Do the words “aero-elastic flutter” mean anything to you?
This week, Popular Mechanics announced its annual “Breakthrough Awards” for the coolest, most promising tech innovations of 2007. 28-year old investor Shawn Frayne, a former student of MIT engineer Amy Smith (who has been hailed by Wired as “A MacGyver for the Third World”) has now come out with his own simple but ingenious solution for poor communities in the developing world.
Access to affordable energy is key for improving living standards among the 3-4 billion people living on less than $4 per day. Making that energy clean and renewable is critical for averting ecological collapse. Since poor communities and nations aren’t able to make large capital investments in electricity transmission infrastructure, the focus must be on “distributed” power generation - creating the energy right at the source. Since wind turbine technology does not scale down well, Frayne decided to explore other options for harnessing wind power for the small residential energy needs (under 50 watts) of poor families.
Inspired by seeing videos of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse as a child, Frayne used a pair of magnets and a metal coil to create his “windbelt”. The rudimentary technology’s recognition by Popular Mechanics aligns perfectly with the principles of Sustainable Global Enterprise, an approach which stresses entrepreneurial, market-generated solutions to problems of ecology and economic development. Who knows - Frayne’s simple innovation may help lift thousands of poor communities out of poverty! And refined further in traditionally neglected markets at the “Bottom of the Pyramid”, the “windbelt” may even provide developing nations with a green “leapfrog” technology over developed markets, which may in turn adopt the technology commercially someday themselves.
For now, I’m sure Frayne is just thrilled to get his picture in the paper.
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