Flags of tomorrow: a wave to the future

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The most common way wind energy is harvested is by windmills. These windmills are eco-friendly and don’t do much harm to the world as opposed to other energy harvesting methods, but they come with some downfalls. According to a 2013 study by the Smithsonian between 140,0000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines”. In addition, wind turbines decrease the value of homes around them. One possible solution to this is the use of piezoelectrics in flags. These flags are made by thin PVDF films that are flexible and can bend easily, like a flag. After recording the power output of the PVDF film at different angles away from the wind flow, we were able to calculate the best orientation of the flag. At angle 0° or 360° we were able to achieve 2.0306E-08 and 2.39379E-08 Watts. Thus, we would need 50,129,710,626 flags to power a 1200 Watt toaster oven. While these numbers might seem small and insignificant, in the future and in a greater scale, these piezoelectric flags might be powering your house.