O-Wind Turbine - James Dyson Award National UK Winner

James Dyson Award national UK winner 2018 is O-Wind. O-Wind has redesigned the wind turbine creating an omnidirectional, single axis turbine that takes advantage of horizontal and vertical winds, without requiring steering. It has the potential to be used in urban environments to generate sustainable electricity.

[rtz]

Is it scalable? How much load or force can it exert? How much or how hard can it drive? Does it stall out or fail to spin faster after a certain wind speed?

[Simple_Simian]

What about some solid facts?

What minimum wind speed is required, what's the power output range?

[Chimonger]

There have been other Wind gens proven to work well in the capricious winds that curl through dense urban buildings. All (well, they seem few) have some rendition of double helix fins, teathered at both ends (at their poles).
The double helix catches wind from any direction, and respond to a wide range of wind speeds; teathering them at both ends prevents them being damaged by high winds (like in Chicago, IL).
And they DO output good amounts of energy. Size matters; gearing matters. They can run generators on both ends, if fins are mounted horizontally.
The double helix form, geared to turn more slowly yet output well, don’t kill birds either, even ones with fins in-filling the double helix ribs.
These guys said nothing about size or output of their O-Wind.
It’s spherical shape would certainly avoid killing birds.
Size matters, because that affects output capability, as well as maintenance ease and costs. It also matters to scalability, and eventual prevalence of use. If they could be made in a range of sizes, such that they are useful for householders, all the way up to building owners augmenting their real estate with on-site green energy, they can work.
BUT...a sphere is bulkier to mount, and more ungainly to maintain, than a cylinder, Imho.
A unit or units that might make enough energy to be useful to an apartment highrise, might be very difficult to put on top of the building.
And, there’s that Thing about audible, palpable windgen vibrations, affecting the buildings and their inhabitants...

[SolarizeYourLife]

There are plenty of vertical wind turbines, just buy one and replace the blades with your set up... And compare how well it does...we all want to see it in action...

[noavailablenamespace]

Would an independent and lightweight nacelle (almost windsock like) improve the o-wind turbine's performance, depending on the depth of placement of the turbine within the nacelle?

[jonathanday]

The idea of a turbine that works like this has been around for a while. The alternative energy centre in Wales had one that looked like an upside down egg whisk. But it never caught on.

If this particular invention catches on, and especially if it's more efficient and scaleable than its predecessors, then it has earned this award and any others given to it.

[JeffDM]

The guy talks about a person in an apartment generating their own power but that seems questionable. I haven't yet found any numbers on how much power their example device can generate at a given speed.

[judeirwin]

Let us all know what amount of power it can generate and what wind speed is required. Then, when you’re ready to manufacture, what will it cost. Don’t just think of urban spaces. Millions of people in rural areas need this. Could be larger or be installed in groups or banks?

[africorn]

What happened to them? There is no website (any longer).

[horseshoecrabs]

Keith Bontrager's well-known quote, "strong, light, cheap, pick two" applies to a number of engineering principles. While the design in the video looks cool, my guess is that it will need to be ultra lightweight while strong enough to deal with the massive surface areas being stressed when scaled to size. We just used 2 of our 3 options from the quote, which suggests that "expensive" is going to be the third component to make such a design structurally sound.

[RicardoRimorin]

Would like to know more about this, interested in distributorship of this in our country

[vetostreamwrongy]

Brilliant people, doing beautiful work.

[blueshark]

Nice! And Power output? Voltage?
Operaring efficiency??!?

[spaken]

How many watts does it generate compared to a conventional turbine? I suspect it's only a fraction.

[justincase]

Include low cost, low weight, and high durability in your calculations. I'm thinking something along the lines of UV-resistant nylon that's both factory balanced, able to be rebalanced in the field, collapsible for shipping, and as cheap as the proverbial pinwheel.

[garyj]

I live amongst the trees in the windy Catskills mountains USA, are you manufacturing and, if so do u have a larger version to test in this type of environment? We have a fair amount of wind plus it’s very omnidirectional.

[Harold-tsnf]

Do you have any distributor in other country already?

[SimonPlatten]

Are they're any updates on this, is a 3d model available?

[DirkWWiersma]

Looks promising. Is it already a marketable product?

[Buzzhumma]

Very good . I heard about you creation on Robert Murray Smiths channel . Check out his diy version . Its great 👍🏻