Nate M.’s Highway Windmills
Nate M. from Detroit (who coined this accident barricade idea from a few weeks back) has sent in many car-related ideas, which is rather interesting given his location. This next one takes power windmills and plants them along the median of busy highways and major streets:
Actual live-cam feed from a highway in Europe. Really.
While planting windmills near a highway is not a new idea, the idea to strategically place them along the median is. Their placement would be receptive to both directions of passing traffic, feeding off the wind resistance wake from cars and trucks.
I don’t know how much traffic frequency or vehicle speed is needed to keep these windmills operating, but I like this idea for it’s practical use of the wasted real estate alongside the highways. I think these could operate with zero traffic present, buoyed by actual wind that moves along the highway corridor.
Posted on April 4, 2011, in Architecture, Cars, Environment, Transportation and tagged Automotive, Design, Energy, Environment, Ideas, Transportation. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Ive been thinking about this idea especially for cold climate winters. If the windmills were used to generate heat through a resistor underneath the roads, it could help melt snow and ice off the road. Maybe they could used for small lights on the side of the road during warm weather?
This is completely anecdotal (I cannot verify this), but a million years ago I delivered pizza to pay bills, in the cold confines of Prince George BC. I delivered to an affluent neighborhood on the outskirts of town, a very hilly area. Fortunately a few customers had heated driveways, otherwise I couldn’t get to them. I remarked to one customer: “It would be awesome if all the roads in town were heated.” And he responded “At first yes, but all the warm roads would cause a lot of steam and fog. Visibility could get bad.” And that made sense. He pointed out all the heat that comes off of some sewers, and said “Now imagine that everywhere!” Smart guy.
But using windmills to power lighting infrastructures is a far-gone conclusion. At night when demand is low (power is actually being wasted!), lights are the primary consumer of this energy.