Industrial designer Jonathan Globerson has one of those ideas that makes you go, "Oh, duh! Why don't we all have one yet?" It's so simple, and yet so smart. His Greenerator design is a personal generator that converts wind and sun to power and can do so from a balcony, without messing with the view.

Image: The Greenerator could provide personal solar and wind power to apartment dwellers. Credit: Jonathan Globerson.

Here in Colorado, where one of the numerous local ballot questions was about extending the building height limit to allow for renewable energy projects on rooftops, Globerson's design could be a way to preserve the view while reducing reliance on coal. Heck, if it's possible to squeeze an evening full of hours out of a Nokero solar lightbulb on my modest, north-facing balcony, imagine what I could do with a Greenerator.

Looking a little like a cross between a double helix and a barber shop pole, the Greenerator design calls for a wind turbine, a half-dome shaped compartment for the generator, a controller, ultracapacitor, inverter and a solar panel attached to a balcony edge with a rail clamp and floor screws. The design might not be gorgeous, but it's not worse than a satellite TV dish -- and those are everywhere.

Globerson's design calls for magnetic levitation to reduce the wind turbine friction, as well as flexible thin-film solar cells that would require less material than traditional solar panels. According to his design specs, the Greenerator wouldn't be powering your whole apartment, but it could reduce the annual cost of electricity by 6 percent. The Greenerator alone could power a refrigerator or a 32" flat panel TV, which strikes me as being fairly impressive for such a seemingly small generator.

So far, a 1:4 scale prototype of the Greenerator is up and running:

http://youtu.be/Mu6_tQ8LY2s

ccording to Globerson's site, the prototype turbine works, although from watching the video I think the design will need streamlining to reduce vibration and noise. Plus, I'd want anything metallic that's attached to my balcony to go through extensive safety testing -- not just for humans, but also for wildlife.

With enough development, the Greenerator might mean that gung-ho residents who live in multi-unit buildings can scrap the petition for solar roofs, and start lobbying for rooftop gardens instead.

Analysis by Alyssa Danigelis
Wed Nov 3, 2010