Our work - Wind Energy

Our Work is a post series that talks about our past or current work in a specific area or industry.

Most world wide power grids or distribution networks are saturated making it difficult or impossible to add additional generation capacity without significant modifications to the distribution networks. As the world's cities and industries grow so does the demand for more energy. There are many places in the world where huge wind farms could be built. Utilization of the power from these farms would require significant additions in infrastructure, backup generation capacity and power transmission lines. These costs often eliminate any benefits from economy of scale offered by the larger wind farms. However, if smaller wind turbines could be constructed with a similar economy on a smaller scale, then a small turbine could be economically installed on many business' roof tops. This would help feed local demand without direct impact to the large scale power grid. To make this concept practical with true economic and environmental benefit, two aspects need to be addressed. The first is a regulated restriction on limiting wind generation capacity within a particular region of the large scale power grid on a sector or area basis for the purpose of maintaining stability of the power grid and reducing the amount of backup generation required for that region. This requirement is dictated by the necessity to maintain grid stability and eliminate or reduce the need for equivalent backup capacity. Secondly the cost of small scale wind turbines needs to be significantly reduced to make it cost effective for small to medium applications.

KVA is working on technology in partnership with two other companies to reduce the cost by 40% of generating power and connecting that power to the grid. These savings combined with other unique simplifications in manufacturing and design result in overall cost reductions of 30-40% for wind turbines in the 2-20 kw range suitable for home or business use.