Attack of the Bladeless Wind Turbines!

Well, here it is, folks, the future of wind turbines. Yup, no blades, so the spotted owls and birdies will be safe to fly around them. And, you can put a couple of these in the same space as a regular whirling & spinning wind turbine. It's a no-brainer. The future is here and now. Well, almost.

We've all grown accustomed to seeing those 100-foot pinwheels that are popping up everywhere there's wind to generate electricity. They spin in the breezes as you drive down the highway, spinning and chopping up endangered birdies and whatever else happens to fly through them into tiny pieces to make pretty much a bloody mess on the ground below. 

But guess what? Now somebody has a better idea. A Spanish company by the name of Vortex Bladeless has figured out a way to generate electricity from the power of the winds in a radical new way. In a few years you just might be seeing a bunch of these gizmos on the horizon instead of blades up in the sky and, apparently, yes, they actually do produce electricity.

Of course, the things look like giant rolled marijuana joints shooting up into the sky, but what the hey. These things are supposed to do the same as the windmills but instead they turn the breezes into kinetic energy by the miracle of "vorticity".

Instead of capturing energy from the winds by a giant propeller, vorticity is an aerodynamic effect of spinning vortices that's long been considered the enemy of architects and engineers who normally try to figure out how to design their buildings so these whirlpools of wind don't rip them apart. Apparently, vorticity can start an oscillating motion in structures (if the wind is strong enough) and things will break apart and collapse. That's not such a good thing if you're making a building, but apparently if you use the energy and funnel it the right way, you can make it wobble around and produce electricity.

That's what the founders of Vortex Bladeless think. They take that energy and try to use it instead of avoiding it by turning it into something productive.

The idea of Vortex’s shape came about by using computers to make sure the spinning wind occurs all together at the right times and places along the entire gigantic joint, er, mast. In the current prototype, the elongated cone, mast, joint, or whatever it is, is made of carbon fiber and fiberglass which lets it vibrate even more normal. Then there are some repelling magnets at the bottom that jerk each other back and forth and all that kinetic energy is then converted into electricity. Really!

What a great idea! No gears or bolts or anything mechanical moving around. That makes it cheaper to manufacture and maintain. The guys who put the company together say the "Vortex Mini" will be about 41 feet tall and can capture about 40 percent of the same wind that a regular windmill would, but since you can put twice as many of these in the space of a propeller turbine, it works out pretty close to the same thing.

The company already has about $1 million raised from the Spanish government and from private capital and they're planning to try raising more funds in the U.S. soon.

Next, I'll bet they'll be painting the things so they even look more like giant smoking marijuana joints and sell advertising on them to the pot industries in Colorado where it's legal. Oh my! What would our parents think?