Vortex Power

Harnessing the wind from every direction.

The Engineering Design Project was the capstone of the engineering undergraduate degree. A multifaceted team collaboration between electrical and mechanical engineering students to conceptualize, prototype, and test innovative solutions.

Excerpt from paper (1):

Wind energy provides renewable, non-polluting energy. Reducing the capital, operating costs, and environmental impacts while enhancing the efficiency of wind machines will make these devices more economically viable.

[…]

The main innovation was to utilize wind channeling. Wind speed increases as it travels up, over and between surfaces, like tall buildings or narrow passageways. To fully harness the power of wind channeling, the vortex device would be placed in an area of high wind speed, like between two buildings, in order to generate the maximum amount of power at accelerated wind speeds.

Acknowledgment(s)

Wind generator prototype co-designed as coursework.

(1) Ashley, D. et al., n.d. "Vortex Power."