Who would ever have thought that wind blower fans in a cow barn would spark an idea to create innovated vertical wind turbines?

It turns out that a small, clean technology startup company located in a kibbutz near Ramat Hasharon, Israel may be developing a new stackable wind turbine that could compete with the giant propeller ones currently in use around the world.

Coriolis Wind is the brain child of its 3 co-founders Dr. Rafi Gidron, an entrepreneur  from Precede Technologies, an entrepreneurship and investment firm focused on high growth markets such as alternative energy; Orni Petruschka, also with Preclude; and Dr. Shuki Sheinman, formerly connected with NASA, Scitex and El Op.

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There are many advantages to wind power, the least of which is zero-emissions electricity.  Now, several innovative companies worldwide are exploring the idea of creating floating wind turbines anchored to platforms far out to sea that connect to the seabed to harness the power of the ocean winds.

In September, the first full-scale floating wind turbine was launched in the North Sea off Norway.  Called Hywind, the 2.3-megawatt wind turbine was hauled six miles out to sea by tugboats and installed on a floater traditionally used for production platforms and offshore loading buoys.  The turbine’s tower is bolted to a steel cylinder that extends more than 300 feet below the surface and is connected to the seabed with three anchor points. (more…)

The “locavore” movement is big, especially in California. With the bounty of food found locally in the Bay Area, living off the land — and sea — is not only possible, but also a delicious exercise.

But there’s another, less obvious, revolution brewing here in the Bay Area: the “locavolt” movement. In response to high gasoline and natural gas prices, global warming and an increasingly unstable, scary world, people are looking to generate power right in their own homes and neighborhoods with free energy from nature.

Technology advances in computers, telecommunications, generators, inverters, and even cars, are all giving the locavolt new tools to harness renewable energy and lead a fairly normal life.

Within the next few years, plug-in hybrid cars in California will be able to serve as a mini-power generator for your home and store renewable energy from your solar photovoltaics system or your small wind turbine. Plug-in hybrids may also help balance out a smarter electricity grid capable of easily sending power back and forth between generators and consumers, much like we send and receive e-mails on the Internet today.

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What would you do if you were worth $3 billion? T. Boone Pickens? Propose to build one of the largest wind farms in Texas, of course!

T. Boone Pickens, American financier and Chairman of BP Capital Management, ironically grew his wealth initially through mergers and acquisitions of oil and gas companies. From there, Pickens expanded his company, Mesa Petroleum, to be one of the largest independent oil companies in the world by 1981.

With his continued success came much criticism. During his peak, Pickens has been accused of being a “corporate raider” – investors who essentially direct or execute a hostile takeover of a company, often with the agenda of breaking up and selling various assets of the company to gain large profits. Though most of his attempts at corporate raiding failed, his endeavors drove the targeted company’s stock up, making Pickens and other investors millions of dollars.

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As the world celebrates Global Wind Day on June 15th, we are reminded of the economic, political, and legal issues that must be addressed to further advance wind technology.  With regard to the legal issues, consideration must always be given to the patent landscape.  In the past twenty years, nearly 500 U.S. patents have issued with the words “wind turbine” in the claims; 123 patents issuing in 2008 alone.  The technologies covered vary from improvements in blade design to methods for detecting ice on a wind turbine.  Patents are government validated assets.  For those who do not own the assets, patents become economic roadblocks.  Companies in the wind-energy industry must face the reality:  You either own the assets, or are subject to the roadblocks.

Before bringing a new product to market, every wind energy company should ask itself two important questions:

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A colleague of mine said to me recently, “No energy is clean energy.”

Which got me thinking. Of course, Clean Coal comes to mind. And people love to say that “No coal is clean,” and “Clean Coal is an oxymoron.”

OK, OK. It’s not the best marketing term I’ve ever heard. There is a U.S. Department of Energy program that uses the term, and that program has funded gasification and carbon sequestration projects. So there is such a thing, whatever you want to call it. How about “Clean(er) Coal”?

Then I thought about wind. Big, majestic, white turbines … cutting up birds that fly into them. Whoops. That’s not very clean.

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