Powertime is a firm believer in using technology to reduce our impact on the environment and we love seeing new and innovative ways to achieve this. This month we highlight an interesting project by French company, New Wind, which has an interesting twist on harnessing wind as a source of energy.
Tree shaped wind turbines
Traditional wind turbines are large and not very visually appealing. Jérôme Michaud-Larivière, founder of New Wind, came up with an idea to design smaller wind turbines that look similar to a tree. These are more visually appealing, looking like interesting sculptures, and generate electricity from light breezes blowing between buildings and streets in the urban environment. Although they are not as efficient as standard wind turbines, their size and appearance makes it more possible to install them throughout cities and even in household gardens.
Jérôme got the idea when watching the small leaves of a tree moving rapidly despite there being hardly any wind present and came out with this interesting idea which is to be installed at Place de la Concorde in Paris before being rolled out in various other cities.