) Bladeless Windmill: Wind power without spinning blades? Impossible, you might say -- but you’d be wrong. The Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo installed this powerful, curious-looking contraption at the Delft University of Technology in March. Instead of translating the mechanical energy derived from the movement of large blades rotated by the wind, the bladeless turbine lets wind move electrically charged water droplets against the direction of an electric field, increasing the potential energy of the particle. A collecting system then harvests that excess energy. The lack of large moving parts means the turbine is quieter and creates much less vibration, making it much better-suited to urban environments. Mecanoo's bladeless wind power generator.