BroadStar Wind Crosses $1 per Watt Barrier – Watch Out, Solar
by Anonymous - Jun 6th, 2008
Dallas-based BroadStar Wind Systems is about to turn a giant corner --- into $1 per watt wind, into urban windmills and into the global energy big league.
If, that is, its new wind turbine -- the "flexi-location" AeroCam -- can live up to all of it of its enormous claims.
No small task.
The company busted out of stealth at WINDPOWER 2008 with the announcement of its long-awaited AeroCam -- and this shocker of a double promise:
- The AeroCam turbine will make wind power generation possible in nearly every location, including cities.
- And it will make wind cheap – $1 per watt, installed – for the first time ever, with the 250,000 kWh machine to be priced at $250,000.
How will it do that exactly? By being small on size but big on power, the company claims.
According to BroadStar, the AeroCam is short, compact and easy-to-install, with parallel rotor blades located much closer to the ground than conventional propeller-based turbines.That low-ground proximity allows the machines to capture surface-wind energy at low rotational speeds.
And it qualifies AeroCam to "infill" existing rural wind farms. Meaning: the small turbines can be stuck between taller and larger propeller-based ones for better power generation.
In urban areas, they can be installed on commercial and residential rooftops, picking up wind drafts that strike buildings, and then moving upwards, catching currents from four to 80 mph.
The kicker?
BroadStar is convinced that its machines will be "manufactured, transported, installed and maintained at lower costs" than any other wind turbine on the planet. And most -- if not all -- rooftop solar panels.
(Yep, it’s gearing up to take on that market, too. Watch out Nanosolar...)
Still don’t be fooled, yet.
BroadStar may be getting most of the online attention of the wind energy little guys right now (as anyone with a $1 a watt claim often does), but it has some stiff competition.
Here’s just a fraction of that legion of competitors, courtesy of Cleantech Group: Mariah Power, Southwest Windpower, Bergey Windpower, Solar Wind Works and Entegrity Wind Systems.
The marathon race for mass-market, $1 a watt clean energy is on -- that's for sure -- and it seems anyone can win it.
Source: Cleantech Group
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Scam
Horizontal machines like this are fundamentally inefficient because half the assembly is always turning towards the air stream. There is a good reason propellers on airplanes don't work like this.
Horizontal axis machines (the common generator with an airplane style propeller on a tower) will always outperform a machine like this and is a lot simpler.
Furthermore, the idea of putting them on rooftops is absurd. They claim there are tunnel affects due to nearby buildings but this is absurd. Some area might get more breeze, and others may get none.
You have to be at least 30 feet above the highest obstacles. The extra wind speed up there makes a huge difference because the potential power output is a cube of air speed. Double the air speed and you have 8 times more energy available.
This is a scam and does a great disservice to the renewable energy movement. The fact that people take things like this seriously shows we need to do a better job of teaching science in high school.
Great post! The AeroCam is
Great post! The AeroCam is short, compact and easy-to-install, with parallel rotor blades located much closer to the ground than conventional propeller-based turbines.That low-ground proximity allows the machines to capture surface-wind energy.
thanks
I search this hardly, thanks :-)
Off - Grid
One day soon, Americans will be able to design and build a zero maintenance, off-grid home and survive the ups and downs of the marketplace without foreclosure or gas shortages.We just have to ignore the very compelling McMansion adverts and think in practical and realistic terms. Smaller European diesel cars are here, battery cars are coming, a new age is dawning. We will be able to live in the 'burbs comfortably in super-insulated, solar oriented, geothermally heat/cooled, practically sized survival oriented buildings!
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