Each year millions of people are affected by weather related events like storms, blizzards and hurricanes. Among other challenges, these weather events result in wide spread power outages and damages to electrical infrastructure—requiring repair that often takes weeks to restore. It is estimated that nearly 8 million people on the east coast lost power during Hurricane Sandy and another million people faced power outages this past weekend during Winter Storm Nemo. Many of these people went days if not weeks without power.
To address this I propose the creation of multi-weather energy generators (MEGs). Similar to traditional back-up generators, MEGs would provide an alternative form of energy to power homes and commercial businesses during and in the aftermath of major storms. However, these devices would be multi-faceted and would work throughout the year to continually store and synthesize various forms of energy into some sort of battery format that could then be used on an as needed basis. During the Summer/Spring for example, MEGs would use solar panels to continually convert solar energy into stored electrical energy. During the Fall/Winter, MEGs would use wind turbines to convert and store mechanical energy into electrical energy.
For most of the year the energy created by MEGs would simply sit as stored energy in a battery format. However, during the 2-3 weeks of the year when weather sours and households faced major power outages, MEGs could be drawn on to provide much needed power until the power grid is restored. In designing these devices the focus would be on making them light-weight, low-maintenance and affordable to ensure that consumers would not incur a large cost in terms of money spent and time needed to maintain the devices.
Allen Miller 