Miniature and Floating Turbines to Reduce Wind Power Costs and
Turn Light Breezes Into Reliable Electricity
Located on house roofs or floating 900 feet above them, from remote
villages to the local industrial park, a new generation of wind turbines
is expanding wind power’s reach to any home or business that wants an
environmentally friendly source of electricity. Two companies developing
new wind turbines, MicroWind
Technologies LLC. and Magenn
Power Inc., were recently cited by SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray as
examples of innovators ushering in a new generation of cost-effective
wind power. They are among several SolidWorks®
3D CAD software users stretching the boundaries of wind turbine
designs and expanding wind power’s reach around the world.
Magenn and MicroWind confront a key obstacle to wind power’s growth;
generating a steady stream of power from unpredictable winds.
Burlington, Mass.-based MicroWind is developing a low-cost rooftop wind
turbine that can generate electricity from winds as light as 10 mph.
Ontario-based Magenn is working on a lighter-than-air wind turbine that
floats 600-1,000 feet above the ground to catch the steady wind flows.
“MicroWind and Magenn demonstrate the kind of thinking that will make
wind power a practical, economically feasible electricity source on a
large scale,” Ray said. “The basic concept of generating power from wind
has been around for centuries, but companies like MicroWind and Magenn
are confronting engineering and design obstacles that have prevented it
from working on a large scale – even if that large scale is actually a
lot of small turbines working together.”
MicroWind Technologies is the creation of entrepreneur Michael Easton, a
Tufts University-educated engineer. Easton designed the “residential
scale” wind turbine as part of a research project, then started the
company to develop it commercially. In 2008, MicroWind won first place
in the Hellenic Business Network competition, second place in the Tufts
50K competition and received a grant from the Compton Foundation,
raising enough seed money to start the venture. The MicroWind turbine,
designed in SolidWorks® 3D CAD software, features a vertical
axis configuration, which means the turbine’s axle is perpendicular
to the ground instead of parallel. That orientation enables the turbine
to generate electricity from slow winds.
