Dean Kamen’s Inflatable Wind Turbine Doubles As Digital Billboard

One of the biggest impediments to wind power is the not-in-my-backyard criticisms that wind farms are ugly. This can only make wind power adoption worse. Luckily it is only a patent application so it's all just speculation.

How about the balancing electric wheelchair that is no longer being produced because Johnson & Johnson cannot find a way to profit of off it, yet many people with MS want one?

It's difficult to judge this without seeing the final product but it is revolutionary in design.

Many wind projects never get off the ground because of the barrier to entry (high initial costs and risk of wind pattern changes etc...)

This design looks to get around those. If one gets developed it'll be interesting to see just how efficient it is.

Maybe birds won't die when they hit one either. Maybe they'll just bounce off?

So, let's say we have a turbine system that can be repeatedly deflated, moved, inflated and re-anchored.

The next question is, can that process be done semi-autonomously? The big question would seem to be battery or power transmission technology.

Gotta love the futuristic image of turbinebots roaming the Wyoming hills, looking for local maxima on the energy ranch.

But keep in mind the truly important part of a patent application: the device described need not exist or even be capable of being built.