Small Wind Is Dead, But Some Don’t See It That Way
WindStream is a small wind concept I once promoted; see pic at left depicting a version of the product they eventually hybridized it with solar PV. It’s built around an extremely important set of facts, which its founder, Dan Bates (good guy) understood very well:
• Because the power generated by wind is a function of the swept area defined by the path of its blades, and because the area of a circle is proportional to the square of its radius, bigger is better (to a point).
• The cost of making longer blades raises more or less linearly, proportionately to their length.
• Because of the advantage this provides big wind, if small wind is going to work, it has to be cheap.
• Cheap things tend to fall apart easily.
One might have thought that this would put a spear, once and for all, through small wind. And, for most observers, it did precisely that.
But along comes this guy, challenging that position, and raising money via crowd-funding.
Will he be successful in raising money? Who knows. He has a Ph.D.; maybe people will be impressed. Will he succeed as a business, and will small wind, as he claims, eventually generate 10% of our energy? Not in a million years.
Craig,
I agree with your assessment that small wind will never supply anything like 10% of energy demand.
However, some small wind technology devices have already proved useful in various specialist applications. On a global scale the technology can be really useful for applications where other forms of cheap power and technologies are uneconomic, and “power on demand” isn’t a requirement.
The Tulip design seems to be inspired by the concept of ‘tacking’ sails, and whether it works efficiently or not, I don’t know enough to judge the viability.
The project and the individuals behind the project, seem reputable and open to honest evaluation although exactly why an Israeli Corporation would pursue crowdfunding as a means of funding and product like this, must raise some doubts.
The company’s CFO Larry Solomon, is a well connected young business go-getter and should have been able to find a Venture Capital funding organization to facilitate the commercialization of this product without too much difficulty.
I agree! The amount of electricity produced by wind power increases the larger the diameter of the turbine. Because of this small wind probably won’t get very much traction and will end up dying very soon.