Giving Compass' Take:

• Smithsonian magazine discusses the chaotic wind patterns in urban environments and how a new product called the O-Wind Turbine could address this problem for the sake of clean energy. 

• How can donors fund more sustainable innovations such as this? In what ways might O-Wind help create more efficient turbines around the world?

• Read about other incredible innovations for sustainable energy.

James Dyson and the team at the James Dyson Foundation announced the winner of the 2018 Dyson Award, selecting a small, omnidirectional wind turbine out of 20 international finalists. Called O-Wind, this soft globe hangs suspended between cables, above and below, and spins around a vertical axis whether the wind is coming from above, below or from the side.

“The complicated shape takes wind and makes it go through tunnels, and creates pressure differences … which makes it spin always the same direction,” says inventor Nicolas Orellana, a recent Lancaster University master’s of science graduate who now works full time on O-Wind.

Orellana developed the first O-Wind prototype not as a generator, but as a wind-driven rover that could travel efficiently across flat deserts. Along with partner Yaseen Noorani, who he knew from Lancaster, Orellana realized the same principle could be used for power generation. Wide vents throughout the ball, facing different directions, siphon wind through smaller vents, kind of like a bunch of parafoils twisted together into a ball. The pressure differences from the wide vents to the small ones make the device rotate around a single axis due to Bernoulli’s principle.

Read the full article about wind turbines and sustainable energy by Nathan Hurst at Smithsonian magazine.