Bladeless wind turbine - GIF

[mwmkravchenko]

This has gone around many times, and is just so much more internet hype.
Can electricity be generated by vibrations alone? sure it can. could even a 1000 if these non-decorated totems ever produce even a fraction of the energy of a single nat, gas or coal fired plant or an aging hydroelectric turbine? Highly unlikely. Why not simply strap generators to the billions of trees that grow naturally? Here's an idea just shove an anode deep into the ground then create a huge screen cathode and suspend it it the air then draw energy from the earth's natural battery effect. Oh, that's been tried as well but the technology died with Nicola Tesla.
so we are stuck with generating energy from the sidewalks

The standard idea of centralized generation is here. But a distributed model of generating electricity is also possible. And easier to work out on the existing electrical grid. I'm sure you know that the further from the generators you go the less the current capacity of the wiring available. That's one thing skipped over on the internet ideas.

Biggest problem is that companies make a lot of money doing this and the people owning them want to keep it that way. De-centralising the whole shooting match takes away all the bucks.

What could be done if profit was not the sole reason to do something.

Maybe smaller profits. But it'll never happen. A distributed grid of production is cheaper than a centralised system. Requires maintenance, and can be much more resilient to outages. Pretty much why it will be such a battle to ever do it.

Even here in Ontario Canada. American love to paint socialist on most things Canadian. The main producer of electricity ion the province of 18 million is partially owned by the province. There is a "delivery" charge for the electricity. Still waiting for the delivery truck to show up.... The fee is to refinance the nuclear reactors and their super expensive maintenance that pretty much finishe din the late 60's. Still paying for the reactors that make near 40% of the electricity here. The rest is natural gas and hydroelectric. Ontario has fully tapped out it's hydroelectric potential. Quebec, Manitoba and Labrabor are the areas where there are enormous untapped potentials. Manitoba being the toughest one as there needs to be near 900 mile million volt transmission line to get to the U.S. border. Yeah Canada is big. Texas is a small fry compared to the larger Canadian provinces. Texas is 40% smaller than Ontario, And just a week bit larger than each of the provinces to the west. Hey, geography killed no one!

[nova_robotics]

Maybe smaller profits. But it'll never happen. A distributed grid of production is cheaper than a centralised system. Requires maintenance, and can be much more resilient to outages. Pretty much why it will be such a battle to ever do it.

I don't agree with this part. There's currently a massive push toward distributed generation. More and more solar is being installed on houses everyday, and when you drive through places like Ontario it seems that every farmer has installed a massive solar array. It's a dead project now, but MicroFIT resulted in huge small-scale residential and commercial adoption. Medium scale wind projects are popping up everywhere as well. It's happening, just in parallel to centralized "old guard" generation methods, which is actually a good thing. We need both. Where I live in the East Coast we're at 30% renewable, which has been largely led by medium scale distributed projects. They're trying to get to 80% by 2030, but that has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.

[mwmkravchenko]

I don't agree with this part. There's currently a massive push toward distributed generation. More and more solar is being installed on houses everyday, and when you drive through places like Ontario it seems that every farmer has installed a massive solar array. It's a dead project now, but MicroFIT resulted in huge small-scale residential and commercial adoption. Medium scale wind projects are popping up everywhere as well. It's happening, just in parallel to centralized "old guard" generation methods, which is actually a good thing. We need both. Where I live in the East Coast we're at 30% renewable, which has been largely led by medium scale distributed projects. They're trying to get to 80% by 2030, but that has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.

I live near Ottawa and yes there are many more Solar arrays then even ten years ago. Trouble is that there is not the true infrastructure to keep it working out to the full possibilities. Utility style batteries are only beginning to be available at realistic prices and capacities. A few in Canada mind you, in Ontario and Alberta. Wind and solar applications. What we could really use is a truly engineered distributed grid. A few full container sized battery packs per so much generation. Possibly it will happen. I certainly hope so.