Portable wind turbine gives campers a free-living boost

March 12, 2021 by Alastair Sloane

Danish company KiteX is using a Kickstarter campaign to sell its Wind Catcher, an adventure-friendly portable wind turbine that can be set up in 15 minutes and used pretty much anywhere.

It offers freedom campers, for instance, a whole new independence. Paired with a compatible 3.5kW portable generator (Jackery, Goal Zero, Bluetti and so on), Wind Catcher can produce 600W to charge phones, laptops, a power inverter for a TV set, even an energy-efficient fridge or E-bikes. A lighter-spec version is good for 200W. An app keeps track of power generated.

The whole unit weighs just 10kg and starts in price from around NZ$1700. The turbine itself has three fibreglass and carbon-fibre rotors with steel hardware and bearings and is connected to a fibreglass and thermoplastic 4m tower (see illustration) via Dyneema-reinforced nylon belts and lines.

The turbine spins at a maximum 140rpm and can be setup on ground with up to a 12deg slope. The belts at the bottom are adjustable to account of the difference in required guy wire length.

Says KiteX: “Wind Catcher Lite will start making usable energy of 50W in a 14km/h wind. This means you don’t have to camp in the most windy places to start producing usable power. The larger version will make 600W in a 29km/h wind.

“It’s designed to run quietly. It’s not silent, like solar panels, but 20 meters away you won’t hear it.” A big plus, says KiteX: Unlike solar panels, Wind Catcher works at night.

If you are in a position to shell out upwards of NZ$600,000 for the 60^thanniversary Porsche 911 S/T or optional Porsche 911 S/T Heritage, you’ll no doubt want the signature titanium watch that goes with it. That’s how Porsche figures it anyway. Or, if you want the watch you’ll need to get the car. Both the car and the watch are limited to 1963 units, the year the original 911 model broke cover. The watch – Chronograph 1 911 S/T and Chronograph 1 911 S/T Heritage – and the car carry matching edition numbers. The watch is priced at $US13,500, or around $NZ22,200. The car, says Porsche NZ, starts at $NZ608,000. A “strictly limited number” will go into production for NZ early next year.

Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

A go-anywhere EV concept for the US military uses an onboard 12kW diesel generator to top up the batteries on the move. The all-wheel-drive has 800-volt technology and a 200kWh battery pack to power three electric motors, two in the rear and one up front. Claimed output is 745kW/15,590Nm, or 1000hp and 11,500 ft-lb of torque. The four-seater was developed by the defence division of General Motors and is based on the platform of the Hummer SUV. It rides on Fox performance shock absorbers and 37-inch tyres and comes with “exceptional” approach and departure angles for off-road mobility. Maximum range using the generator to keep things ticking over is said to be around 500km.

The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.