CBC News

The Honeywell wind turbine is designed for the roofs of homes and small commercial or agricultural operations. (WindTronics)The Honeywell Wind Turbine measures 1.8 meters across and weighs 84 kg. It can begin producing power at wind speeds of three km/h.

A Canadian-made turbine designed to fit on roofs and help power homes and small businesses will go on sale in December.

It is being manufactured at a new factory in Windsor, Ont.

Reg Adams, president of manufacturer WindTronics, told CBC News the turbines will appeal to commercial and agricultural operations, as well as homeowners who are environmentally conscious, or need emergency backup power.

“We are complete emergency home standby systems,” he said in an interview. “It’s like the replacement of a home standby generator. We can build a battery support, and if the power outage is because of a storm, it will have wind. If not, we have charged batteries.”

Each turbine comes with a computerized smart box and inverter that will allow the unit to feed directly into the ac power system of a home or business, or feed the energy back into the electricity grid.

‘The Honeywell turbine makes wind technology affordable and accessible.’—Reg Adams, WindTronics

The design is intended to maximize power output while minimizing noise and vibration. The unit differs from industrial wind turbines in that it looks more like a fan than windmill and generates power through the tips of the blades rather than turning a generator.

“The Honeywell turbine makes wind technology affordable and accessible to the vast majority of Canadian homeowners, who have great wind resources,” said Adams.

24 years to payback

When its installed in an area with high winds, the turbine can produce up to 2,700 kilowatt hours a year. Based on Ontario’s peak power rate of 9.9 cents per kWh, a turbine could save $272 in power costs each year.

However, at a cost of $6,500, with an additional $3,000 for installation, it would take 24 years for it to pay for itself.

Adams says the company is currently negotiating with the Ontario government to have the turbines included in the Feed-in Tariff Program, which pays a premium for green-power energy.

He said if the Ontario government agrees to pay 50 to 55 cents per kilowatt-hour, it will make the turbines far more appealing to everyday homeowners.

If Ontario residents were able to feed power back into the grid under such an arrangement, the turbine would earn about $1,500 per year and be paid for in 4½ years.

The turbines will be sold at Home Depot and other major retailers across Canada.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/10/27/con-turbine.html#ixzz14tV2BpbF

By MATTHEW L. WALD October 19, 2010, 8:29 am

A “direct wafer” from 1366 Technologies, left, made by casting it in its final form, and a traditional one, made by sawing slices off a block. The direct one costs 80 percent less, the company says.

A company that secured a Department of Energy grant to pursue a breakthrough idea in the manufacture of solar cells plans to announce on Tuesday that it has raised $20 million to commercialize its technique, which it says will reduce the price of solar panels by 40 percent.

The company, 1366 Technologies of Lexington, Mass., has found a simpler way to produce the basic building block of solar cells: silicon wafers. It uses molten silicon to cast the wafers in their final form, six inches on one side and 200 microns thick, or about eight-thousandths of an inch.

The current method is to cast the silicon in huge ingots or grow it in giant crystals and then saw off thin pieces, which wastes about half of the silicon.

“Early indications show this could be one of our great success stories,” said David Danielson, the program director for solar energy at the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy, a new office within the Energy Department that provides relatively small grants to develop high-risk but potentially high-payoff technologies. It promised 1366 a grant of $4 million for an 18-month program to develop the wafer technology; 1366 is reporting success after eight months.

The company is expected to announce that it has raised $20 million in new capital, some of it from a major customer for the wafers, Hanwha Chemical of South Korea. Other investors include Ventizz Capital Fund, a European company that specializes in clean energy investments. Two companies that had previously invested, North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners, have also added funds.

The chairman of Hanwha, Ki-joon Hong, said in a statement that his company had “every confidence that 1366’s innovations will fundamentally change solar manufacturing.”

The silicon, the basic material of solar cells and computer chips, is derived from a very cheap material, sand. But to function in electronics it must be made extremely pure, which makes it expensive.

The new technique, going from molten silicon to final product, is a bit like frying pancakes as opposed to slicing salami, except, as Mr. Danielson put it, “when you cut a salami, it’s not like half the salami ends up as salami dust that you have to throw in the garbage.”

The trick is to get the wafer out of the mold without breaking it. Company officials will not say just how they do that. The president of 1366 Technologies, Frank van Mierlo, predicted that the development would make solar power cheaper than coal power, although the technique has not yet been commercialized.

If the wafers go to market, 1366 would be one of the early fruits of the ARPA-e program, which was authorized by Congress in 1997 and signed into law by President Bush but was not financed until the passage of the federal stimulus act, which gave the program $400 million over two years. In December, 1366 received $4 million.

The company’s name is a reference to the amount of solar energy, measured in watts, that falls on a square meter of the earth’s surface.

The cell has other refinements, including finer wires to conduct away the electrons, so the shadow cast on the energy-gathering area is smaller. And the company drills small holes into the cast wafer to give it a honeycomb appearance, which allows light to bounce around inside the crevices, producing better absorption and less reduction, Mr. van Mierlo said.