February 10, 2006 4:00 AM PST
'Micro' wind turbines are coming to town
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Rather than build farms of towering wind turbines in rural areas, some companies are designing "micro," or small-scale, turbines that fit on top of buildings. The idea is to generate electricity from wind in urban or suburban settings.
"We want to integrate these small wind turbines on buildings in plain sight," said Paul Glenney, director of energy initiatives at Monrovia, Calif.-based AeroVironment. "We think this can really communicate the generation of clean electricity."
What's new:
A handful of "micro" wind turbine companies are trying to bring small-scale wind power generation to urban and suburban settings.
Bottom line:
On-building wind turbines are still an emerging technology, but they could fill a viable niche among different products for generating energy.
In their pitch for the technology, the companies are going beyond satisfying the growing interest in clean forms of energy. AeroVironment, Aerotecture and a handful of other businesses are marketing their turbines not just as power generators, but also as attractive additions to existing structures.
Right now, giant turbines built by the likes of GE Energy and Siemens are still the norm in the wind power industry, and on-building versions are rare. Newcomers are trying different tacks to break into the market. While some such as Clipper Windpower are producing entire devices, others are focusing on providing specific components of a turbine.
"We're tracking over 20 different emerging wind technology companies in our proprietary deals database, and that list keeps growing," said Robert Day, a partner at Expansion Capital Partners which specializes in clean technologies.
Overall, the wind industry is booming, experts said. The American Wind Energy Association said that last year 2,500 megawatts of new generation equipment were installed in 22 states, valued at $3 billion.
Wind architecture
AeroVironment, which is perhaps best known for its unmanned aircraft technologies, has a project under development from its Architectural Wind energy technology division.
The turbines look like large fans in square housings. They are specifically designed for placement on the top of steel-reinforced, flat-roofed commercial buildings such as a warehouse or "big box" retail store like Home Depot, Glenney said.
The turbines can be lined up next to each other to aggregate power generation, and the fans will spin even in a very slow wind of a few miles an hour.
The company has set up a few beta sites to test various factors, including its cost-effectiveness, the amount of noise it generates, and the potential impact on birds and bats (the turbines have a grate on both sides).
AeroVironment has not yet decided whether to commercialize the products. But in presentations with potential customers, the company has gotten a good reception, Glenney said. Business owners and municipalities are eager to find sources of clean electricity for a variety of reasons, including concerns over global warming and dependence on oil from unstable parts of the world.
"Lots of companies just want to reduce the footprint that a business leaves" on the planet, Glenney said. "And they want to educate their stakeholders--their customers, their pupils--on these issues."
Chicago-based Aerotecture is taking a similar "architectural" approach to wind power generation, although with a substantially different design.
Invented by University of Illinois professor Bil Becker, the company's Aeroturbine product uses a helix-shaped turbine placed inside of a cylinder. The turbines, which are 10 feet long, can be placed in many positions and take advantage of variable wind, according to the company.
"It's not fussy about gusty or turbulent winds. It's very amenable. It's the microclimate of the building that you have to look at," said Lesleigh Lippitt, co-founder of Aerotecture.
The company, which is in the process of commercializing the product, is negotiating with Chicago city officials over an installation at the Daley Center, which would set Aeroturbines at the top of the 650-foot building, she said. Other placements are under discussion, including underneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, Lippitt said.
Other companies building similar micro wind products for urban or suburban areas include Finland's Windside, and the U.K.'s Windsave and Renewable Devices. There's also a product line called Urban Turbines, from Dutch company Ecofys.
Also on the market are several turbine products, such as Southwest Windpower, designed for remote homes or boats.
Mix and matchExpansion Capital's Day said that small-scale wind technologies have a viable role in the bigger picture of power generation.
Placing a 300-foot high turbine in downtown San Francisco is problematic. But distributed, or on-site, electricity generation systems can help customers get around the transmission bottlenecks and reliability problems of the wholesale electricity grid, Day said.
He added that even small-scale turbines are not immune to the challenges that the overall wind industry faces, such as concerns over noise and cost efficiency.
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Only thing about too many wind generators is I am afraid it could mess with wind patterns but I'm not sure. Probably not.
I wonder if I use one of these there and some solar panels if I could just power my whole house. If we all did this we could smash the grip the big companies have and have like this mega clean environment.
I realize that wind power is the hot technology now, but let's not get carried away. Can't power your house by a box fan on top of it, chances are one of these units may be able to power a light bulb or two at best. Seeing how these'll cost a couple thousand $$, and have maintenance costs, the company will have a hard time selling these.
The country needs to move beyond fossil fuel power plants, but it's a pretty big waste to invest $3 billion to get only 2500 MW.
It would be one thing if just stores and malls got in on this. The worst part of this is that soon enough city governments will start getting this sort of thing. They'll be putting in these units on top of municipal buildings and have their pictures taken in front of them. Good for you Mr. Mayor, doesn't it all look so very cool. Why Mr. Mayor it helps America's addiction to oil - bravo! How much power does it actually generate? Don't ask don't tell, but nationwide it's almost as much as two power plants, you see. Thanks for wasting taxpayer money on these toys.
Please help us with some of the following metrics:
* Cost of the unit
* Expected power output of the unit
* Expected lifespan of the unit
* Maintenance or other ongoing costs
* Cost per kw/h. (This can be derived with the above metrics)
* In the case of wind techs, please also give us the avg. wind speed required to achieve these metrics
This piece looks as if it could have been copied from the company brochure. I am not denigrating the product, the idea, or the business model. Unless we have these metrics, there is no way to evaluate.
Mark Brandon
Sustainable Log - News and Views for Socially Responsible Investors
http://sustainablelog.blogspot.com
http://www.firstsustainable.com
When you subscribe to Sustainable Log, we give $1 to Alternative Gifts International in support of a cause of your choice.
I agree that any potential purchaser or investor should consider costs and benefits. But a complex, speculative calculation of that nature doesn't make sense in this article, which was about how some companies are pursuing the idea of wind mills in urban or suburban settings.
would send a signal to the oil producers.
Get the power generation close to the use.
Putting it on top of an existing skyscraper should not be a NIMBY problem. Putting them on a pristine landscape that is a problem.
How about a home windmill to recharge the Prius.
I still believe that efficient sun power should be the goal.
Great idea, Pranay, but my sanity just wouldn't be able to take it.
:)
Cost $2 million. Expected return on investment ~ about 15%
sounds good for a large corporation. So that means that a wind
turbine just has to clear about $300,000 per year to make
money. Easy. After all wind is free.
1.5 MW turbines stand 40 stories tall, but on average you can
expect to only get about 20% or so use out of them - the rest of
the time the wind is not blowing, or they are down for
maintenance. They run 365 days per year, 24 hours per day *
20% of the time, so 1752 hours per year. Electricity costs 10
cents per kwh at home, but 1/2 of that is for transmission. The
other 5 cents is for the power. 5 cents is the retail price. You will
only get 2 to 3 cents, as you own a source of electricity that
can't be turned on on demand. Say 2.5 cents. In total your $2
million investment makes 1.5MW*365*24*20%*0.025 = $66
thousand per year. Wow, that is not much money. But you still
have to maintain the turbine. Good luck doing that for $50
thousand a year, after lightning, wind and sun do their damage.
So you might break even. Why, then all the turbines going up in
the US? The answer is government money - $300 000 of it per
turbine per year. So now you are happy. You get cheques,
depreciation allowances, tax breaks, and more. It won't be easy.
You will have to spend many hours at local and federal
governments. Flights to Washington. But if your company is
named GE you will succeed.
Like distributed or grid computing (Human Proteome Folding, SETI, Cancer Busters, etc) you have millions of PCs running small tasks that, put together generates more processing power than the most powerful supercomputers in existence. I believe you can apply the same principle to produce energy from mini turbines that are connected to the power grid and feed it whenever it generates some power. Are we on to something? every single transmission tower, telephone and electricity pole should have at least one on top of it (and feed the grid directly), in fact every single structure should have one. This principle would apply to any form of energy production from mini solar panels (everywhere) to hydroelectric : taping energy from water in pipes and storm drains and sewers. I've also seen special speed bumps on roads that generate energy when a car goes over them... so many intersections with heavy traffic will generate a great deal of energy. You should be able to charge your Ipod just by walking, really.
Any Venture Capitalists reading this Article Out There!
that small wind turbines are nothing new. In my local harbor,
there are dozens of them on sailboats. These turbines provide a
valuable but tiny amount of power - they are used to charge the
batteries so that the boats "on the hook" can operate their
required anchor lights.
Very little else can be operated on the quantity of power
produced.
It is also fairly common for one of the turbines to develop a very
annoying whine when the bearings go bad.
Otherwise, the noise is fairly bearable.
JUDITH CONNELL - GREENBANK, ONTARIO
JUDITH CONNELL - GREENBANK, ONTARIO
mesh covering the turbine blades to keep birds from flying into
them.
Studies clearly show that the typical giant turbine kills no birds at all. The dead bird worriers apparently have no idea of just how many millions of birds are killed each year in the US from such things as : flying into windows and buildings (estimates range up to a BILLION) , or eaten by cats (100 million) , hit by cars (100 million), flying into electric transmission lines (174 million), and so on.
The bird worriers are spreading gigantic lies about the extent of bird kills by windmills. Most of these people could care less about birds - their motive is to block wind power ad they will take advantage of public ignorance to do so. They
present themselves as protectors of nature all the while they are acting to help destroy nature. These people are beyond contempt. And I'm including you too, Ted Kennedy, two-faced blubber boy of Mass.
for the massive use of wind power in the United States.
They're good as a supplemental system, but the cost per
Megawatt is too high to be sustatinable as a mainline solution.
Neither is solar power for much the same reasons.
What needs to happen is for fusion power, preferably cold
fusion, to be advanced far enough to allow for fusion plants to
be built inexpensively and efficiently.
Lisa Green
If it costs 3000$ and can produce 100Kwh/Year in a typical installation, it's a joke.
If the cost is below 1$/Kwh/Year, they might be into something ...
Step #1 is to tax vehicle fuels heavily, and use the money to reduce sales tax, so that it is revenue-neutral and not regressive.
Step #2 is to lower the age at which people can sell their (large) family home and move to a much smaller one, without getting hit with devastating capital gains taxes. This would encourage empty-nesters to make way for families with kids. Thus large fuel-inefficient houses in urban areas would be more likely to be used by people who actually need all that room. Real estate prices in urban areas would not skyrocket so much if the supply was increased in this way.
Pretty darn cool!
see www.windation.com
contact us for more details
-Mark
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by Sheikhrezai
September 27, 2008 7:44 AM PDT
- You are missing the most significant of Urban Building Turbine makers
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See all 55 Comments >>see www.windation.com
contact us for more details
-Mark