Miscellaneous

In the corner of Seamus Garvey's office is a strange contraption.

It looks like a vertical steel girder, supporting what looks like two giant test tubes.

Small plastic pipes protrude from it, adding to the device's peculiar appearance.

It looks odd, but Seamus - a professor of dynamics at the University of Nottingham - thinks it could solve our energy problems.

The device is a prototype for future wind turbines.

It's designed to tackle the great weakness of wind farms - their inability to generate electricity when there's no wind.

If Seamus's plan works, turbines could be modified to "convert" the wind into massive amounts of compressed air.

Seamus with his contraption

This air could then be used to generate electricity when demand is higher, or when the wind isn't blowing.

Seamus says: "The demand for electricity's not constant.

"In the middle of the day we want a lot of it, at night almost nobody wants electricity.

"Also the wind does not blow at the same speed all the time.

"We will have times (as wind power becomes more common) when the amount of electricity generated by the wind is more than the total demand for the whole country… then you have to store it or waste it."

Seamus's plan is to place weights inside hollow turbine blades.

Gravity will make the weights fall down the length of the blades as the wind rotates them.

This "piston effect" would compress air, which can be piped away for storage in giant energy bags.

The compressed air can then be released to generate power when it's needed.

The idea of storing energy in the form of compressed air isn't new. In fact, it's already happening at some locations.

But Seamus's ideas for compressing it are innovative, and he's already in talks about further tests and prototypes.

He's also looking into similar schemes using tides and waves.