On a long car journey yesterday my mind started wandering as I glimpsed a large wind turbine. I started thinking about ways of harnessing energy from natural occurrences.
From regenerative braking in vehicles to hydro-electric power in the home, I came up with some wacky ideas!
My favourite was to collect the rain that falls onto the roofs of buildings and channel them into a storage tank. From the tank, a pipe would run towards the ground and through a turbine before it is made available as a hosepipe or into a butt. The pressure of the falling water through the pipe would generate electrical energy from the turbine that could be transferred to a storage battery and used later, reducing the energy requirements of the house/building.
How much energy it would produce, I have no idea, but I like the idea! An easy after market solution would be to fit small cheap turbines to the bottom of existing guttering.
Today, I did some Googling and found out that, unsurprisingly, I am not the first person to think of this idea. There are a few other papers, blogs and forum posts talking about the same thing. The fact that I haven't seen a DIY fit it yourself kit probably means it is not a viable option. Who knows?!
I had a wacky idea that could save fuel but I won't disclose that yet as I did a patent search and couldn't find one that mentions it anywhere so I'll try and see if it is a viable option before going down the route of getting a patent and then licensing it to Honda, BMW or Volkswagen for millions!
I'm interested to know of more ideas that could be developed - list them here if you have one? (I promise I won't steal it for profit!)
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