Giant Vibrating Wind Turbines May Be The Future
“Skybrators” are cheaper, easier to maintain, better for the environment, and potentially more efficient than current turbines.
Wind turbines haven’t changed that much over the years. The first modern 3-blade electricity-producing wind turbines were built in the 1920s. While our current turbines are more refined, with better blade designs and more efficient generators, their blueprint is now a century old! Surely we could develop a better design rather than relying on such ancient technology. Well, as it turns out, we can. A new type of turbine promises to be far cheaper and more eco-friendly than anything we currently have. But how does it work?
“Turbine” isn’t the correct name for these wind energy devices, as they don’t have any blades and don’t rotate. Nonetheless, engineers have dubbed them “bladeless wind turbines” just to be confusing. These “turbines” generate energy through air turbulence over a pole rather than lift over a blade. As the wind passes over it, vortices are generated, but because of complex fluid dynamics, they form on one side of the pole and then the other in a repeating pattern. These vortices push the pole left and right perpendicular to the wind direction, causing the pole to vibrate. This vibration is how bladeless wind…
