Solar Powered Windmills?

Or, When You're Hot You're Hot!

The pathetic illustration below is RecycleBill's idea of a Solar Powered Wind Turbine that could be powered by wind and solar-- perhaps even both at the same time. It could be built into new buildings, retrofitted to existing buildings or made freestanding. It has the added benifit of being able to provide passive solar powered cooling and unlike other windmills, this windmill would work even when the winds aren't blowing.

While I'm probably not the first to consider such an idea and can't produce data to support my hypothesis I thought I'd tell you how I hope it would work. When sunlight strikes the south facing glazing on the front of the tower (essentially an empty tube) the air inside heats up and begins to rise causing the turbine at the top to rotate. Hot air naturally rises through a process called convection. This would make the system useful on those hot summer days when the wind refuses to blow.

And at times when the wind is most likely to blow (like when a storm is brewing or at night) the natural winds passing over the turbine would keep things spinning in much the same way as those spinning attic vents you see on some houses.

As to how much electricity it might produce I really haven't a clue but I've little doubt that if properly constructed someone could make such a system quite useful. Fact is: all windmills are solar powered as all natural winds are caused by the heating of the Earth's atmosphere by the Sun.

Update: As I suspected, I'm not the first to think of this idea as United States Patent 4491740 will attest. While that means a business based on Solar Powered Windmills might have to pay for the use of Edward A. Siegel's idea, there is no law that can stop you from building your own.

Seems some folks at Penn State are working on the same.