The Green Energy Machine (GEM) is a modular floating platform built from a split octet-truss space frame. Land is often the most expensive part of a home. The GEM puts housing and workspace on rivers, lakes and sheltered coastline, where the lot is free.
Concept render — twin water wheels asternThe cost of land, not the cost of the building, is what prices many families out.
A floating structure sits on water rather than on purchased ground. The largest single line in many housing budgets simply goes away.
The frame is assembled from repeating truss members and flat panels that fold from a common pattern. Workshop tooling is enough; no expensive custom moulds.
Units can be built in a yard, towed to a site, anchored, joined to neighbours, and moved again as needs change.
The platform starts as an octet truss, one of the stiffest lightweight structures known, then is split into simple hull shapes.
Octet-truss geometry gives high strength for very little material. Splitting it along planes produces hull shapes that can be skinned and made watertight, and joined into trimaran or catamaran layouts that carry a deck and living space.
Fig. 1: Split octet-truss hullTelescoping mast/anchor legs pass through the hull. Raised, they carry sails and collectors. Lowered, they reach the riverbed or seabed and hold the platform steady.
Fig. 7: Mast/anchor frameThe construction method is as important as the shape. It was designed so that two capable people with ordinary tools can build it.
The frame starts as identical flat truss sections, welded together on a simple jig laid out on a long level surface. Nearly every strut is the same length, so there is little to measure and little to get wrong. Sections of about 12 metres can be handled by two people.
The flat faces of the split octet truss take sheet steel directly. The same sheets welded across the frame make strong, watertight compartments, so the bulkheads add to the strength of the structure.
Welding makes it easy to add truss layers or whole modules later. A first unit can be modest, then extended into a larger platform as needs or budgets grow.
A GEM does not need every harvesting system. Builders can add only the ones that suit the site.
Think of the GEM as a combine harvester for the water: it moves to where the energy is and harvests it. Two large paddle-wheel rotors with adjustable concave blades sit on a shared axle between the hulls. Flowing water or passing waves turn them, and a vehicle-style axle and generator set turn that rotation into electricity.
Fig. 2: Twin water-wheel generatorBlade angles can be adjusted, so the rotor can work in a steady current or in the surge of waves. The drawings show a breaking wave driving the blades at the waterline.
Fig. 6B: Wave powerThe hulls are designed to do more than float.
The twin hulls and adjustable drawbridge-style gates (“wicket gates”) narrow the water as it approaches the wheel. Narrowing a stream speeds it up, and the power in moving water rises with the cube of its speed, so a modest current can become a useful one.
Only half of the water wheel is in the water at any moment. On the return half of each turn it is out in the air, where drag is far lower, so little of the energy gained is lost.
Water is far denser than air, so a slow-turning wheel can handle a great deal of energy. Slow rotation means simple balancing and machining, and standard axle and gearing parts step the rotation up for the generators.
A fixed power station needs years of permits. A floating one can try a site first.
Anchor, measure the real output over a season or a year, then decide whether a permanent installation makes sense there.
Nothing is built into the riverbed or shore. When the platform leaves, the site is as it was. Local rules still apply, and you should check them before anchoring anywhere.
Tides reverse roughly every six hours, so a small battery bridges the pauses. The platform can also move to where the current or waves are stronger.
Large parabolic sails on the mast frame can catch wind, or be set flat and used as solar-thermal troughs that heat a collector pipe to make steam. Because both wind and sunlight scale with the area exposed, a bigger sail gains on both. Builders who only want the wheels can leave the sails off entirely.
Fig. 8H: Sails raised, platform anchoredArtist’s impressions of the platform with its optional systems. Click to enlarge.
Concept renders. Details differ from the drawings, and the renders are not engineering models.
AI-generated concept animation, shown to convey the idea of the platform under way. The styling differs from the drawings and the living space is not depicted.
Click any drawing to enlarge.
• Split octet-truss hulls
• Twin water-wheel power unit
• Telescoping mast / anchor legs
• Optional solar-thermal sails
• Modular trimaran / catamaran layoutsWe are open to conversations with builders, housing providers, communities and investors.
Start a ConversationDescriptions are conceptual and reflect the design as filed. No performance, cost or regulatory approval is claimed; floating dwellings are subject to local building, marine and zoning rules.