Turbines and Batteries Recycle Gentle Breezes

A company, called Collective Energy believes in giving businesses flexibility over their power supply, in United Kingdom and beyond. Allowing multiple used electric car batteries to have second lives is a key component of their business model. This innovative approach now includes harnessing turbines and batteries together, in order to build a solution we have not seen before

Alpha 311 Wants to Capture Motorway Breezes With Turbines

UK start-up Alpha 311 creates small wind turbines to gather energy in gentle breezes. These may look tiny compared to wind towers, but they say they have several strategic advantages:

Their small turbines can retrofit onto streetlights, and motorway overhead signs.
Gentle wind movements, including artificial breezes from passing traffic can rotate them.

Who among us has not felt the energy of those artificial breezes, as motor traffic raced past us? This surely is an excellent example of renewable energy in action, be it from electric- or gasoline-power vehicles. And moreover, the 6-foot-high turbines, each weighing 30 pounds could deliver their energy to the grid via overhead, and street lighting.

Collective Energy Wants Turbines and Batteries To Join Forces

CNN World News explains how a passing small car moving at 50-miles-per-hour causes a 12-mile-per-hour breeze, able to rotate an Alpha 311 turbine. A single turbine on a busy road could produce as much energy as a 300-watt solar panel, according to a company spokesperson. What an opportunity this is to team small turbines and batteries!

Collective Energy and Alpha 311 are joining forces to work together. Alpha 311 may be able to generate abundant raw power, but it will need batteries to stabilize it for the grid.

End-use businesses could tap into the system by ‘owning’ individual used EV batteries, delivering exclusive green power to them. This one seems a winner for the UK, given its climate, extensive motorway network, and steady supply of used EV batteries coming on stream.