business news item
Quiet Revolution: A new approach to Small Wind Turbines
It looks like a sculpture of modern art but it's the newest generation of high tech wind turbines: With only 5 meters height and 3 meters diameter, very light weighted and very quiet the QR5 type offers additional applications.
The QR5 is a new type of small wind turbines
Everybody meanwhile knows the standard technology of larger wind turbines. There's a large rotor mounted which needs lots of space and which is pretty loud and the whole thing needs to get turned to the direction from where the wind blows. So, even when people are glad to get renewable energy from there, there are a quite a lot of disadvantages the same time.
But not with the new technology of the QR5 rotor: Through it's special form it doesn't need to get turned. Additional mechanics (and costs) may get saved this way. The new form too reduces noise. The small diameter and the light weight of the construction allows mounting even on house roofs where usually weight is an important factor. Conventional rotors normally can't get mounted there. Also other places where conventional rotos could never get mounted were an option for the QR5: It even could get built in one's garden.
Nonetheless, the QR 5 can deliver 10.000kW/h per year. That's enough for an office of 20 employees or two low energy houses. At a price of currently around 30.000 EUR and with enormouse potential of cost cutting through economy of scales, other materials and outsourcing.
This time, the QR 5 is in advanced test stage on some tower blocks and the team of british startup company Quietrevolution gains additional experience in long term operation.
Michael Bloomberg, major of New York City recently metioned that NYC had a lot of sky scrapers with string winds on the roofs. He seems to be interested in the technology. But he's not the only one. RWE, german energy provider, recently took over some shares of Quietrevolution.
