The windy city?
Does Cleveland have what it takes to become the real ‘windy city’? Mark Cironi, CEO of Green Energy Technologies Inc. thinks so.
Sometimes the most innovative products come from the most unlikely places. Take Green Energy Technologies, Inc. for example, a fledgling Ohio-based company founded by an ex-IBM executive with technology developed in the 1970s using principles of a mathematician from the 1700s. Whatever the origins of his company may be, Cironi is determined to use this Bath, Ohio alternative energy company to help make Northeast Ohio the epicenter for cost effective urban wind power.
We sat down with Mark Cironi and asked him why his wind drive (turbine) design is unique and how he is going to make Cleveland a windy city.
Q: You are the CEO of Green Energy Technologies and your first commercialized product deals with wind power that is based on a principle of wind amplification: How did this come about?
This technology came to my attention through some research and talking to the inventor, a professor in New York who worked with this technology back in the ‘70s and 80s. He came up with the basic idea but really was never able to commercialize it. I took the idea to Cleveland State University and met with Dr. Majid Rashidi. We used the basic concept but we modified and revised the whole idea so it could be commercialized, manufactured, and be cost effective. We’ve gone through several iterations of it, and now CSU does hold the patent, and I have the exclusive rights to manufacture it and sell it world wide.
Q: Your design is different then the wind turbine at the Great Lakes Science Center or what most people think of when they see a ‘wind mill’. What makes your wind power unique?
It’s completely different. You have to understand our technology is about wind amplification, and AC drives (an alternative current electric motor) to produce energy from the wind. It was developed around the Bernoulli Principle while the rest of the industry relies on ambient wind ours amplifies the wind.
It is a 40 foot in diameter tower with multiple blades -- from 11 to 15. So, as the wind hits the tower, re-routes the wind and captures it on the inner walls of the tower, the blade hits it and amplifies it by a factor of 2.1 inside the tower. Right now, we are experiencing a 1.76 amplification factor average across the blade.
Q: You consider your product more urban friendly: why will your wind power be easy to integrate into urban areas?
There are some environmental things that come into play when you are in the city limits: The first is noise. We have multiple blades to reduce noise on a given hub. With our technology, it is more of a buzz. It is not like the one at the Great Lakes Science Center where it is more of a thump or a whooping sound. Also, because of the size and design we can put up rooftop towers and use them as technology and communication towers as well. You may have to reinforce the roof but in most cases you can do that in 10 days it is not that big of a structural issue.
Q: According to your figures the Green Energy Technologies wind power is also more cost effective, how did you achieve that?
The big turbines get more complicated and a higher the maintenance cost. The gear ratio on those really tear them up; that’s why when you drive across California you see blades on the ground or not functioning. The cost for traditional turbines is $1,600 to $1,700 a kilowatt hour and sometimes upwards from that, but ours is $1,300 kilowatt hour installed. The one at the Great Lakes Science Center was quoted at $2,200 a kilowatt hour. We are also planning on producing energy at 5 miles an hour using those AC drives. With this technology you are starting to turn the blades at 2 mph winds. So there is rarely a time when the blades aren’t turning.
Q: Your company was formed January 2004, where are you in the process of bring this technology to market?
We just ordered the master mold, and that one piece is the same piece the goes together to build the entire tower. It is fiberglass a quarter inch thick with 3 or 4 inch polyethylene back fill and each piece is 95 lbs. and there are 32 of those pieces that snap together to make one turn or to go around the tower one time, they are 12 and-a-half-feet tall and 40 feet wide. The towers rang between 150 to 220 feet and each one produces more energy as you go up. So if a customer requires 891 kilowatts, they will need a 192 ft. tower based on an average 12 mph wind. It goes in a spiral shape, so all we had to do is build one mold. It is off-the-shelf technology. We are waiting for the final mold to be done and sent back here and we are going to run multiple shifts to build the first tower and one of my board members is my first customer. We are going to put up five of them in Redding, Pennsylvania at a metals company. The technology is primarily commercial and industrial, although I see it being used by municipalities and colleges.
Q: You said you want to put up the first Green Energy Technologies wind product in Ohio
We are in the right place at the right time with the blackouts but also the beauty of living in Northeast Ohio is that everything is here. All you have to do is find it. Everything is in Ohio, the general contractors are here, the steel fabricators, the fiberglass, NASA Glenn and Dr. Rashidi,—I can go right to the manufacturing companies in the area and integrate the engineering to come up with one solution. That is how you keep the cost down.
We want to build the first tower in Ohio. I think that is the right thing to do. Even with the order in Pennsylvania, he would forgo putting his up first if we had a green light from a University or company in the area.
Update
7-13-07—Tubbs Jones secures funding language for CSU Wind Spire Alternative Energy Project
