The described research is a light weight, inexpensive portable and collapsible wind turbine, small enough to be carried in a backpack, ruck sack or within the storage compartment of a vehicle, which can be used to recharge batteries and provide off-site, emergency, or campsite power. As a means to extend the battery life of electronic equipment while moving away from the power grid and extra battery storage, a power generating unit is needed. Current approaches are to carry the anticipated number of spare batteries, to use solar cells or any number of small generating thermionic devices. While each of these have a place in the market, they also have negative cost, size, and weight drawbacks.
The objective of this research is to create a power generating/storage wind turbine device for recreational, emergency, and military use that can easily be collapsed and transported as needed. The device is a lightweight, collapsible wind turbine constructed of rugged materials to be used on camp sites, remote locations etc. and carried within a pack for travel. It is of a size and weight to be part of an emergency or survival pack. The wind turbine, in its preferred embodiment, is a self-starting/sustaining device that starts at low wind speeds so no monitoring or priming of the device is necessary. In addition to the novelty of it being collapsible, the wind turbine device employs advanced features to increase its wind energy capture efficiency and its energy storage and delivery system, along with unique design features that make it rugged, lightweight and easily assembled.
