Turbine design ‘doubles area suitable for wind power’
Airsynergy, founded in 2008 by Jim Smyth, an engineer with a background in air management, hopes to claim a stake of the €90bn global wind energy market over the next few years.
Over the last five years, Mr Smyth, now the company CEO, has worked to perfect the design of a cowl for wind turbines that increases their effectiveness.
The unique and fully patented cowl means the turbines are economically viable at lower wind speeds. Airsynergy believes the development has doubled the land area that will be suitable for wind power production in the future.
The company plans a ‘friendly partnership’ business model that will see it lend intellectual property rights to companies that will build the turbines.
It has already agreed its first licensing deal with US company Aris Renewable Energy. The deal includes a multi-state licence agreement for the US market giving Aris a royalty bearing patent licence to develop, manufacture, and sell wind turbines and wind-powered street lighting using Airsynergy’s technologies.
Mr Smyth said Airsynergy planned to focus on smaller producers first before expanding to larger turbine manufacturers.
“Initially we plan to focus on the small wind market but, as we scale to bigger units, we will target the medium and large wind industrial markets also, particularly in the US, UK/Western Europe and China,” he said.
” We have carried out significant research and have not identified any issues in moving into large wind and, once scaled, our technology’s impact on national grid planning can be profound.”
In recent years, the wind energy industry has faced challenges on aesthetic and noise pollution grounds.
Mr Smyth said planners are in favour of their technology, as it cuts down on the noise from turbines. He added that, in commercial versions of their turbine, the cowl will be made of a transparent composite plastic like that used in the roof of the Aviva stadium.
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