New, more efficient wind power technology blowing your way
Cheaper wind turbine inspired by 2004 tsunami
Antone Gonsalves, Bloomberg Businessweek
Sunday, June 5, 2011
In December 2004, Imad Mahawili was vacationing with his family in Florida when an earthquake near Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people. Watching the destruction of poor villages in Asia and Africa on TV, Mahawili was reminded of the poverty he experienced as a child growing up in Baghdad in the 1950s.
"It was heartbreaking," he says.
Mahawili, 62, was then executive director of the Michigan Alternative & Renewable Energy Center, a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs launch green startups. But the tsunami had given Mahawili, a serial entrepreneur who holds a doctorate in chemical engineering and had sold two technology companies, an urge to build something that could benefit the poor. In 2006, he started working on an idea for a small, inexpensive wind turbine that could provide electricity to rural communities. Three years later he left Marec to found WindTronics in Muskegon, Mich.
In most turbines, wind spins a three-blade system, which turns a vertical shaft that connects to an electrical generator at its base. In contrast, Mahawili's design looks like a giant bicycle wheel with 20 nylon spokes. At the outer end of each spoke are a magnet and stationary coil, which generate electricity.
(More here.)
Antone Gonsalves, Bloomberg Businessweek
Sunday, June 5, 2011
In December 2004, Imad Mahawili was vacationing with his family in Florida when an earthquake near Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people. Watching the destruction of poor villages in Asia and Africa on TV, Mahawili was reminded of the poverty he experienced as a child growing up in Baghdad in the 1950s.
"It was heartbreaking," he says.
Mahawili, 62, was then executive director of the Michigan Alternative & Renewable Energy Center, a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs launch green startups. But the tsunami had given Mahawili, a serial entrepreneur who holds a doctorate in chemical engineering and had sold two technology companies, an urge to build something that could benefit the poor. In 2006, he started working on an idea for a small, inexpensive wind turbine that could provide electricity to rural communities. Three years later he left Marec to found WindTronics in Muskegon, Mich.
In most turbines, wind spins a three-blade system, which turns a vertical shaft that connects to an electrical generator at its base. In contrast, Mahawili's design looks like a giant bicycle wheel with 20 nylon spokes. At the outer end of each spoke are a magnet and stationary coil, which generate electricity.
(More here.)
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