V2 Wind Turbine Concept Produces Power in Low Wind Areas

V2 Wind Turbine is designed to accelerate incoming wind speed and generate power in low wind areas

V2 Wind Turbines stacked

V2 Squared Wind (V2 Wind), a wind energy company based in Boston, has come up with an innovative wind turbine concept focused on optimizing wind power. Unlike most other wind turbines, designed to be installed in high wind areas, the V2 Wind turbine is intended to work in low-wind areas, such as cities or commercial buildings.  This capability allows installations to be placed closer to where the electricity is used, sidestepping transmission issues that currently inhibit broader use of wind power.

V2 Wind's innovative design generates electricity with a permanent magnet generator run on a wind turbine housed within an hour-glass tube geometrically designed to accelerate incoming wind speed.  In field tests, the V2 Wind turbine technology was able to take a 10 mph wind and accelerate it to a wind much greater than 20 mph.

Another aspect setting the V2 Wind turbines apart from existing wind turbine concepts are their unique cube-shaped modules suitable for stacking on existing buildings or creating separate frameworks several hundred feet high.  These wind turbine arrays can scale from 100KW on-building applications to 7MW off-shore applications with only a minimal impact on cost. These factors remove a cost barrier for smaller and mid-size wind turbine applications and a visual barrier for off-shore wind farms where line of sight visibility is an issue.

V2 Wind Turbines stacked

Whereas other companies with innovative designs to concentrate the wind, such as FloDesign's wind turbine modeled after jet engines, and OptiWind's cylindrical tower, have already constructed prototypes, V2 Wind is a relatively new company looking to obtain funding outside of friends and family, so it still remains questionable whether this product will ever make it to market. What we do know is that on November 17, 2010, V2 Wind competed as a finalist in the Clean Tech Open Business Competition, one of 18 finalists out of 300 entrants. Although their technology didn't place in judging, the fact that V2 Wind's wind turbine was selected as a finalist promises an encouraging future for this clean-tech business.