Wind Power Goes Sky-High

Altaeros is on the way up. The Boston-based renewable energy startup said in a press release that it has successfully tested a prototype of its airborne wind turbine -- a jet engine-shaped, helium-filled balloon with a conventional wind turbine inside.  In the prototype test, the device was tethered to a transmission cable and lifted to 350 feet, where, according to the company, it......read more

GE Weaving Fabric-Covered Wind Turbine Blades

If all goes according to General Electric's plans, the next generation of wind turbine blades will be wrapped in fabric. With a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) program, GE is developing a new fabric-covered wind turbine blade that the company says will perform just as well as conventional fiberglass blades,......read more

The World's First Bird-Friendly Wind Turbine

Clean though wind power may be, it doesn't come without its own environmental concerns, chief among which is the fact that birds and bats share the unfortunate habit of flying into spinning turbine blades.  Raymond Green, an 89-year-old World War II veteran, has developed a new bladeless wind turbine that he claims will save the lives of avian creatures. Carrying the slightly wordy......read more

US and UK Announce Floating Wind Turbine Collaboration

At this week's multilateral clean energy meeting in London, the British government announced it will collaborate with the US to develop floating wind turbines that harness the higher wind speeds available over deeper water. The UK's offshore wind potential big; it is estimated to account for about one-third of Europe's overall offshore wind potential. But in order to exploit it, new technology......read more

Wikado Playground Gives Wind Turbines New Life

The Netherlands has a long and rich history of harnessing energy from the wind. Hell, the windmill is their national symbol. Today, the country is a global leader in sustainable design. So it comes as no surprise that Dutch designers have found a creative way to reuse old wind turbines: a fun-filled playground created from recycled wind turbine parts. Designed by 2012Architecten, the Wikado......read more

Turbine-Free Wind Power

Wind power may be clean, green, and renewable, but it doesn't come without its problems. It's noisy as hell for people living nearby, and it poses serious risks to flying wildlife and sensitive shoreline habitats. A group of mechanical engineers from Cornell have responded with a solution that may represent the future of wind energy tech. The working prototype, dubbed Vibro-Wind,......read more

Rising Tide

As a potential clean energy source, tidal power is as alluring as it is elusive. The consistent daily flux of the tides presents attractive possibilities for the production of reliable, sustainable power, but the hurdles posed by deploying large turbines in the sea are more than a little significant. Still, tidal energy projects, particularly in Europe, are attracting plenty of capital......read more

On The Boardwalk

Ah Uhuru, you clever scamps, you've done it again. The Brooklyn furniture designers, who we featured in our SHOP section earlier this year, make functional yet whimsical designs from materials that have been "reclaimed, recycled, repurposed, reused or otherwise rejected from their original function." We love that sort of thing, of course, so we're pretty excited about Coney......read more

London's 'Razor' Building First in the World to Integrate Wind Turbines in Design

Peering down 148 metres from the top of the latest addition to London's skyline, the traffic-clogged Elephant and Castle roundabout and its notorious neighbour, the Heygate estate, below feel an unlikely location for a world first. But next week, this new skyscraper, nicknamed "the Razor", will take a crucial step towards becoming the world's first building with wind turbines......read more