Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
GAINING TRACTION
Brayfoil’s morphing blade technology has been wind-tunnel tested at the University of Stellenbosch and the CSIR, with thorough computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis having also been performed. The team has built working prototypes (at 7.5 m long) of a 1:10 scale five megawatt blade and a 1:3 five megawatt blade segment, all of which morph effectively.
$1m (around R14m) was raised from the Technology Innovation Agency in
2019 for the construction of a pilot project, which is set to go up at the University of Stellenbosch during the second quarter of this year. The turbine will be 24 m high with 7.5 m blades, and will be coupled with dynamic modelling of large-scale turbine performance using software from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the United States.
In total, the team has obtained $2.3m (approximately R35m) since inception in 2017, from angel investors, government grants and venture capitalists. Funding was also raised from the Norwegian venture capital fund Katapult Ocean in 2021, one of the top 50 climate investors in the world, while Brayfoil has just been selected to receive grant funding from the UK government as a part of the TechX accelerator with the Net Zero Technology Centre, in collaboration with bp Ventures, Equinor Ventures and Accenture. At Hello Tomorrow 2019 in Paris, Brayfoil was identified as one of the Top 100 Deep Tech Pioneers, and in 2021, they were a part of the prestigious CleanTech Open accelerator programme out of the USA, as well as Creative Destruction Lab’s Climate Stream at the HEC Paris business school .
The path ahead for Brayfoil is not straight cut, but in a world where wind energy is very clearly one of the major components in the push towards ‘net zero’, the company’s technology stands out as a viable and costeffective way forwards for the energy industry. Following the pilot project, the team will be seeking further funding to build a full-scale pilot project. They will also be engaging with industry partners, ultimately taking their breakthrough technology to market, either via licensing to manufacturers to incorporate into the next generation of turbines, or by building blades for the retrofit market.
The company was started by father-andson team Robert and Matthew Bray, on the back of 15 years of research and prototyping by Robert. Brayfoil’s remarkable technology was inspired by the shapes formed by bird’s wings in flight, particularly how they change curvature. This was first observed by Robert in Cape vultures at Marakele Game Reserve. What he saw subsequently tied in with further investigations carried out by Oxford University researchers in 2009. This work showed similar shape changes in owl wings. This is all yet another example of nature inspiring advances in industrial design, which is bringing us closer to a more sustainable future.