A recently-incorporated California wind company thinks it's got a turbine for an untapped market.
Wind Harvest International can’t prove definitively that its wind turbines are bird-friendly, but it did find a bird's nest under one.
It wasn't a raptor, said company president George Wagner, but one typical for that area.
After 30 years of developing and patenting vertical-axis wind turbine systems, Wind Harvest is ready to commercially produce two models of its turbines and is raising funds toward that goal.
Company CEO Kevin Wolf said the last prototype built in 2004 gained Wind Harvest new patents that allow the company to place the turbines close together, which lowers costs and maximizes land use on a wind farm.
The patents fit in with the company plan to produce low-cost, low-maintenance turbines that generate profits rather than losses. For the next few years, said Wagner, the company will focus solely on wind farms.
"Our market is underneath the existing turbines," he told Cleantech.com. "It's like drilling for oil below where the others drill."
Unlike other wind turbines that look like tall propeller fans, Wind Harvest's Windstar turbines look more like paddlewheel frames lying on their side and stand just 50 feet high.
"As far as I know there's no other wind company with years of field testing and international patents," Wagner said. "There are some new companies coming up now and from everyone who's checked us out – there’s no one within three to five years of catching up with us."
The test location for the Point Reyes-based company is Palm Springs, which the U.S. Department of Energy considers to be one of California’s primary wind-generating regions.
"The wind speed of the site is so enormously important to the economics," Wolf told Cleantech.com.
Right now Wind Harvest is raising capital to get its Windstar 1500 model through the final, long and costly testing and certification process. The first turbine is expected to go up in August or September.
Take a look at the Windstar 3000 turbines here >>
Wolf said the plan is to start marketing the Windstar 1500 model, designed for higher wind speeds. After the turbine is established, Wind Harvest then plans to follow it up with the Windstar 3000 model for lower wind speeds.
The company is currently funded by individuals who Wagner described as having entrepreneurial vision and environmental concerns.
"Everything is money-driven in this world," he acknowledged. "Banks will not loan big amounts on a turbine that’s not certified."
One previous investor isn't ruling out the possibility of investing in Wind Harvest again. "It's not unheard-of to continue on with an investment," investment consultant Jean-Luc Park of the Calvert Special Equities Group in Bethesda, Maryland told Cleantech.com.
Calvert Venture Funds is listed as an investor in the company, and Wind Harvest is on the list of companies in Calvert's Socially Responsible Investing portfolio.
With the emphasis on setting up the turbine, conducting a study on bird safety to satisfy groups such as the National Audubon Society isn't in the plans, Wagner said. The simpler solution: "You don’t put your turbines where your bird flight paths are."
This advice seems easy for the Windstar turbines because they’re fairly low to the ground.
According to an independent analysis of the company’s wind turbines reviewed by Cleantech.com, Wind Harvest’s turbines were designed to "develop a technically simple wind turbine suited for near-ground locations that can be fabricated, assembled, and operated with local technology and personnel." Among the turbine features noted in the report are their low, rigid steel frames and low drive train for easy maintenance.
The report was done by a top wind engineering expert as part of an investor-driven, due diligence process and is available to qualified investors.
"We're very happy with the report," said Wolf. "It has lots of things that show how valid the technology is."
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Windstar turbines
Windstar turbines are definitely on the right track, there are so many windy areas that could be exploited with the right equipment, underneath larger turbines on wind farms is just one of them, urban areas and the built environment is another. Kevin Wolf is ill-informed however when he states that Wind Harvest is the only company who have years of testing and international patents in the field of vertical axis wind turbines. In Europe there are a few other companies that have been working in this field for a number of years, most notably www.turby.nl, www.vweltd.com and www.quietrevolution.co.uk.
Windstar Technology
I've worked on maintenance operations for WHI at the Palm Springs Windstar turbine array. I was quite impressed by the elegant simplicity of the Windstar design. That approach enables installation and maintenance to be performed by folks who are not highly specialized. It's roughly on par with doing basic maintenance and repairs on a car. I think that makes these turbines uniquely positioned for rapid, large scale build-out once the certification process is complete.
Vertical Axis Turbines
Watching a whole row of merrily spinning empty plastic 2L bottles mounted upside down and creatively carved into wind catchers I wondered what had become of vertical axis wind turbines.
They seemed to offer such promise 20 or so years ago.
Guess the will to embrace the technology wasn't part of the investment culture of the day.
Economics certainly seem to be tilting towards this fairly benign renewable.
competition for Windstar turbines
The first commenter above is right to point out an error in George Wagner's quote "as far as I know there's no other (VAWT) wind company with years of field testing and international patents." He meant to say that we know of no company pursuing the understory market of commercial wind farms. The VAWTs we have seen are either for home/rooftop use and are small, less than 10 kW or, if they are large, they are designed to be put on towers. An understory VAWT has to be short and they need to be placed closely together to maximize the use of land and reduce costs. WHI's "coupled vortex" patent (http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2003064852) will prevent VAWT competitors from placing their turbines close together such that the neighboring turbines create additional lift and torque on each other. VAWTs in the understory will need to withstand much more turbulence that when they are in smoother more laminar winds higher above the ground. Any new turbine model entering the commercial wind market takes years of field testing, multiple iterations and a great deal of experience.
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