts of kinetic energy by having a comparatively large working surface area and density. (source) 

Two of these, the Vortex Bladeless "skybrator" and the Katrick Technologies "honeycomb" can be for personal home use. Exciting and fascinating stuff!