The Pinwheel

[Ed Borden]

Joe Saavedra has this concept of using a pinwheel design that can be placed outside a window

Imagine a million of these all over the city.

[joe]

This concept was done in collaboration with Estefanie Duque, who's thesis is called Kinetikit:

http://stefydu.com/thesisblog/

She's created an open-source micro-energy harvesting kit (taking something like 0.8v and boosting it to 3v) that can be applied to a variety of applications, pinwheels being one idea. 

She's also made frisbees, skateboards, and more that take tiny amounts of kinetic energy and charges batteries with them.

all of the photos Ed's posted are from her prototyping work!!

[Ed Borden]

Here is the link to her blog about the pinwheel:
http://stefydu.com/thesisblog/?p=144

Also, she has a video here about the harvesting kit:
http://kinetikit.org/

[Ed Borden]

The more and more I look at Estefanie's work, I am convinced that this
type of approach is perfect for us (kits). I think after much talking
about this project, there's been general consensus on the innovation
here for this group not being at the point of power generation, but on
the method of sharing.