Four researchers from the University of Texas Arlington recently completed a study that uses a miniature windmill to convert wind energy into electric energy. This is surprisingly more efficient than the large-scale versions and uses piezoelectric vanes, which are called biomorphs attached to a crankshaft. Because piezoelectric material can generate high voltages with a minute magnitude of deflection, this design could be feasible for powering wireless sensor networks. The team recently demonstrated just that and wrote up the results in a paper: “Myers, Robert, Vickers, Mike, Kim, Hyeoungwoo, and Priya, Shashank. “Small scale windmill.” Applied Physics Letters 90, 054106 (2007).”
