Wind Power
Revolutionising small wind power. The ‘Thinair Wind Turbine’ for sustainable and renewable energy systems
Bill Currie from Powerhouse Wind chats to Kiwi Tiny home about the options for Tiny Home owners and Tiny Home communities to use wind power to support their electricity needs.
“We created Powerhouse Wind with one challenge in mind. To develop a product technology family that would make wind as accessible as solar for people with a need or desire for onsite renewable generation.
Why? Because wind is the second most available source of distributed renewable energy besides solar energy, and despite being second, has a potentially important role as a complement and a backup for photovoltaic systems. The Thinair product system has been designed from the ground up to be an appliance like product that combines high technical performance with the potential for economic manufacture, reliability and long term maintenance and servicing. The aim is to position Thinair as a viable complement for solar PV in distributed energy situations with the aim of making possible houses and sites that are net zero energy in all weathers and seasons.
PV is a pivotal technology for now and the future and will be very widely applied, but it has its limitations. Overnight of course, and more seriously over days of extended overcast and seasonally its output varies both predictably and randomly. A coupled turbine can balance these holes and support the system battery by providing energy when the wind is blowing at night, on dull days, and in lower light seasons. The aim with adding a turbine is to add generation diversity and close the energy gap so the house or remote site can draw the operational energy needed without exceeding the energy stored in the battery or needing external backup.
A successful wind turbine for local generation applications needs to be:
Quiet. If close to people it needs to be quiet and non-disturbing in all phases of operation.
Reliable and long lived. Reliability and life are key to economic success.
High performing. To recover the energy invested in materials and manufacture, high performance and high conversion efficiency are needed.
Easy to own and operate. For all applications automation is essential.
Appropriately scaled. The scale of the solution has to be suitable for the installation location.
Economic. The solution had to deliver an economic return and be an improvement on the existing or next available solution.
The Thinair turbine concept delivers on these measures in the following ways:
The single blade reduces noise, by having just one tip and trailing edge travelling at the same speed as its 2 and 3 blade competitors.
The intentionally wide blade chord section results in a smoother, higher Reynolds number flow which gets better performance out of the airfoil set. For equivalent flow conditions, a single blade design compared to 3 blades has a 6 % output reduction, but at small scale the effect of the Reynolds number increase means the airfoils perform better and recover that loss and more. An additional advantage is that the rotor inertia with just one blade is far less than a 3 blade set which improves the acceleration/deceleration performance for following gusts.
The parked blade mode minimises exposed surfaces and noise in extreme conditions, and puts the wing into a furled, low force position trailing downwind. A further benefit of this feature is that the machine is always correctly positioned for the next start by the ‘weather vane’ action of the furled wing.
The product system benefits from being a ‘ground up’ design, with all systems and components being matched for optimised performance in the system.
We now have seven years of experience running Thinair turbines built on the production tools and molds. There is a further 3 years before that running prototypes built by hand. This means we have had time and running hours with the machines to make improvements informed by the field experience and to refine the controller and its algorithms.
One of these turbines, with a similar rating of PV panels and a battery and inverter makes the perfect system for a small or tiny house to run fully net zero, either off grid or on, and have some excess energy for charging an electric car or feeding back if connected.”
About Powerhouse Wind
The team at Powerhouse Wind share a common desire to apply their experience to the development of a customer-focused wind power system.
Wind turbines in residential areas offer wind energy which is clean, renewable and localised.
As with solar power systems, wind turbines in residential areas can connect to the power grid and provide significant energy for your home. Any excess power can be fed back to the grid and will generate income. When the wind is not blowing (which it does not, wherever you are), the residence is able to receive electricity generation either from installed solar panels or from being connected to the grid.
The improvement of solar technology has meant that homeowners now benefit from solar power. Wind turbines in residential areas are the ideal complement to solar.
Contact Details
Powerhouse Wind
3 Midland St
South Dunedin
Dunedin 9012
New Zealand
+64 (0) 3 456 2288
