Beating out a fascinating list of other entries, the O-Wind Turbine has taken out the UK£30,000 (US$39,000) first prize in this year's James Dyson Awards. This crooked, vented spherical device is designed to hang from skyscraper balconies and generate electricity in the chaotic wind conditions of a high-rise metropolis.

Traditional wind generators are very efficient, but only when they're pointed straight into the wind. You don't see much wind generation in large cities, because the built-up environment plays havoc with wind patterns, causing swirling three-dimensional vortices where wind constantly changes direction.

So there's plenty of wind to draw energy from – urban winds can be very strong – but if you want to convert them into electricity, you'd need something that could take wind from any direction, including upwards, downwards and everything in between, and harness it into rotating a turbine in a constant direction.

And that's what we've got here. Inspired by NASA "tumbleweed" technology designed to use the swirling winds on Mars to continually push an exploration ball in a single direction, the O-Wind team set out to design an omnidirectional turbine shape.