The world is constantly evolving and upgradation and efficiency are always in the need of the hour. one of the worlds leading aerodynamic experts, Flodesign is  looking to change the worlds approach to wind energy. The company that used to manufacture aerodynamic parts for  the military choppers and jet fighters, has now focused their attention on the wind-mill industry. The only obvious conclusion that even Paris Hilton could have guessed is, a wind mill designed on the basis of  the jet-engine technology. and that’s exactly what they’ve done. According to the CEO of Flodesign, Stanley Kowalski, the company is seeking to raise a series B round of $25 million later this year to deploy and test the real-life performance of its 150-kilowatt turbines. The company is developing a wind turbine that resembles a jet engine than a typical three-blade turbine and the  plan is to develop relatively small turbines and make them available in the market to be used by communities, businesses, or wind farm developers. He also stated that the company is now testing prototypes, a process that will take at least a year.

During a panel on  said Thursday Kowalski said, “I think it’s exciting that there’s an oligopoly among wind turbine suppliers. There is a resistance to change and that’s how things disrupt and we hope to be one of the disruptors.”

The utility-scale wind farms typically use massive wind turbines capable of producing one or two megawatts of electricity which is more than enough to supply hundreds of homes. By contrast, FloDesign, along with  other wind designers are working on a turbine that can be used in locations that are not well suited for large turbines, such as mountain ledges or customers that want to make on-site power, like a municipality or an organization like it.

The design can be explained as a turbine that is built around a fan and a shroud that surrounds it. It is  designed such that, the air passes right through the fan blades and around the edges of the shroud. This creates a mixture of two air speeds at the back of the unit, with the faster air going around the edges of the shroud and the slower air passes through the blades. When the two air flows meet, the rapid mixing causes a vortex of air which is to be pulled through the turbine, electricity is generated at the tips of blades instead of using a gear box, Kowalski explained.

The product, which has a 60-foot diameter, is manufactured so that it can be transported on a standard truck bed, which would make installation cheaper and simpler than the large turbines. The company expects that it will be quieter than traditional turbines and also less dangerous to birds and bats because it will be easier to spot, Kowalski said.

FloDesign Wind estimates that it can generate power 40 percent cheaper than the traditional turbines, although the performance is  location dependent. Part of the lower cost is from its ability to extract more usable energy from the available wind, a prototype of its turbine was tested at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology early this year and found that it performed three times better than the traditional designs.

All I can say is, what took them so long  to come with this idea, which is brilliant none the less.

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