Circa 2008

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December 122008 Massachusetts-based FloDesign has developed a wind turbine that could generate electricity at half the cost of conventional wind turbines. The company’s design, which draws on technology developed for jet engines, circumvents a fundamental limit to conventional wind turbines. Typically, as wind approaches a turbine, almost half of the air is forced around the blades rather than through them, and the energy in that deflected wind is lost. At best, traditional wind turbines capture only 59.3 percent of the energy in wind, a value called the Betz limit.

Jet engine wind turbine

FloDesign is a spin-off from the aerospace company FloDesign based in Wilbraham, MA which recently raised $6 million in its first round of venture financing. Their turbine design surrounds its wind-turbine blades with a shroud that directs air through the blades and speeds it up, which increases power production. The shroud concept is based on the same principles as a high bypass jet engine design that is used by all commercial jet aircraft engines to reduce noise and significantly improve efficiency. The new design generates as much power as a conventional wind turbine with blades twice as big in diameter. The smaller blade size and other factors allow the new turbines to be packed closer together in the field compared to conventional turbines, increasing the amount of power that can be generated per acre of land.