This idea is still dough in the oven whilst it warms up, but...
I have a field that is pretty useless. No sheep, goats etc, just long grass. But it does look inoffensive.
Now what I'd like to do is make better use of the field. Ideally, I'd like to get rid of all the grass and replace it all with
something that looks equally inoffensive, but generates power for me.
Imagine a rubber mat 1sq m in size, that has a whole load of fake grass sticking out of it. This 'grass' would actually be litle solar panels, but in the shape of a wheat stem with a bulbous head containing the solar cells.
This would be attached to the rubber mat with connectors that would generate tiny amounts of electricity when it was moved by the wind using piezoelectric thingies.
The body of the actual mat would contain little channels that water could run down, and here would be micro water wheels.
Now, in of itself, the power generated by the mat would be quite small; solar + wind + water, but add enough of them together in a 'plug-together' kind of fashion and cover my field with them and ...
- it looks like it did before
- it gives me power for no additional work other than setup
- i don't have to cut the grass any more
- cover acres of useless moorland without building big, ugly windmills
of course, i've no idea how to build it, but once built, the volumes would be so enormous the economies of scale would kick in making it quite cheap...