Pinwheel Generators

Rather than building enormous power plants and huge gargantuan windmill generators, or massive hydroelectric plants that deform entire landscapes, why not just use a massive array of very small pinwheels? Yes, that's right: Pinwheels, like what you give to a child, but with a tiny generator on the back. Each pinwheel has a connection to adjacent pinwheels.

Now, let's say we want to do it with hydro power. We stick the pinwheels in the bank of a major river, one every few feet or so, so that they're sticking out into the water. If we do this every five feet, and the river is a mere 100 miles long, that's 105,600 little pinwheels. And that's only along one bank! I bet designs could be made that wouldn't interfere with the ecosystem, either.

Wind: There are tons of places to stick pinwheels. You could put them all on top of houses and along roadways. Inside subway tunnels (I actually got this idea at the Pittsburgh airport; they have pinwheels in the walls of the train that moves you between terminals, doing nothing but spinning around) or train stations. In fields, perhaps just above the maximum growth height of food plants.

If the components were simple and easy for anyone to replace, entire communities could manage and care for the pinwheel array. Large quantities of pinwheels could be dropped in electrically blighted areas and quickly installed for electrical power, unless there was never any wind or water flow in those areas.