LED Blog: LED Lighting And All Things Green

Tags: wind turbine energy

Energy Ball - Powered by the Wind, Sadly not Chi

I’ve decided to expand the realm of the blog to encompass the second half of the title rather only focusing on LED-specific information. As much as I love LED lights (and could talk about them all day) I feel that broadening your horizons ultimately makes you a better, more well rounded person.

I found this energy ball (unfortunately not the Kamehameha variety) while trolling through the interwebs, and it’s pretty, and pretty innovative. It’s basically a small wind turbine in a round configuration that provides increased efficiency and quieter operation than conventional windmill-style versions. It can operate in relatively low winds and can provide up to 15% of the energy of a typical Swedish family. For fat American’s I’d say cut that by 1/3rd, so maybe it can power 1/2 a PS3. The added benefit (or detriment depending on how you see it) is that it’s less likely to make spontaneous chicken (or bat) nuggets for you throughout the day.

A turbine is a turbine is a turbine, you say? Well then I guess you you haven’t seen enough turbines. A large factor for the purchase of any consumer is form (vs. function), so having such a cute-looking windmill ball on the top of your house could make you the envy of your neighbors as well as providing a service to the environment. The other big factor is cost, so if they can make these at a good price point, I’d love to get a couple and put them outside. I would even name each of them after obscure DragonBall attacks.

[Via Inhabitat]

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under concept. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.