Tuscany's Enatek Banks on Micro Wind Turbines

 The sun pretty much drives just about everything in Tuscany. It powers the grapes, the olives, and to some extent, it powers the millions of tourists that flock to Tuscany each year.

You think of grapes, ceramics, olives, primi piatti, gelato, art, steep steps that yield beautiful views. But I doubt you think of clean tech.

Deep in the heart of Tuscany, Enatek has busied itself with the future. And future they believe is wind.

They view their prototype Venturebine as the solution to the problem of clean renewable energy in urban areas. Venturebine is a micro wind turbine for urban areas where space is at a premium. Unlike traditional wind turbines that are built on a vertical axis and require high wind speed to generate electricity, Venturebine operates on a horizontal axis, which means you can have multiple units together on one rooftop and produce significant electrical output at low-wind speeds.

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“The wall effect is the increase in wind speed as wind is funneled across the edges of structures,” said Gianluca Cecchetti, CEO and founder of Enatek. “About 75 cm in front of, and 75 cm above the roofline, there is a zone of turbulence triggered by the wall effect that constitutes a significant increase in wind-speed. The Venturbine is custom designed to harvest this increased wind speed.”

Venturebine is a result of the field and wind tunnel research that Enatek undertook to discover how wind reacts with geometric structures in urban areas, walls, buildings, rooftops, etc.  This reminded me of Aiden, the seventh grader who recently won a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History by turning to nature for his inspiration. Aiden looked at a tree and saw the Fibonacci sequence reflected in its branches, leading him to create a more efficient design for solar panel layouts. (read the full story here from his viewpoint) Similarly, Enatek looked at the field research they had and determined that a completely different design was needed for urban wind turbines to be effective.

“The sequencing is electrical, not mechanical, so even at low wind speeds the electrical output is cumulative without any loss due to kinetic transmission,” added Cecchetti.

The Venturebine is lightweight, less than 200 kg per unit and easily mounted onto roof-edges and ridgelines and this also minimizes vibrations and torque on the supporting structure. But, the Venturebine is also small, measuring three meters by 1.7 m for each unit which allows for multiple combinations across a single roofline.

I wonder what Don Quixote would make of this.