These mini-turbines are so quiet and so beautiful, you’ll want to put one on your roof
Being small is no barrier for making big news. The Leviathan Energy Wind Lotus, the most aerodynamically efficient and cost-effective small vertical axis wind turbine in its class proved that when it was wowed media at Sde Boker in southern Israel.
The Wind Lotus is the brain child of Dr. Daniel Farb, an American who settled in Israel and established Leviathan Energy in 2006. LE is a diversified clean energy group focused on providing “state-of-the-art technologies that will change the fundamentals of the renewable energy market on a global scale.”
Small winds to bring big change
The promotion of the Wind Lotus and its successor the Wind Tulip coincided with a new Israeli governmental regulation that offers owners of small wind turbines a special tariff of up to 43 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity produced and then sold to the public Israeli Electric Company.
The goal of this new regulation is to encourage growth of distributed renewable energy in Israel, and to empower citizens to become partners in carbon-free energy independence.
Leviathan Energy claims that one of the advantages of the Wind Tulip™ is that it is able to produce electricity at winds as low as three to six feet per second, much lower than any competitors. The Wind Tulip™ will be available in both 2.0 and 3.5 kilowatt versions costing between $7,800 to $11,500, and promises a rapid return-on-investment, depending on local wind speed.
Additional advantages include low noise and vibration levels, ideal for working from residential rooftops; a third though not easily measurable advantage, at least according to Leviathan Energy, is that its turbines are beautiful and this would lower people resistance to setting them up on the roofs.
The fact that the Wind Tulip™ can be placed on rooftops means that it is setup close to the end user and will not, like other renewable energy projects, necessitate extensive bureaucracy involving the Israeli army be allowed to build in the Negev Desert.
Homegrown Technology and production
While Israel is on the front on developing solar power technology much of the production of material such as the panels themselves takes place in China and Germany meaning that both job opportunities and income is lost. Leviathan Energy aims to change this by not only using the first turbine to be used for education and student research project as well as being manufactured in Israel so to keep the jobs there.
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