89-Year-Old Man Develops Bladeless Bird-Friendly Wind Turbine

89-Year-Old Man Develops Bladeless Bird-Friendly Wind Turbine



One of the few environmental concerns over the large 3-bladed wind turbines is the threat posed to birds and even bats. So Raymond Green, 89-years old, devised a new type of wind turbine that can harness wind energy with no large moving blades, and no threat to birds.

Green’s CWP Compressed Air Enclosed Wind Turbine completely eliminates the three massive blades seen on most wind turbines. Rather than waiting for the wind to turn a blade, Green’s device features a patented Inner Compression Cone Technology, which he claims will squeeze and compress the incoming air in order to create more power at the turbine.

“Our design does not have any external moving parts to hit the birds,” writes Green on his website. “Our unit is easy to see so the birds can avoid it, and all moving parts are internal. The blades are mounted behind the windsock and inner compression cone, therefore making them nonaccessible to birds. Also, our turbines make virtually no noise.”

According to Green, his design can be scaled up for commercial power production, or down for residential use. The CWP will soon be tested, improved upon, and manufactured by Sigma Design, so final judgement will have to be reserved for the birds themselves.

Raymond's homepage is Catching Wind Power, for more details on the design. What I like, is from an architecture/urban planning viewpoint, is the smaller, more compact design makes these suitable for use in neighborhoods where larger towers would be prohibited by codes or impractical. You could mount dozens of these to a single pole, and as a homeowner looking to buy into wind-generated electricity, you could start with one or two turbines, and add more as you can afford them. Hoping to see this guy's design put to the test and eventually marketed!

Wind technology should be fully developed it is a travesty that the US has not taken full advantage of this resource. I travel the world quite a bit and have seen third world countries farther ahead in the utilization than us.

The bird argument has been a major stance that has been used to stop development here and this 89 year old has just made that argument null and void for him.

Looks like a good idea. If it actually works and each cone will produce the same power as one standard generator, it could greatly reduce the land area needed. Something like this could feasibly be mounted on buildings.

It's awesome that this man is trying to change the world at 89 years old. I hope it comes to fruition for him but I have my doubts. If we were to have wind turbines we would have had them decades ago and by now everyone would have one. We will be dependent on oil based energy as long as there is a profit to be made.

He'll probably be approached with an offer he can't refuse, sell the patents, and well never hear about it again.

inb4 a major oil company buys the rights to this and then does nothing with it because its "not economical"

Awesome, they need to start building these everywhere. I know if they put them up in Oklahoma, they could power half the US hehe. If you'd been to Oklahoma you'd know how windy it can get.

Now hopefully no "accident" befalls this dude like a "random" heart attack or something.

Just seems that happens a lot when an awesome idea is brought to public light. Must be from the brain power of the creator for creating the idea which causes a power surge that ends the live of the inventor...

Now Chicago could run the whole north east......But for really BIGGG WIIND DC could power the whole country....
Throw a couple of those in the senate and it would make megawatts.......

Here is a Man Trying to beat TPTB God Bless Him !!!!!

He isn't trying to beat them if he patented it. Unless he did this opensource so they could never buy up the patent and bury it, and then it belongs to the people and he accepts competition. And that is the right thing to do. All these things need to be open sourced.

My big problem with this design is the ease with which you could clean it.

We all know crap flies through the air.... the wind turbines we have now are designed to kick *** and let god sort it out.

89-Year-Old Man Develops Bladeless Bird-Friendly Wind Turbine

. The blades are mounted behind the windsock

Sorry, I had to do it.
I hope you understand.

Did they find alot of bird carcasses around these supposed aviary asassins?

reply to post by Screwed


Yeah, over-hyped headline does it again! Not the old guy's fault though, at least he doesn't call it a "bladeless" design, he calls it a " Compressed-Air Wind Turbine". Not to mention, "turbine" itself implies blades.

Anyhoo, here a video from his site on how it works - the cones look similar to the inner and outer cones found in ramjet engines.

reply to post by GoOfYFoOt


No, that's always been an overblown threat about wind turbines. The real reason the guy uses the cones is to increase the wind pressure at the turbine. The writer of the headline just played up the "bird-friendly" aspect of it - which isn't much better than their "bladeless" claim either, lol.

Not being an engineer, my guess (mentioned above), the cones purpose are to increase wind pressure on the turbine blades, since they're smaller and can't generate the level of torque found in the huge blades of a typical wind turbine. I'd guess that the cones would also need to be pointed constantly into the wind. At least with the big open blades, the traditional wind turbine can vary from the winds to some degree with only a small loss in power. However, those big blades also require a motor to keep them aimed into the wind, while these look like they might be able to aim into the wind just under the wind pressure alone. Not really sure, but the design is intriguing.

Originally posted by stirling
Now Chicago could run the whole north east......But for really BIGGG WIIND DC could power the whole country....
Throw a couple of those in the senate and it would make megawatts.......

I think you meant petawatts

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
89-Year-Old Man Develops Bladeless Bird-Friendly Wind Turbine

final judgement will have to be reserved for the birds themselves.

I think the birds have yet to prove his claim.It's not a foregone conclusion that the inner blades will cause less harm than the outer blades. Both designs have blades and predicting exactly how birds will behave amounts to an unfounded claim. It may in fact be more bird friendly but it would be nice to see this claim backed up.

Bird friendliness aside, the design may have some other advantages.

Originally posted by GoOfYFoOt
Did they find alot of bird carcasses around these supposed aviary asassins?

I've had a 5 blade wind turbine for more than four years now.

NOT ONE DEAD BIRD next to it.

I guess they get chopped up pretty good and dispersed by the wind.

I didn't notice in the article how this new design stacks up against a conventional wind generator, as in wind speed needed to start it spinning or power output vs windspeed.

Some wind generator projects have been thwarted for the simple reason that locals didn't want them cluttering up the landscape, with birds being used as the reason to oppose their installation.

Why can't they just surround windmill blades with cages like they have on fans?
Like this...

Originally posted by butcherguy
I didn't notice in the article how this new design stacks up against a conventional wind generator, as in wind speed needed to start it spinning or power output vs windspeed.

I've seen no data but I can offer an educated guess. Since the funnel shape concentrates wind, these might work better in relatively low wind areas that may not have enough wind for the normal design to be efficient.

The other concern I'd have would be one of maintenance such as longevity of the bearings. This funnel design looks like it might be harder on bearings, though can't be sure. I'd certainly monitor that in a comparison though, in addition to efficiency.