‘wind cube’, a modular wind power system designed by chen liao hsun
‘wind cube’ is a modular wind power system designed by chen liao-hsun for household use.
the units, 100-watt turbine generators, advantage from telescopic blades, which can be pulled out to activate the system when there is a gentle breeze, and retracted in heavy winds or bad weather to avoid possible damage. individual units are designed to fit together in a honeycomb structure and can thus be tiled to fit entire exterior walls and roofs.
‘the concept,’ chen liao-hsun states, ‘is to use three-dimensional wind fields to make up for the insufficiency of two-dimensional ones.‘ he estimates that each ‘wind cube’ can generate about 21.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month, approximately 1/15 the household usage of a family of four.
while it is unclear how efficient the devices would be implemented in reality, an additional possibility for ‘wind cube’ may be the use of the honeycomb structure as a free-standing fence, to prevent the deleterious effects the system might encounter in terms of wind speed and device efficiency when installed upon an existing wall.
video demo of the ‘wind cube’
a single turbine unit of ‘wind cube’
the retractable blades can be pulled out in just three steps to activate the system for use in appropriate conditions
concept illustration of the system in the protected, retracted mode (left) and active use (right)
designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication.
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more commentsIts a new way to move a building..
mount masses of fans to one side.
A wind turbine will not make a sifciginant dent in your electric bill unless you live in a place where the wind blows pretty hard most of the time. Even in a very windy location, it may take 10 years for to generate enough power to pay for the initial cost. Windmills are designed to produce maximum power at a particular wind speed; at half that speed, they produce only one eighth as much power. Here’s a link for some commercially available windmills. If you build your own, it will probably be much less efficient. In most cases, the price tag does not include a tower or installation. Check your electric bill to see how many kilowatt hours you use during your windy season. Divide by the number of hours in the billing period to get the average power consumption. Before deciding on a windmill, you should compare against other options. In urban communities with lots of sunshine, solar is best. Gasification is a much more attractive option for areas that don’t get much wind or sunshine. However, the gas turbines that go with them tend to be pretty noisy, so they are not suitable for crowded urban communities.
what is the minimum speed of air to this turbine can produce electric power
and how much of power at this speed ?
As the wind cube modulars are designed to harness wind energy from the wind that flow nearby home, so we would probably say that this is not meant for largely populous cities as there will be hardly any wind flow through the buildings. So it will be a waste there. However, this will work in standalone homes where walls are more subjected towards open spaces and hence greater wind for operation of these modular generators. But if rated capacity is concerned, then this is again an drawback of this system as compared to common wind turbines.
I comletely agree this is an innvoative idea, but need to be improve the rated capacity as common wind turbines will give the primary competition to it.
While it looks good structurally, it looks modern aesthetically, and it nests well and creates interesting exterior patterns:
“This looks like an Interior Designer’s idea of what of what an “engineer” would do. Very superficial design.
Its effing stupid, unless perhaps you are trying to use motors to fan a wall. Wind does not want to go into and through a set of blades, and then suddenly turn a sharp right angle with zero radius, and then bounce into similar air streams.
Air wants to go more or less STRAIGHT. Air can be your friend. Just don’t make it do silly things it doesn’t want to do!”
I don’t know if the designer intended it but it mentions right in the article the chance to maybe use this as a freestanding wall to be more efficient… so I think they meant it just like rdee says to show a jumping off point for other inventers.
what ohdesign says is interesting, places where you get wind tunnels, I wonder if could work there even on a building wall…