Sketchy Concept in Microwind
Frequent commenter Tim Kingston came across this microwind concept in Gizmag and sent it to me. A man of few words, he writes: “FYI.”
Thanks as always, Tim. Here’s my take: The wind conditions in 99% of the places this would be deployed are terrible, the “swept area” is small. I would bet that the electricity one would generate with it would be horrifically expensive.
As far as I can see, the only people who have a legitimate customer value proposition in this space are our friends at WindStream, which is why we present them in our list of renewable energy investment opportunities.
While I agree with you that this concept seems expensive at first blush, there are a couple mitigating factors:
1) It looks as if they way it’s clipped on to the panel is designed to take advantage of the panel itself as a wind guide, so its effective swept area could be significantly higher than the size of the blades.
2) if the turbines are designed to produce dc power of the same voltage as the panels, these turbines may be able to share inverted and other infrastructure with the panels, lowering the overall incremental cost of power from the turbines.
3) If this is seen as a way to increase the capacity factor and energy output of a solar farm, the incremental energy from the turbines needs only to be cost competitive with adding another solar panel. On an off-grid application, it needs to be even less competitive because the complementary nature of wind and solar generation profiles will allow the system to have a smaller battery or other type of backup power supply.
Excellent points. Thanks very much.
The more I think about it, though, I see other issues — the biggest of which is that it doesn’t face into the wind; it always faces south (in the Northern Hemisphere). That’s going to be total disaster for capacity factor for a horizontal access machine.
VAWTs (vertical axis wind turbines) don’t need to rotate to face the wind. Since this one is on its side, it should be able to benefit from both southerly and northerly winds. How much this matters will depend on location… it all depends on the prevailing wind direction.
I agree with you that this will only make sense in very specific locations, and I don’t see it as a viable business model given the niche market, I just don’t think it’s as bad as you’re making it out to be.