While in Latvia there is still heated debate about the usefulness of wind energy and the impact of wind turbines on the landscape, the US company Airloom Energy has developed a new wind turbine system that resembles a carousel and could create significant competition for the currently common turbines, whose height can already be twice that of St. Peter’s Church.
! The original article is available on Inc.com The article has been translated with the help of artificial intelligence, but it has been edited by an editor.
A Wyoming-based startup has just begun work on designing next-generation wind farms. The company’s modular turbines could be cheaper, faster to build and more efficient than the conventional turbines that resemble windmills.
The turbines developed by Airloom look nothing like the gigantic windmills that have become the standard of the wind energy industry. The new design looks more like a carousel.
“With growing electricity demand, we need more flexible systems that can be quickly built and deployed anywhere at large scale,” says Airloom CEO Neil Rikner. “That is the only way we can ensure energy security and independence. Airloom’s patented, US-manufactured turbines do exactly that — they replace bulky and expensive models with low-cost compact designs that generate more energy and take up less space.”
Airloom Energy has started construction at a site near Rock River, Wyoming, where it will build its first large-scale turbine. The company has announced that the project has already advanced far enough that construction will be completed and it will be able to begin commercial operations in 2027. In Rock River it will test its next-generation modular turbine design to validate output, ensure manufacturing efficiency and improve deployment costs.
The Airloom turbine structure is only about 18 meters high, so Airloom believes it is very well suited for locations with lower wind speeds or height restrictions. (Since the late 1990s the height of wind turbines has increased by about 83%, and some onshore units are mounted on towers that have grown by about 83%, with some land-based turbines today standing on towers over 100 meters high and rotor diameters of 120 meters.) The new design consists of several poles holding a track and arranged in a large oval. Fixed blades move along the track under wind pressure and generate energy.
Thanks to the modular design, Airloom turbines will likely be able to capture more wind and produce more energy while using less space, and they can be built using small, mass-produced components that can be manufactured by local companies. Airloom Energy claims that its turbines can be installed in less than a year and will have a lifespan of about 30 years. The company also says that its design can avoid the challenges associated with manufacturing traditional horizontal-axis wind turbines, which is very expensive.
“This pilot project is more than an experiment; it is a fundamentally new approach to sustainable renewable energy generation: a system that can be deployed faster, uses land more efficiently and is created to tackle future challenges,” says former GE Onshore Wind product management leader and current Airloom advisory board member Paul Judd.
Airloom Energy has raised about 13.75 million US dollars from various sources — including Bill Gates–managed Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital, WYVC, Crosscut Ventures, and WovenEarth Ventures. Of this amount, 5 million dollars came from Wyoming state Energy Matching Funds and 1.25 million dollars from the US Department of Defense.
Originally published at https://inc-baltics.com/radita-alternativa-milzigajam-veja-turbinam/
Like
Love
Happy
Haha
Sad
