Greenward Technologies Inc. has acquired the rights to the Universal Wind Turbine project, including all related patents pending, and has started design work on prototypes. The company plans to use a midsize, lightweight, modular design based the proven three-blade, horizontal-axis rotor, then combine these modular turbines on a single tower in ‘quad arrays.’
Incorporated in January, Greenward Technologies is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has research and development facilities in San Diego.
‘We're targeting a weight reduction of 50 percent for the wind turbine assembly, which we define as everything that sits on top of the tower,’ says Larry Haworth, CEO of Greenward Technologies. ‘One of the really exciting areas we are looking at is the prospect of a very large improvement in utilization of the wind resource, in terms of installed capacity per acre, with the counter-rotating quad array. This is currently only about 17 kW per acre, so there is a lot of room for improvement.’
Ed Salter, an engineer and wind industry veteran whose company manufactured over 400 wind turbines for California wind farms in the 1980s, is also involved in the project. Salter is the originator of the Universal Wind Turbine concept and is Greenward Technologies' chief technical officer.
The company is currently contacting interested manufacturers of wind turbines, heavy equipment, advanced composite structures, towers, drivetrain components and control systems for this project.
