Perhaps the next green power revolution will come out of Israeli engineering.
Hillpoint Energy CEO Ben Spitz told Green Prophet’s Tyson Herberger his company’s Israeli development team will soon unveil a one megawatt high-altitude wind turbine. They are filing for a provisional patent, and hope to officially announce the new design “in the coming weeks.”
While Dubai is building a wind powered sky scraper, Hillpoint Energy’s Israeli researchers are designing wind power generators that will fly. Spitz said the wind turbine will be “lighter-than-air” and “float at a high altitude.” He continued to say the design is set to “get much stronger and consistent winds and generate a lot more power” than currently commercialized technologies.Spitz grabbed headlines recently with the publication a 228 page report claiming that if wind energy tax credits are renewed, the US wind turbine market will hit $60 billion annually by 2013. That’s tremendous growth compared to last year’s estimated $7.9 billion market. The BCC Research report says several US states are likely to see annual wind energy market growth rates higher than 50%, and up to 150,000 new jobs could be created in the five year span.
With data like that, Hillpoint Energy already has initial investors lined up for what the company’s blog calls “the next billion dollar venture.” Spitz told Green Prophet the company is currently “seeking manufacturing partners worldwide” for their 1MW turbine.
Perhaps the most exciting part is that this is just one of several promising Middle Eastern cleantech players. As Green Prophet has previously profiled in this guide, Israel is home to several promising solar power solutions.
Author: Tyson Herberger
After a stint deep-frying foods, Tyson’s second ever job was as a radio announcer. Since then, a passion for news, community and the environment pushed him through the Center for Environmental Citizenship’s Environmental Journalism Academy and National Public Radio’s Next Generation Radio – not to mention high school and university diplomas. With credentials like those under his belt he was able to get a part-time gig as a newsreader while working a day job in urban renewal. Eventually he gave up community organizing for a full-time career in journalism and media management with assignments in North America, Europe and the Middle East for a variety of radio, web and other endeavors, including Primedia’s now defunct RAM-FM. He’s also an avid hobby photographer Tyson can be reached at tyson (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
