Rooftop wind energy innovation claims 50% more energy than solar at same cost

&gt; Aeromine said unlike conventional wind turbines that are noisy, visually intrusive, and dangerous to migratory birds, the patented system is motionless and virtually silent.<p>I&#x27;ve been a supporter of wind energy for 30 years and it&#x27;s my favorite generation source. I want to believe the claims of this company, but the above quote is activating my spidey senses. Conventional wind turbines are not a serious threat to birds. According to <i>Homebrew Wind Power</i> by Dan Bartmann and Dan Fink, here are the causes of bird fatalities per 10000 fatalities (page 28):<p><pre><code> 5500 Buildings &#x2F; Windows 1000 Cats 1000 Other 800 Power Lines 700 Vehicles 700 Pesticides 250 Communication Towers &lt;1 Wind Turbines </code></pre> Many other sources agree.<p>Any wind turbine company will know this. For one to spread this lie makes me doubt their other claims. I hope they&#x27;re right about price per watt but I have serious doubts.<p>That said, I would LOVE to have affordable grid-tied residential wind to complement my rooftop solar. It&#x27;s not an easy problem to solve.

You can see technical drawings of their device in their patent (US 11391262): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patentimages.storage.googleapis.com&#x2F;26&#x2F;02&#x2F;b1&#x2F;f9004c8c6a47fb&#x2F;US11391262.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;patentimages.storage.googleapis.com&#x2F;26&#x2F;02&#x2F;b1&#x2F;f9004c8...</a> The article calls it &quot;motionless&quot; and &quot;bladeless&quot;, but this is patently (hah!) false. There are actually spinning blades... See figures 16c, 16d, 19 in the patent: the blades are in the turbine underneath the central body element.<p>At first sight, given the quantity of material used in the device for the foils and central body, relative to the small turbine size, it&#x27;s hard to intuitively picture how or why it can be more efficient than a regular wind turbine built using the same amount of material which could, therefore, have much larger blades.<p>Edit: in fact the inventor of the device, Carsten Hein Westergaard, previously published results from a prototype <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.1088&#x2F;1742-6596&#x2F;2265&#x2F;4&#x2F;042065&#x2F;pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.1088&#x2F;1742-6596&#x2F;2265&#x2F;4&#x2F;...</a> in which he claims the prototype achieved an efficiency of 42% of Betz limit, which is inferior to standard utility-scale turbines (Wikipedia claims 75-85% but I haven&#x27;t checked sources: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Betz%27s_law#Betz&#x27;s_law_and_coefficient_of_performance" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Betz%27s_law#Betz&#x27;s_law_and_co...</a> ) so that seems to confirm my intuition.

I am always skeptical whenever I see a headline that says new technology X can be better, cheaper, or more efficient than existing technology Y, but then fails to show in the actual story how that is true with real numbers.<p>This CAN produce 50% more energy than solar, but under what conditions? It seems like they should have a side-by-side chart of a solar and a wind setup that costs the same and show how much energy each one produced over the course of a year. Since nothing like that was in the article, I remain skeptical.

I&#x27;ve been fascinated by roof ridgetop fans. They capture the air being funnel up and over the roof to increase their efficiency without increasing their size. The startup RidgeBlade uses a simple ducted squirrel cage fan along the ridgeline, and their studies show a 2.2x efficiency increase on 45deg slope roof. They also work well with solar.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thepowercollective.ca&#x2F;products&#x2F;rb1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thepowercollective.ca&#x2F;products&#x2F;rb1&#x2F;</a>

The claims made in the article are too over the top to be able to take them seriously - particularly the idea that wind is somehow going to even out the stochasticity of solar. In most locations, and particularly at the heights implied the notion of &quot;rooftop&quot; wind, wind is just as variable as solar. They might well be partially complementary (there isn&#x27;t much wind on the best solar days, where I live, but might be good wind on cloudy days; but still, when the sun down goes here, the wind goes with it 4 nights out of five).<p>These turbines may or may not be a good deal for many sites, but you sure can&#x27;t tell that it&#x27;s even a question from this article.

&quot;The unit... generates round-the-clock energy... producing energy in all weather conditions.&quot;<p>Can someone explain to me how, whenever wind energy is mentioned, <i>any</i> sort of of scepticism, and I don&#x27;t mean &quot;snarky internet contrarian&quot; scepticism, I mean &quot;human being who has lived on Earth&quot; scepticism, <i>ceases to exist</i>?<p>Is there actually a large population out there <i>who has never experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no wind</i>?<p>Or do you... think that bad things will not happen to you if you just <i>believe</i> in transparent bullshit hard enough? Because I&#x27;m sorry, but they will.<p>How. Does this Shit. Get Written?<p>The best, most reliable sources of wind, FYI, are known by anyone in industry to be very far away from most built structures, and high.

Home Owners Associations already block solar, unfortunately I give this a 0% chance of getting approved in any neighborhood that has one :(<p>EDIT:<p>====<p>Don&#x27;t shoot the messenger. I don&#x27;t agree with it either.

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s worth popularizing such concepts and patents. I&#x27;ve seen plenty of them in the past 2 years and non have reached production and promised value that outperforms solar panels.<p>Furthermore, there is research done on solar panels all the time too to increase their efficiency and panels have and continue to improve their W&#x2F;m2. So by that time, solar panels might have outpaced it.<p>This &quot;same cost&quot; is likely calculated as initial cost + electricity&#x2F;24h instead of initial cost + maintenance cost + lifetime.<p>Other comments have mentioned the moving parts which don&#x27;t exist on solar panels. Moving parts will inevitably fail in contrast to solar panels which often outlast their 25 year warranties with only reduced efficiency.<p>Wind is less predictable than sun too. It&#x27;s also less powerful the lower the height is due to buildings blocking it. That&#x27;s why wind turbines are so high and usually out of cities.<p>Cost is not the only factor that matters. Panels on rooftops are more or less not visible. This thing sticks out a lot and isn&#x27;t aesthetically pleasing.

Solar panels are fairly set and forget. No moving parts. For wind curious what kind of maintenance is needed

Is this truly motionless, or are the turbines just hidden, sort of like those Dyson fans?

The company has not yet provided any real numbers. I want to know how much electricity is generated at a specific wind speed. The lack of this most basic number leads me to believe this isn&#x27;t as good as it sounds.

Fascinating.<p>Checking out the company who makes these, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aerominetechnologies.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aerominetechnologies.com</a>, I see they position it for larger buildings, including multi-family residential, but not large single-family homes, but I feel motivated to see whether this might be a good solution for my case instead of installing solar.

I&#x27;d like this to be true, but that&#x27;s some industrial grade BS sprinkled in that press release:<p>&gt; The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy.<p>Let&#x27;s be generous here and use numbers for my area, which further north than all of US excluding Alaska. I can get just over 200W of electricity per m^2 from solar (peak) with standard ~20% efficient panels here and 200kWh per year.<p>So with this I should be getting 2MWh per m^2 per year with an average power output of almost 230W and much higher peak as it is generally much more windy during the day.<p>So 1m^2 footprint of this device would match performance of standard 3.5-4m diameter wind turbine (9.6-12.5 m^2) assuming a sane if slightly optimistic average annual wind speed of 4m&#x2F;s.<p>I find that super hard to believe.

There&#x27;s more wind at higher altitudes, so I expect industrial-scale wind farms to have an inherent advantage over any rooftop solution.

How will this be financed?<p>In residential solar, panels are largely subsidized by federal ITC or financed by banks claiming the tax equity which covers the maintenance, upfront costs, etc; hence the zero upfront residential solar model. Will this be similar?

I think there is a hybrid future coming - and I suspect farmers will be at the forefront of this - hills with steps full of these built in, marginal fields providing pv-solar.<p>I can smell a new industry I just cannot understand the leverage points

I&#x27;m waiting for Vortex Bladeless: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vortexbladeless.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vortexbladeless.com&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m all for renewable energy, but what&#x27;s up with the push (and subsidization) for homeowners to become mini power plant operators? It&#x27;s even weirder with home batteries involved. Yeah you save on transmission costs, but it&#x27;s overall a lot cheaper, safer, and less politically messy to do this at dedicated facilities or huge buildings like malls.

Rooftop solar is essentially drop-and-forget -- you have to do approximately 0 maintenance for the next 10 years (at least).<p>There are definitely moving parts in that video -- does it have to be cleaned? Do the bearings wear out? Will a bird nest in it? Fill with leaves?<p>I definitely hope it works but I&#x27;m skeptical this is really as mindlessly easy to do as to drop panels on a residential house.

&gt; The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy<p>That&#x27;s a pretty sneaky way of implying that it provides energy at all times, when it probably just provides energy when the wind is blowing, whether that is during the day or night. There&#x27;s nothing in the article about any energy storage capacity included with these things, apart from the claim that it can minimize auxiliary storage requirements.

At least judging by the video, this doesn&#x27;t look like something that would be a practical choice for a lot of residential situations relative to existing solar options. Maybe on larger apartment buildings? It would be cool if it were, I mean here in New England we get lots of wind, all the time.

&gt; An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units installed on the edge of a building<p>why not a bigger single installation? seems like this is rotating a tunnel internally, not motionless.<p>Looks like there s no shortage of good ideas to generate energy but how do we store it

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;10&#x2F;25&#x2F;climate&#x2F;energy-transition-solar-wind.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;10&#x2F;25&#x2F;climate&#x2F;energy-transition...</a>

I wonder how these compare to old fashioned savonius rotors, which are cheap, silent and omnidirectional. No visible moving parts is nice in residential areas, and I suspect that is their main selling point.

&gt; An Aeromine system typically consists of 20 to 40 units installed on the edge of a building facing the predominant wind direction.<p>I don&#x27;t want 40 of these highly visible things on the edge of my roof.

Wonder if the funding will come from those that support solar panels like Sunrun, Sunpower.. or new lending sector will form that specialize on lending + insurance for wind equip

I don&#x27;t see think we should see this as a replacement, but something that compliments other forms such as solar.<p>It doesn&#x27;t have to be one or the other ignoring costs

So, does anyone know how I can go about measure the wind potential over a certain períod of time on my - say - balcony or roof? Any inexpensive suggestion?

Moving parts, noise. These are the reasons PV is likely to continue to dominate most deployments.

Wind speed scales with height above ground so I presume these are only for sky scrapers.

&gt;bladeless &gt;motionless I always love it when articles are obvious shill pieces for a company. It is a turbine system with a different mechanism of getting air to a turbine. The first thing you see in the video of the article are spinning blades.<p>The real question which the article should be asking is how they compare to traditional large turbines. (Which can stand unobstructed at great heights). How well this works in urban environments, where Wind is blocked&#x2F;funneled by other buildings. Or if the claims over solar are actually justified.<p><i>Far</i> too often there are articles about blatant vaporware (often fusion) where people just report sone companies claims as if it were self evidently true. If you want to convince me: - Show actual data. What did one such unit generate over a few month in electricity? <i>Surely</i> you have to know. - Do not lie. The thing <i>obviously</i> is neither motionless nor bladeless.

Cool article and comment section just to see the tech used here (some folks even linked the patent for this design). It&#x27;s interesting to see this in &quot;pv&quot; magazine which presumably stands for photo-voltaic.<p>It&#x27;s good to have options and I don&#x27;t think the world will ever be &quot;solar OR wind&quot; - they compliment each other and can provide redundancy.<p>The interesting thing here is Rooftop seems to focused on selling to consumers (?) as opposed to industrial scale turbines or solar farms. For my personal (off the grid) energy needs one&#x2F;two 100w panels are sufficient but nice to see a less &quot;dangerous looking&quot; wind catcher.<p>This probably has less installation than solar and I&#x27;m curious about the lifespan&#x2F;service intervals of the mechanism

How do I get one? I live in a high wind area.

I have been wondering about this for years.

Price per kWh?

Wouldn’t people do both then?