Sky serpent

Up until now wind turbines have always been installed as individualunits, but Doug Selsam is an American inventor who developed a methodfor joining multiple turbines together. While normal turbine designsare big and powerful, they are also expensive and difficult to install. Selsam took a smaller approach, linking multiple rotors onto the sameshaft. This idea allows small and inexpensive designs to be deployed, that aren't as powerful as the big ones, but quite efficient. Eachrotor captures wind increasing the efficiency of the whole and ifaligned correctly can use one tenth the material to produce the samewattage as the big boys. Popular science magazine even named the "skyserpent" the invention of the year in 2008. Selsam is nowconceptualizing ways to deploy his design on a larger scale like opensea water.

Source: designboom.comAdded: 16 February 2009