Looking for a glimpse of the future? Want a hint on how America”™s economy might recover its vigor? Glance atop the restored brick brownstone at 322 Mill Street in Poughkeepsie and see the shiny vertical access wind turbine whirling in a light breeze.Â
“Our machine is positioned for entry into a new market, called urban wind,” said Bill Jacoby, president and CEO of AeroCity L.L.C., which has a license to test the prototype wind machine and bring it to market on the East Coast. “By using this kind of turbine we can bring power to where people live,” said Jacoby. “So that”™s why we think there is a big market.”
The machine is not a traditional wind mill, but has helical blades intertwined like a DNA strand that spin vertically, a configuration that is safer and more efficient at lower wind speeds and within the air turbulence of crowded cities. “Cities are characterized by turbulent winds. This captures wind from many directions,” said Jacoby, standing down the block from the building at Mill Street and Catherine Street in midtown and looking at the device on the roof.
He said current wind power paradigms are focused on “big wind” options involving the traditional wind farms with huge turbines with twin blades able to produce megawatts of power. The disadvantage of such big wind options is their remote locations that necessitate big investment to bring the power to the people over transmission towers. There is also the “small wind” option, he said, that might sit atop a 10- to 40-foot tower in a backyard and produce one to 10 kilowatts of power for an individual home or business. Jacoby said this market is being explored by a handful of wind energy entrepreneurs, but said they require at least some acreage to operate.Â
The AeroCity design is a third potential market for creating energy from what he called “urban wind.” The machine attached to the roof of the Mill Steet building is a test in progress to see how much power the machine can produce on a typical building in Poughkeepsie. A version under development is expected to generate up to 2 kilowatts. The current turbine turns at winds just over 5 miles per hour. The system can be linked to have several turbines working in synch.
Such arrays could be part of an energy plan called distributed generation, in which individual buildings have wind and solar capacity that supplies some or all of the power that structure needs. Distributed generation is touted as a way of reducing strain on the existing power plants especially during peak loads. It would also reduce the need for additional plants or infrastructure such as transmission lines routed into crowded urban and suburban areas. Since it is comprised of clean energy sources, distributed generation also reduces carbon emissions that are a greenhouse gas. Â
On a cool October morning with a brilliant sun, the turbine could be seen turning in even the faint breeze of that day. Jacoby said he envisioned the optimum system for a building would combine wind and solar. “At night, the sun doesn”™t shine but it can still be windy” he said, noting such a hybrid system could be unified into a seamless supply source.
AeroCity is getting plenty of help in developing its prototype into a market-ready product, a process Jacoby said could take about 18 months.
The design of the vertical turbine was developed and licensed by Aerotecture International, a Chicago company founded by Bill Becker, a former professor at Illinois Institute of Technology and an associate of geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller. Aerotecture has had a model running four years in Chicago.
AeroCity is based in Lake Katrine and being assisted by the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation, a business incubator. The Poughkeepsie prototype was made at Fala Technologies also in Lake Katrine.Â
It is attached to a refurbished building owned by Larry Scardacci, who said he is increasingly interested in green construction and renovation. He said he got to talking with Jacoby on a Metro-North train when he saw his lap top computer displaying information about alternative energies. Now, they have partnered to put a prototype wind machine atop one of his buildings.
Jacoby and Sardacci both extolled the broad economic benefits from a program in distributed generation, not only from manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines, but from the construction jobs created installing and servicing such equipment. “There are ripple effects to this kind of work,” said Jacoby. “And what we are seeing is a grassroots uprising interested in renewable energy.”
AeroCity is hosting a public meeting to show off its wind turbine, featuring state Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, chairman of the state Assembly energy committee, on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 10 a.m. at 322 Mill St. in Poughkeepsie. The event is coordinated by the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation.   Â
