Investors get wind of exciting energy advance
A GOLD Coast start-up is set to bring a breath of fresh air to the wind energy industry.
Axis Energy Group, founded in 2012 by ex-Newport Homes CEO Peter Kittel, has researched, developed and patented stackable vertical axis wind turbines.
This year the company plans on installing a “proof of concept” turbine at Broadwater Parklands and visiting the US for three months to raise $10 million in tranches to become a global business.
The company believes its turbines will become part of the urban landscape, placed to the side of roads, highways and railways, and on top of apartment towers.
“The big commercial wind farms require special rural areas, away from residential housing, and they need laminar (streamlined without disruption) flows,” Mr Kittel said.
“That is a very limited type of field where they can work. Our technology works effectively right next to a factory, or on top of a high-rise building. You can have, potentially, nine times more power from the footprint of a high-rise build- ing compared to solar power. So the power production is high from a small footprint and that is something people have been looking for.”
The turbines Axis will produce (it is in the process of tendering for their manufacture) are small. They have a height of just 3m and width of 1.7m, while commercial-size horizontal axis turbines can have a rotor measuring 180m.
“We’re small scale by comparison,” Mr Kittel said. “We call ourselves small wind. But the idea is we can scale up to an individual client’s needs because we can stack the turbines on top of each other.”
Reda Farhi, who is a design engineer at Axis, said because most industry investment and research was directed into horizontal axis wind turbines, as a consequence there had been a lack of research into alternatives.
“We’re not looking to compete with these large horizontal wind farms,” he said.
“What we’re doing is offering a totally different solution to a problem that has not been tackled before.”
Mr Farhi said the benefits of vertical axis wind turbines were coming to the fore now there was more research available.
Mr Kittel said the horizontal version did not produce power efficiently in urban environments.
He said there were other issues such as noise.
“There is a horizontal axis wind turbine at Bond University,” he said. “I was giving a lecture and the noise that came off it was so bad that I couldn’t speak over it. They run at a high velocity, which makes them noisy, while our turbine technology is not. If you have turbines in a residential area, they need to be quiet so people can sleep.”
Mr Kittel said the idea was not to replace other forms of renewables, but become part of the overall solution.
“Battery storage systems have halved in price in the last 12-24 months,” he said.
“That now makes microgrids a possibility. Renewable power is dependent on the local environment.
“Some places have unlimited sun, whereas others, there are plenty of shadows, so solar is not a solution, but there might be wind. We form part of the overall solution between solar and battery.”
Mr Kittel said in May he will head to San Francisco to take part in one of the Australian Government’s Landing Pads.
The pads are designed to provide start-ups with a collaborative space where they pursue international opportunities and attract investment.
“The government looks at people they think are export ready, and they give them the opportunity to open an office overseas,” Mr Kittel said.
“We’re now at a point where we have done our financial modelling and we are investable.”