Lexington, KY - Technically, it's the bulk movement of air around the earth. It's plentiful, widely distributed, clean, renewable and an alternative to fossil fuels. It's wind.
Today it's being widely used to power lives and industries by exploiting the wind's kinetic energy. Wind Energy Corporation, founded in 2007 and based in Elizabethtown, is developing and field testing a new wind turbine for what it sees as the emergent multibillion-dollar commercial wind market.
"There is a sector of the market between 'big wind,' which is the huge propeller systems you see on wind farms in Oklahoma, Texas and California, and the small units
you see behind people's homes," declared Jim Fugitte, co-founder and chief executive officer of Wind Energy. "There is a big void for the five million commercial building owners in the United States."
Fugitte, a banker by trade but an entrepreneur at heart, and his partners are gambling that businesses will see the value in using wind energy to save money and natural resources. He claims that two-thirds of all electricity that flows into commercial buildings can be conserved. "That's a kind way of saying two-thirds is wasted," Fugitte asserted.
Many European countries are quite comfortable with wind power. Denmark, for example, is a pioneer in the industry and today generates more than 20 percent of its power from wind turbines, some located on "wind farms" offshore.
"Our turbines are designed to give companies in areas of Class 3 wind (12-13 mph average) a way to generate their own electricity," said Fugitte. "They mount them on the roof - two to six of them."
Wind Energy's product has only an insider corporate name: "Windy." The turbine is drag-based, meaning it gains power by being pushed by the wind. As it turns, energy is transferred from the sail surface to the central shaft. The process generates electricity even in light winds.
Wind Energy Corporation is working on the final engineering of the prototype. It has signed up four of what it calls "adoptive customers," who have given the company deposits and are ready to have turbines installed at their locations for trial and demonstration purposes, according to Jack Phillips, the company's co-founder and chief marketing officer. His background is in product development and commercialization in the composites industry.
The first unit is going up at a large distribution center in Westlaco, Texas, belonging to H-E-B, a 300-store grocery chain serving Texas and Mexico. The next three will go to Huron Hospital, a branch of the Cleveland Clinic; a Ford dealership in Harlingen, Texas; and the National Tropical Botanical Gardens in Kauai, Hawaii. The last site, theoretically, is a good one, said Fugitte, because of the Aloha State's low-level, constant breezes.
Phillips said the turbines are unlike huge propeller-driven machines mounted on towers and often seen in the Plains states, in deserts or offshore. Those can contain as much as 34 tons of steel. Phillips described "Windy" as a "beautiful, vertical spiral with an artistic shape to it." He added that it is designed for urban winds, which tend to be turbulent at times because of nearby buildings and trees.
It's quiet, too. Phillips said customers don't want a unit whirring loudly or vibrating in the parking lot or on a rooftop. And the turbine is also bird friendly.
"We can put any number of them up on a company's building. It is a visual statement to their employees and the public that they're for sustainability, renewable energy and doing good things for the planet," remarked Phillips, who added that a city official in Westlaco, stated at a meeting that the turbines would demonstrate that his city was progressive. "I thought that was a powerful statement, crystallizing what it means when someone sees one of these wind turbines spinning."
Phillips said Wind Energy will be hands-on with the four adoptive customers in terms of exactly where and how the turbines are installed, as well as with the intricacies of local permitting.
"We'll walk them through everything. Then, as we ramp up sales, we'll streamline the processes for all future customers," he concluded.
Although Wind Energy Corporation was founded in Kentucky, the Bluegrass State, interestingly, has not been identified as an ideal location for these turbines. There's not enough steady wind, said Fugitte. The same is true in many parts of the Southeast.
"When you talk about wind potential in Kentucky, it's bad," he explained. "When you go to the Virginia side of Southeast Kentucky's mountain range, there's plenty of wind - enough for commercial production. But on the Kentucky side of the ridge, it's inadequate."
But that situation could be improved as new generations of residential, commercial and municipal wind turbines are developed in the years to come. Wind Energy is positioned to help companies start producing their own electricity onsite while leaving a smaller carbon footprint.
"We're ready to put the turbines out there, people are ready to buy them and investors are ready to finance them," said Fugitte.