The Green Optimistic

This is a short video showing a device made up of a simple bicycle wheel to create electricity for your tent in the mountains.

You may use small wood boards, or toy boats “borrowed” from your kids. Or as well you may teach your little ones how to build a free energy device.

While about a month ago I was presenting an article about Suntory Mermaid II, a boat powered only by the movement of the waves, I am now presenting an inventor, named Francois Kneider, who in his seventies, continues to amaze the people who know him by the number of ideas he has and the innovations he brought to life. In 2005, he focused on building wave powered systems for boats.

The main idea is simple: find yourself a river, make sure its falling abruptly enough to have the necessary speed and velocity to spin your turbine, and make the necessary piping and flow control system.

John Gilmartin, Scottish inventor, has found out a way to harness the free electricity from his backyard water stream near Staveley, in Cumbria, by using used youghurt pots and with the help of PhD engineering student Mr Cattley, now hopes to see the invention in the shops by the end of 2008.

The wave powered boat is called “Suntory Mermaid II”. It has a speed of 5 knots, which is three times slower than traditional diesel powered boats. With some improvement in the wave-propulsion technology and combining it with wind sailing we can hope that it will become competitive with fossil fuels-powered boats.

Francis Farley, an experimental physicist (I like them much more than the theoreticias), has invented the “Anaconda” wave powered device. It can mainly be described as a large distensible tube, made out of rubber, closed at both ends and filled with water. The Anaconda tube is designed to be anchored just below the sea’s surface, with one of its ends facing the oncoming waves.

I received a message today from a reader suggesting a particular website. I read the information on that particular website, and there was presented a hybrid energy producing system by using the waves as a “catalyst” for the operation of a diesel-powered generator.