With money, technology, the best brains and resources, developed countries can afford the best of energy sources. What is challenging is to design the best, with the developing countries in mind to be of genuine utility with the limited resources and money available.
Shawn Frayne, a 28 year old inventor based in Mountain View, California, is the brain behind the “wind belt” which uses the wind energy to light up LED lamps and power radios in poorer homes.
The wind belt can harness and produce much more energy and much more effectively than a conventional wind turbine can. “With rotary power, there’s nothing out there that generates under 50 watts,” Frayne says. This makes it 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbine.
As “Innovations that make life easier for the world’s poor need to be affordable, repairable, reliable and environmentally sound”, Executive director and founder of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) Peter Haas advocates, its design is so simple and working so easy to understand even for a lay man that, the locals should be able to fix a problem if any. Frayne’s Windbelt, is a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils.
Frayne envisions replacing the traditional kerosene lamps with this much efficient, cost effective device to light up many homes in developing countries. “Kerosene is smoky and it’s a fire hazard,” says Peter Haas.
Frayne hopes to help fund third-world distribution of his Windbelt with revenue from first-world applications—such as replacing the batteries used to power temperature and humidity sensors in buildings. Shawn Frayne who won a Break Through Award this year for his invention, emphasises, “In the next 100 years, what’s required are new fundamental inventions, and those are going to come from the developing world”
via : popularmechanics
