Wind power has become one of the major renewable energy sources. In the future, electricity can experience breakthrough, it can even be generated from the power of the typhoon. Japan is currently inventing this technology, which energy generated from one typhoon can fulfill 50 years of electricity consumption in Japan.

Japanese technology company Challenergy, with its name combining “Challenge” and “Energy”, converts powerful wind brought by the typhoon into energy. Before the 311 earthquakes, Japan predicted that by 2100, nuclear power utilization would account for 60% of energy . However, the Fukushima incident caused a huge disaster, so Atsushi Shimizu, the founder of Challenergy, wanted to develop new energy for Japan. Challenergy aims to provide safe and reliable electricity to Japan and developing countries such as the Philippines, which are hit by typhoons every year.

The current wind turbines on market with propeller design are easily damaged due to the low resilience against strong typhoon. Therefore, Shimizu has developed a new type of wind turbine to withstand the wind speed of the typhoon. In terms of the appearance, it looks like an egg beater. Whereas, in terms of the function, it is adopt the Magnus effect and combine with the vertical axis to cope with the omnidirectional wind speed, which can withstand strong wind without being damaged. In addition, the new generation wind turbine rotates slower than existing ones, therefore the environmental impacts such as noise pollution and bird strikes are expected to occur less than the conventional wind turbine.

In 2016, Challenergy installed the first typhoon wind turbine as testing in Okinawa and is expected to launch the product officially in 2020. The Tokyo Olympics will be held in 2020, Shimizu hopes that the generator will be installed at the National Stadium or the Toyko Tower so that they can promote Japan’s new energy technology to the world and gain international awareness.