Bird Kill

The National Academy of Sciences has posted an Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects report. The report found that [wind turbines had] "no evidence of significant impacts on bird populations." In particular, the report sets bird kills in context by examining the relative harm to birds by common man made environmental and ecological impacts. That data can be found here.

In a nutshell, wind turbines have led to the untimely deaths of approximately 20,000-38,000 birds, compared to the roughly 100,000,000-900,000,000 birds killed by hitting buildings. (Note the extra zeros). This just shows just how patently nonsensical, irrational, and politicized the notion of windmills killing birds was from the get go. (By the way, for the purposes of the chart in this entry, I had to cheat and change the 28,000 value for turbines to 280,000 just to get that sliver blue line to appear in the chart, relative to the scale of 500,000,000 for building birdkill.)

Imagining the Vertical farm

One of my favorite blogs is the BLDG BLOG. They've got a post this week that makes me scratch my head though. Check out the "Vertical Farm" write up here - it describes the necessary components to build an urban-scale, self contained structure for living and agriculture.

Yet, they ruin it for me with those silly turbines on the top...Any fan of Wind-Sail or vertical axis turbines will immediately see the folly in spending all that precious rooftop real-estate to get such measely swept area from those horizontal turbines. are those fixed in wind-direction too? so you only get 1/4 of the turbines working at any one time? clearly, a well designed, much large, single omni-directional vertical turbine could get 4x-10x more power from the same footprint.

About Wind-Sail

Wind-Sail, Inc.

Optimized Urban-Scale Wind Power

Wind-Sail has developed a patented vertical-axis wind turbine that delivers breakthrough performance, cost, and operational benefits specifically optimized for urban-scale clean power. Based in the Bay Area, California-based Wind-Sail is now seeking venture capital to certify initial 3 kW platform and launch global sales and contract manufacturing.

Wind-Sail Overview

Wind power today is a $27 Billion market worldwide, growing at 40% yr/yr[1], with ever larger turbine systems deployed as utility-scale wind farms. To maximize the power these turbines can produce, these farms are typically placed in the highest wind regions in the world. Yet, most people don’t live in Class 5 wind regions, and furthermore, most people in urban environments would not want or could not feasible deploy these massive systems – with spinning blades that approach the speed of sound and are bigger than Boeing 777 airplanes.

Wind-Sail was founded on a belief that significant wind power opportunities exist in for urban-scale small and mid-range power applications (1-3 kW, 30-50 kW systems). However, to be successful in urban environments, new approaches, new formats, and key new features were required to make wind turbines practical for city applications.

Based on scientific and engineering research funded by Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Wind-Sail has innovated a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) with best-in-class aerodynamic efficiency and performance features for commercial and urban-scale power applications. Our competitive advantages are driven by these key urban benefits of the VAWT:

§ Optimized Efficiency: Highest CPP (40%) of any distributed wind power system. System is omni-directional, capturing the gusty, variable winds that are typical in urban and light/medium wind regimes.

§ Smaller Footprint: Compact design ideal for constrained environments in industrial, urban, campus, and hybrid solar applications.

§ Innovation Through Simplicity: System is easier to manufacture (fewer parts).

§ Scalability: Will scale from 1 to 50 to 500 kW formats.

§ Operational savings: more reliable with one bearing set, more durable with slower spinning blades, and less maintenance than any turbine on the market today.

§ Multiple configuration options: Turbines can be stacked, installed sideways, upside, or at any angular dimension for applications where space constraints or wind conditions necessitate new formats. In addition, because there are no significant blade clearance issues below the turbine, system can be installed in certain applications without costly towering installations or foundations.

---

Product Status

Wind-Sail’s turbine technology has been computer simulated, water and air tunnel tested, prototyped, fine-tuned, patented, and now scaled to successful working models in 1, 3 and 30 kW formats. One of the working units has a small video demonstration at: www.wind-sail.com

Wind-Sail Team

Wind-Sail's executive team has over 40 years of experience in the engineering, production, sales and executive management in electric motor and power component industries.

• Rich McClellan, PhD, CEO

Veteran executive of 3 electronics startups sold to Parker-Hannifin, Motorola, Printronix. Doctorate and is industry expert in power electronics.

• Rick Halstead, CTO

Power industry innovator with extensive management, sales, and technical development expertise with alternators engineered for harsh environs.

• Vladimir Krivopickj, PhD, Technical Leader

Leads core blade/turbine design team. Aerodynamic engineer with
30 years of experience in Russia’s premier weapons laboratory.

• Chris Larson, Project Leader

25 year veteran of PG&E with project management experience across plant, grid, substation and environmental projects in the Bay Area. Leads the site management and permit applications for our Treasure Island install project.

• Jeremy Stieglitz, Marketing & BD

15 year high technology veteran with experience launching and growing product lines of $2M-$800M for Microsoft, RSA, and Cisco Systems.

Competitive Position

There are several companies selling small scale wind turbines based on traditional, horizontal axis propeller based turbines, including Bergey and Southwest Wind. There are also a growing number of VAWT turbines, primarily selling in Europe. By reducing cost structures across the blades, system, alternator and electrical controls, and by introducing advanced CPP efficiencies and power control algorithms for light and medium wind regimes, Wind-Sail’s VAWT designs will be introduced with price-performance leadership, backed up with key operational, installation, and application advantages.

Patents protect key innovations in the aerodynamics of the blades, vertical orientation of the system, the system wind loading and blade configurations, aerodynamic ring structure, the alternator, and the electronic control optimizations for distributed wind.

Markets

The global market today for distributed wind power is today a $400M market, and is forecasted to grow 10x over the next 10 years to $4BN. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), “to date about 110 MW of “small-scale” community wind capacity is installed in the U.S., and from 1998 to 2003 installed wind capacity grew an average of 28% per year, and growth from 2004 to 2005 was a record 35%.” 110 megawatts of power capacity converts to approximately 22,000 wind turbines or $100 million in turbine sales in the United States alone.

Needs from Investors:

Wind-Sail has had no external investment and corporate structure remains flexible. We are seeking $1.5m-$2m in seed/angel funding to establish key first customer deployments in strategic and tactical sales opportunities. An additional investment of $5-$7M will be sought to grow the launch team, scale contract production, establish global distribution and sales offices, and expand sales and marketing programs worldwide.

Summary Contact Information:

Jeremy Stieglitz, VP of Marketing,

jeremy@wind-sail.com

(650) 575-2317

All Bearings Fail

Recently, I was presenting to a venture capital firm and got asked about the maintenance features of our turbine platform. It was a fair question, and one that I didn't answer very well. We do have some significant features in maintenance/durability/simplicity, and I did cover some of the blade resiliency characteristics. Where I got into trouble was around the determination in which one of the VCs believed that "all bearings fail." On the notion of bearings and mean time between failures (MTBF) the conversation went something like this:

VC: What will you do when the bearings fail?

Jeremy: Talks about loads being center-balanced, talk about 180 RPMs as our max, talks about the six-bladed design giving continious, smoothed and non-sinusoidal power pulses to the system...

VC: All bearings fail. When your bearings fail, this is going to rip out of the rooftop when it comes falling over...

Jeremy: Dumbfounded and deer in headlights reaction...

In hindsight, I could have also talked about the expected 15-18 years of mean time to failure ratings on our bearing sets (our bearing sets are rated for 200-300 million RPMs under designed loads)... But of course, I had to go look that up later with the technical team. I also found out that we can promote that there are no flexing or moving parts in the Wind-Sail alternator, and the magnets move past fixed coils. So other than age effects on materials, or thermal problems from overload, the alternator should never wear out. I could have also talked about wind loading on the system, and that frozen bearings present nearly the same load as the system is under braking scenarios (e.g. we don't model our loads so that we are dependent on spinning as a way to prevent being torn away from the roof.)

A couple of closing comments:

1. One of the challenges that I actually enjoy about presenting to VCs is that there are countless holes/traps that you can fall in, and you can never predict which ones are coming. It's mental surfing and it's invigorating learning how to stand on that board. In time, maybe I can ride some of the bigger waves.

2. I can also add "all bearings fail" to my growing list of dispassionate VC beliefs that I need to learn how to avoid falling into, other traps have included: 'distributed grid power won't work', and 'farmers don't care about bird kills- they kill birds for a living', and lastly 'unless you get under $1 a watt, this won't ever be viable.'

On Nameplates and Metrics, Part Three

In previous posts, I've written about how broken namplates are as a metric in clean power, and how these broken metrics are typical in nascent businesses that don't know how to measure themselves.

And now, a solution.

The renewable industry needs to move away from nameplates entirely. Rating these systems on their peak power 'capability' should be replaced by rating these systems on their annualized power production (app).

An APP in a solar panel would be the expected yearly power production of this panel at a "normalized" location.

An APP in a wind turbine system would be the expected yearly power production, assuming rayleigh distribution, at wind class 3. The best online resource I've found for determining power generated from various wind classes and distribution can be found here.






Speaking of metrics, there is a buzz of late on the "cubic mile of oil", which is essentially the amount of oil we consume, globally, in a given year.

On Nameplates and Metrics, Part Two

I touched briefly on the notion of nameplates in renewables as a hangover from the legacy coal plant or gas-fired power systems in which all supply was predictably controlled. In predictable grids, talking about nameplates is very useful, as they indicate the peak capability and help you model loads, distribution, demand response, etc. Namplates are also useful in your house - knowing that your refridgerator will draw XX watts at peak operation is a must for proper circuit planning. The problems start when you transfer that notion to unpredictable, highly variegated renewables.

All of this notion about "metrics" and how broken they can be very much reminds me of Web 1.0, in which the key metric for evaluating websites were "page views". A good blog post on the demise of that metric can be found here.

What is perhaps surprising to me is that "page views" weren't really what mattered... Google, the largest, most successful Web based revenue model on the planet, in most respects, has monetized the opposite of the page view. The page leave? They earn revenue when you leave them. Granted, you had to get there, and find what you needed to leave. But even Serge Brin is famous for stating: our goal is to get you to leave our site as fast as possible. So that particularly blows away Web 1.0 metric notions around click-throughs, page minutes, etc. etc.

So, where will we get to in renewables if the legacy 'nameplate' is non sensical? Found some interesting threads on the web in regards to nameplates in renewables. Appearently, I am not the only one that thinks that nameplates are not necessarily representative or useful comparitives for different systems. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council is actively trying to come up with a proper certification program for solar hardware based on what they produce - not what they have as nameplates. ...Notes from that fall meeting are here.

On Nameplates and Industry Metrics, Part One

If you track cleantech, you've quickly come across nameplates. These are the standard metric used for indicating the power output of any renewable energy system that produces electric power. A typical solar panel will be rated and sold as "120 watts", or a wind turbine as a "3 kw" turbine. These power ratings are known as the system's "nameplate" value.

But what does this nameplate actually mean?

The nameplate is the peak power production the panel/turbine/system is capable of producing. By peak, it's meant to indicate the maximum power, but it also requires "best" conditions, e.g. 120 watts will come from this panel at noon, on a clear skies day, in New Mexico, on June 21rst with the panel at an optimum operating temperature. Now, if you don't happen to live in New Mexico, or it isn't noon, or it's cloudy, or the panel is overheated, that panel could produce that power, less power or no power depending on conditions. In other words, you buy the solar panel as a 120 watt nameplate power output, but you will only get it's peak power output for a limited range of irradiance, temperature, angle of incidence, etc.

In wind power, a 3 kw system will produce 3 kilowatts when the wind is blowing at a certain speed, typically but not always 11 meters per second. While that 11 m/s is an industry norm and AWEA recommendation, some leading vendors in wind turbine market still "cheat" - labelling 3 kW on systems that requires 13 or 14 m/s. That may not seem like much of a trick, but in reality, most wind sites will have 14 m/s winds 2% as often as 11 m/s winds. And in wind power, where power delivered is the CUBE of wind speed, a spare 3 meters a second means you get HALF as much power as you thought.

As the following graphic demonstrates, the same nameplate turbines will deliver substantially different total power outputs based on their overall efficiencies in different wind speeds. You care about the volume UNDER the curves, but the nameplate is simply the peak power produced at the top right hand side of these curves. Quite literally, two turbines with 3kw nameplates could deliver 3000 OR 6000 kw/hrs in a given year at the same install.



So what?

Hopefully, I've shown that nameplates for renewable power are a nearly useless metric. They don't tell you anything except an ideal condition you won't experience often and are a hangover from when a maximum power output was something you could literally "flip on" on demand in gas-fired and coal electric plants. Renewables don't work that way.

Far more useful than "nameplates" would be a way to tell you what kind of total power delivery you will get from a system. That is after all, the most important metric for any power system.

Unfortunately, that's much easier said than done. In solar panels, you'll first need to know the panel's power curve- essentially the sum of all the power outputs the panel is able to produce across the sun rising to sinking in the day. To calculate a yearly power output for the panel would be even more useful, as the sun moves through different angles of incidence for that panel depending on the calendar, and you'll need to factor in region-specific degrees of cloudy days.

In wind, a similar power curve exists that begins with the cut-in wind speed (what speed do you start generating power), and increments power delivery up to the peak capacity speed in a curve. Luckily for wind, there are not quite as many variables to factor. Unfortunately, the power output calculations are made more complex by the higher degree of wind speed variability at any given location.

We need a new power metric.

The Competition As Double-Edge Swords

Invariably, any investor discussion I have around Wind-Sail eventually touches on the subject of vertical axis competitors. In general, I have no problem trying to address and differentiate our product - that's when every entrepeneur should expect every time. Lately though, I seem to be encountering two sets of working assumptions that make this question a real trap:

Assumption #1: Investors that see VAWTs are junk, see them as having been written off by the leading experts, and the only people now presenting VAWTs are quacks, whacks, and nut jobs. Unfortunately, there is a ton of truth to this statement. The early history of first generation VAWTs should them to be substantially inferior to HAWTs and the market 'moved on' to HAWTs in significant ways and never looked back. Since then, the vast majority of VAWTs that show up are junk - they are based on faulty designs, weak structures, and make outrageous claims that are not back up technically.

Here are a few:

Let's put wind turbines along highways, because it's "windy" there. Sorry, but it's not. Yes, you can occaisionally experience wind gusts close to the edge of a road, but you can stand 5-10 feet from a highway with well provisioned, high speed traffic, and experience zero mile per hour winds. Also notice that the turbines would all be significantly displacing and disrupting each other. The general wind direction would be straight along the road, and you'd thus have to space these out considerable to avoid wind blocking.

Just out of curiousity on wind speeds need highways, I found this pic in google:





And I also found this transportation data on wind speeds. In here, you can see wind speed measurement data that averages out to a measly 8.5 km/hr which is a lousy 2.4 m/s. I'll writeup a post on the magnificant, magical power of cubes in wind speeds, but take it on faith for now that it's not worth your trouble, ever, to site wind turbines in such a weak wind regime. (would be like installing solar under a shady tree.)

The other nutter worthy of calling out is TMA Wind. Let's use wind "funnels" to focus the wind. Wind power is a function of blade rotation and torque. All wind systems that rely on "pushing" blades are limited to spinning only as fast as the wind blows, which converts to an upper CPP of 28% efficiency. Unless and until you can create drag on a blade, which can then accelerate the blade to spin faster than the wind (as all typical "horizontal" turbines operate, and spin upwards of 5-6x the wind), you are forever limited to really poor power efficiencies.

Another recent "drag" based design, Mariah Power, seems to have landed some angel investments. In defense of Mariah, they have some elements of lift in the blade designs, although any tubine that relies as heavily on drag as their blades do is probably still in the realm of 30-32% CPP on their design.

Yet, technology is not static, and the design, modelling tools for wind aerodynamics have not stayed still either. Using modern computer modelling and advanced 21rst century understandings of aerodynamics, VAWTs can achieve 40% + CPP - putting them "dead on" parity with CPP efficiencies for HAWTs.

The hard lesson here is:
You need healthy, vibrant, honest, capable competition, or else the investor community considers your entire space "tarnished." You really do face a doube-edged sword in competitive positioning a new technology startup. On the one hand, you need some viable, capable alternatives so that the water isn't muddied. On the other hand, you need to be legitimately different, better, and protective in your differentiation. A tough nut to crack appearently.