Greenward Technologies Inc. has acquired the rights to the Universal Wind Turbine project and has begun design work on prototypes that place four wind turbines on a single tower.
The company said the designs use midsize, lightweight, three-blade-turbines, combine in "quad arrays" on a single tower.
"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."
Greenward Technologies is based in Austin, Texas with research and development facilities in San Diego. The company was incorporated in January of this year.
The company’s chief technical officer is Ed Salter, the originator of the Universal Wind Turbine concept and a wind industry veteran.
The company said it is currently contacting interested manufacturers of wind turbines and expects to have a small scale model ready for testing by late April, 2008.
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