Shawn Frayne

Shawn Frayne is an entrepreneur and the inventor of the world’s first non-turbine wind-powered generator, a new technology that has enormous potential to help people in poor communities power lamps, keep small vaccine refrigerators cool, and charge cell phones for relatively little cost.

Frayne was inspired to create the WindbeltTM generator, during a 2004 trip to Petite Anse, a small fishing village in Haiti that was not plugged into an electric grid. Locals were dependent on diesel and kerosene for lighting, at a cost of US$5-10 a month — a huge sum for most families. Frayne was driven to find an inexpensive and reliable alternative that would enable local people to harvest energy on their own.

After a series of unsatisfying experimenting with solar cells and micro-turbines, he remembered a film he had seen in his junior high physics class about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington, which famously collapsed in 1940 due to powerful vibrations caused by the wind. Frayne’s invention, an elegant device small and light enough to hold in your hand, harnesses this effect, known as “aeroelastic flutter,” by using tensioned membranes to capture small pockets of wind energy. The membranes oscillate magnets linearly past wire coils, which creates an electrical flow.

Today, Frayne’s company, Haddock Invention LLC and its spin-off, Humdinger Wind Energy, LLC, are continuing to perfect the Windbelt generator, which received a Popular Mechanics 2007 Breakthrough Award, at testing facilities in Hong Kong and Guatemala. In six months to a year, he expects to pilot new and improved prototypes in homes in Guatemala and Haiti, with the goal of a large-scale rollout in three to five years. Guatemala is also where Frayne hopes to build what would be one of the first design incubators in the developing world. Its first project: working with local engineers to design a household device to disinfect water using a simple chlorine generator powered by a small Windbelt system — built for roughly five dollars.

While Frayne’s inventions are geared at creating a new micro-power industry in places like Haiti and Guatemala, he also has his eye on developing the Windbelt technology for application in wealthier nations, such as powering wireless sensor nodes in smart buildings or WiFi repeaters. The goal is to generate revenue that can be reinvested in creating additional technologies for emerging economies in partnership with local engineers and inventors.