Artificial plants generate electricity by wind

French engineers successfully developed an artificial tree that could generate electricity by wind.

The Wind Tree Wind Generator is a product of Jerome Michaud-Lariviere and a team of French engineers. After three years of research, they completed a prototype plant made of steel, 11 meters high, 8 meters in diameter and placed experimentally at Pleumeur-Bodou, in Brittany, northwestern France.

Wind Tree Wind Power Generation Model. (Photo: AFP)

The Wind Tree has 72 artificial leaves that can rotate like a turbine on a vertical axis. The tree is designed to harness lightning-fast winds, even slow-blowing at 2m / s, giving it continuous operation of 280 days per year. The estimated output power is 3.1kW.

Gizmag says the plant is completely silent and does not make noise as it rotates like conventional wind turbines. Meanwhile, the leaf parts will rotate regardless of the direction of the wind.

Wind turbines perform better when they are high and windy, so they are usually installed in uninhabited or coastal areas. However, new artificial plants can easily operate in urban centers, by taking advantage of light winds around buildings and cities.

The inventors hope the Wind Tree will be widely used in many homes and urban centers, providing electricity to LEDs on the road or charging stations. In addition, it can also be combined with many other clean energy production technologies such as photovoltaic, geothermal, or energy saving buildings.