When it comes to harnessing the wind energy, the huge towering three-blade propeller turbine systems we see at wind farms come to mind.
Now, the Archimedes Urban Wind Turbine can do for your home and city what these towering structures have done for the electric grid and turn as much as 80 percent of extractable energy from wind into electricity, at a conversion rate on par with the world's top performing systems.
This turbine is designed (unlike conventional windmills) to capture wind coming in from different directions (at different time) because of its inherent ability to catch the wind head-on, regardless of the wind direction, by automatically adjusting itself in the optimal wind position like a weather vane.
The design takes after the Archimedes screw pump, a helix-patterned pipe (used in ancient Greece to pump water) with blade that fans out from the front to back in the shape of a cone-like spiral which allows it to swivel and collect gusts of wind entering at angle as wide as 60 degrees from the axis.
Unlike traditional Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs), which use the lift force to take power from wind energy, the Archimedes spiral wind turbine uses both the lift and drag force for the same. The Archimedes spiral wind turbine utilizes the kinetic energy of the wind much more efficiently than traditional HAWTs.
The wind direction in an urban environment changes constantly but the Archimedes wind turbine follows the wind direction automatically and operates efficiently at low speeds. Other advantages include low cost, low maintenance, light weight, low noise, low vibration and bird friendly design.