A new horizontally positioned wind turbine developed by the Danish company EdgeFlow aims to reap the wind from the roofs of industrial buildings, reports professional journal Ingeniøren (The Engineer). EdgeFlow is currently testing a 12 metre long wind turbine of the Darrieus type, a vertical axis turbine named after its inventor, the French aeronautical engineer Georges Jean Marie Darrieus.
The wind turbine is placed on an edge of an industrial building to exploit the energy that comes from strong updrafts – also called the speed-up effect.
According to Jakob Andersen, the inventor of the new horizontal wind turbine and founder of EdgeFlow, the speed-up effect increases the wind speed by up to 70% in certain directions meaning an increase in energy of up to 400%.
People who have stood on a cliff in very windy weather have probably felt the pressure of the wind coming from below.
“This is exactly the effect we can exploit by placing a wind turbine on the edge of a large industrial building,” says Jakob Andersen.
The turbine being tested is 12 meter long, but the plan is to connect a 12 meter long section on each side so the total length will be 36 meters. A wind turbine of this size is estimated to be able to produce 60,000 kWh annually. The price is expected to be around $ 95,000, with a payback time of around five years.
The next step in the development process will be to optimize the test wind turbine and document the wind resources at the current location.
“We are also in dialogue with a number of companies which would like to function as pilot customers for the next development step. And then we also have to raise capital,” says Andersen.
At the annual World Climate Solutions, which was recently held in Copenhagen, EdgeFlow won an award for being the most innovative cleantech company in Denmark.
