Wind Power: Are Vertical Axis Turbines Better?
(Page 4 of 5)
February/March 2008
Alison Rogers Interview with Mick Sagrillo
Are better models on the way? It depends. Unfortunately, too many of these things have been created by self-styled inventers, people that have no engineering background, no physics background, no math background. They just sort of make something up. I know someone that came to me and said “Mick, I want to make a savonius rotor. I know that it’s not cost-effective. But if a person could make it inexpensive enough, and yet reliable so it lasts for decades like the horizontals do, would you support it?”
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And the answer is absolutely yes. I don’t care if it’s vertical or horizontal. It’s all about what survives, what works, what generates electricity over the decades. It’s about fantasy as opposed to reality. It’s about things that really work as opposed to things we pretend to work, or want to work. So he had an engineering background, but didn’t know much about wind. And the interesting thing about this is, number one, the design has evolved from an inefficient Savonius rotor to a Darreius, and two, he’s been working on this thing for a couple of years with a real engineering firm that has been doing testing for wind for decades. He’s going about this the proper way, instead of tweaking it and making outlandish claims. He has attracted the attention of NREL, who are just a skeptical as I am about vertical technology. They’re going to take one of these turbines to test it. And I’m actually excited about this because he started out with a dream, educated himself, hired the right people. Because his idea was to make something that’s reliable and inexpensive enough to make up for the efficiency factor, and I think the guy may have something. I honestly think that in a year or two, we may see a commercial product that actually works and works for 20 years or so like it should.
So we’ll finally see some performance numbers? That’s my whole thing: None of them do. It’s like here’s this new technology and we want you to buy this. We want you to fund this. I say, “OK, send me the production numbers because it’s not about vertical, it’s about reliability, cost per kwh and how many kilowatt hours the turbine is going to generate in a month or a year.” But they can’t send you that. Because they haven’t tested it, or they’ve tested it and the results aren’t good, or they don’t know how to test it, and so on. It’s ridiculous. If you go to companies that have a good reputation in the small wind market, they’ve got that performance or production info. They may offer a power curve — so what? A power curve is like a horsepower curve for your vehicle, it has no bearing on reality at all. What you need to know is how many mpg are you getting? You’re selling this thing for $20,000 or $30,000 dollars and you can’t afford to put $500 dollars worth of equipment on it to monitor its output? That’s somewhat amazing to me.
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