Wind power has become a viable source of clean and renewable energy, and it is growing at 30% per year. Unfortunately, it is limited to remote areas of the country that have very strong winds. Median Wind is a distributed generation company that has developed an innovative new way to generate wind power in any geographic area, regardless of the prevailing wind conditions.

Induced wind technology provides a mechanism to generate electricity from the untapped resource of vehicles moving on our road system. Median Wind’s vertical axis wind turbine generators are secured atop roadway median barriers, and the air displaced by passing vehicles is caught by rotating sails to create electricity. The shape of the sails has been engineered to capture both forward moving and upward driven air that is uniquely present at the highway median barrier.

Median Wind turbines are about 4 feet tall - unobtrusive compared to the massive turbines typically found in commercial wind farms. When installed along the highway median barrier, they produce a tremendous amount of power: over 0.46 megawatts (MW) from just one mile of highway. One hundred miles of Median Wind highway will generate 46 megawatts (MW) of clean domestically-produced electricity at as little as 14mph winds.

Even when there is little or no traffic, the turbines can efficiently capture the natural wind. Local winds vary by location; for example Los Angeles gets 7.8 mph on average, and Honolulu has 10.6 mph winds. The worldwide average is 7 mph, but winds as low as 5 mph will start the Median Wind turbine generators running – even in the absence of traffic-induced wind. In locations with strong ambient wind speeds, Median Wind will also install larger more powerful 5 kW turbines in the median area to capture additional power from the prevailing winds.