For quite a while, there has been both progress and pressure on owners of large rooftops — think Walmart superstores and Amazon warehouses — to cover their sun-facing acreage with solar panels, thus helping to offset the huge energy use within the buildings.
Progress has been somewhat slow — and it may now possibly be usurped by a new technology that its creators say can produce 50% more energy at the same cost.
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The newfangled competitor comes in the form of wind power, courtesy of a bladeless unit — no huge windmills here — patented by Irvine, Calif.,- based Aeromine Technologies, which has brought in $9 million in Series A funding to accelerate the introduction of its technology.
The technology leverages aerodynamics similar to airfoils in a race car to capture and amplify each building’s airflow. The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy, as long as the wind is blowing, the company says, unlike solar, which cuts out when the sun goes down.
A typical installation, reports PV Magazine , would consist of 10 units or more, adding 50 kW of capacity to a 16-foot roof and producing about 20,000 kWh per year, while the same 10-unit system on a 50-foot-high roof would produce over 150,000 kWh per year.
The company says it expects to introduce the system commercially into the European and North American markets in 2025.
As for the financial backing, Texas-based Veriten, an energy research, investing, and strategy firm, led the funding round, with participation from Connecticut-based engineering consultants Thornton Tomasetti. Meanwhile, Aeromine said it has received nearly 11,000 inquiries from more than 6,500 companies and currently has a pipeline of 400 qualified projects. Its customers are primarily in industrial, logistics, automotive, commercial, and government sectors.
May the (wind) force be with them.
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