Dutch wind startup Mega Windforce has raised more than €1.2m in a €1.5m crowdfunding round meant to bring its 20kW WhisperRing turbine, which mounts its blades on a ring instead of a hub, to production.
Credit: this report is based on a story first published by IO+. Read the original at ioplus.nl.
As reported by IO+, Mega Windforce is running a crowdfunding round with a €1.5m target, and more than €1.2m had come in at the time of writing. The money is meant to move its turbine concept into production.
The idea started with a group of engineers at Delft University of Technology, who designed a turbine whose blades sit on a ring instead of a bulky hub. After a turbulent start, new ownership relaunched the company in 2020.
The product being funded
The first commercial model is a 20kW turbine with a 10-metre rotor on a tower between 12 and 30 metres tall. Last year the company built a proof of concept with a two-metre rotor.
The WhisperRing is a direct-drive ring design. A patented magnetic transmission passes torque to an external generator mounted as a disk on top of the ring, which the company says allows it to use off-the-shelf generators and cuts wear and energy loss. The ring and the lattice tower are made of a carbon-fibre composite (CFRP) that the company describes as five times lighter than steel at a similar cost.
The cost case
For the WR20kW, the company estimates a levelised cost of energy of around €110 per megawatt-hour at a reference site near Schiphol Airport. Its own calculations put comparable small turbines in the Netherlands above €200.
The 20kW model targets farms, business parks and off-grid locations, with Greece and Scotland as its first markets. For those markets the company plans to offer a cost of energy of €70 to €90 per megawatt-hour.
What comes next
Alongside the round, Mega Windforce signed an agreement last week with Turkish manufacturer Gimas and German company BaltiCo to explore developing a CFRP manufacturing plant.
The roadmap includes a 500kW turbine in 2029 and a 3MW+ model in 2031. For the 500kW model, the company expects a cost of €35 to €40 per megawatt-hour. "You don't need huge turbines to achieve a low cost of energy," said chief operating officer Reinoud Blom.
Blom told IO+ the project is high risk. The next test comes in the coming months, when the ten-metre prototype is completed.
Original source: IO+, "How a turbine with a hole could make wind energy cheaper"
