Is that picture of a bladed-centrifugal system an actual picture of the "bladeless" design? I though the Tesla system had a series of closely spaced discs that began to turn with water or air flowing between the discs on the adherent boundary layer.

It will be interesting to see what power this produces at low wind speeds... which may be it's drawback vs. lightweight bladed designs.

The neat thing about this design is that you could enhance the turbine's efficiency by using cheap, adjustable sails to focus wind into the intake.

Yet another breakthrough in Wind Energy Technology.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India

The beauty and downfall of many patents is that you don't need to prove that something works well or even at all in order to be granted a patent. You just have to prove that nobody has patented it before. This design has so many problems and this is nothing more than a reprinted press release. A design that relies on drag like this one is always less efficient than a lift design. The faster it turns, the less drag it has until in theory, if it can reach the actual wind speed (which is impossible), it has no drag. Such a slow-turning turbine will need multistage gearing to step up the RPM to drive an electric generator at optimum speed. Gears always reduce efficiency. Magnetic bearings don't work well at such low RPMs, either. That mesh grill over the inlet to exclude wildlife will create turbulence, which will reduce efficiency even more. The bare bones website providing no details at all is a dead giveaway that this is a one-man operation.

Can you say scam? There is no way this unit shown can make any useful power for it's size, weight, cost.

Nor is the one shown a Tesla Turbine which is even less eff. The people who do these kind of things should be put in jail for fraud.

Years ago I build a small 4 inch Tesla turbine. As an air motor.This was not balanced, no need.

It was veryquiet & smooth running. The only drawback was the lack of torque.

On 70 PSI air pressure the RPMS were about 15000, very quick.

The Solar Aero looks very interesting & I hope it comes to market.

kiwi

matthew.rings,

That's not a centrifugal turbine. First, if you look at what you assume are blades, they're pointed in the wrong direction -- inward, not outward. Second, if you go read the patent at uspto.gov, you can see that the air flows from the right in this drawing and through the airfoil-shaped spacers which you believe are blades. Once through the short spacers, they pass over the disks to the central opening and out through the exhaust on the left. Still a bad design that I don't think will work. The patent files are full of "innovative" wind turbine designs that have never panned out. Their functional problems are obvious, but again, the patent examiner's job is not to decide whether an invention will work, just whether it's novel and unobvious.

jimbo,

Research in the 1970s and 1980s showed that concentrator intake ducts don't really work. Wind just backs up and goes around them. Diffuser exhaust ducts work much better.

I am sure as with all mechanical devices there are drawbacks. If this turbine is based on a Tesla model it has a good chance of working. Tesla was an absolute genius, hundreds of things that exist today are here only because of Tesla. One man did change the world, maybe this one can also. Good luck to his and his turbine.

If this has a good chance of working, why hasn't the Tesla steam turbine taken over in the nearly 100 years it's been around? Tesla had some good ideas. He also had some bad ones. Nobody's perfect. Remember the words of another inventive genius, one Thomas Edison. When asked about all his failed experiments (before he was able to make a working light bulb), he said, "Results? Why, I have plenty of results. I know of 10,000 things that will not work!" Edison was well aware that he didn't know everything.

Wonder if this can be grid-tied, like solar?

RE: Edison. Yes he didn't know everything, and I don't believe he invented everything. He had a team of people working for him , and he put his name on all the ideas. Same thing with Dyson , and Trevor Bayliss

"same cost as coal fired" yeah sure, for 18 percent of the time if you're optimistic.

Nameplate power generation for wind is a scam.

Personally, I'm not convinced this will be very useful. Aerodynamic drag just doesn't seem to be a very efficient means of generating energy. One not only needs a certain amount of RPM to effectively run a generator; one also needs some torque, which I don't see coming from this design.

5KWs at 15 knots??? I assume this is asking too much but at what wind speed does it start generating energy and at what level? At 2 MPH is it zero?

Wwhen I hear 5 cents a KW I am always intrigued. Of course you never hear how they get that number.

What a rip off! All they have done is repackage Tesla' patent and called it their own. On checking the 2 patents I don't believe it is a unique invention. Tesla invented this method of generating power/pumping water, so why can this company now use "HIS" invention without paying Tesla descendants their proper dues.

Look Mr Tesla began the best way to generate power from waterfalls, and this design was a working principle to make it more efficient on future projects. But because he started looking at ways of generating power on home by home methods the backers J P Morgan etc did not back him any further as Tesla@ new ideas were not good for their profits but good for the people.

Pablo,

Even if it's absolute identical to Tesla's patent, his descendants can't get any money. One of the fundamental tenets of the patent system is that a patent only provides protection for a limited time period, currently 20 years in the US. After that, it becomes available to everybody. At best, if your claim was true, the new patent should not have been granted because there was nothing novel, but his family would still be entitled to nothing.

Testla himself would be 100% behind this guy.

I don't se any of the naysayers here contributing constructive ideas to the problem.

I think jimbo9210 has a great point. Add sails. In addition, make the enclosure out of solar cells. There are many flexible solar cell technologies that can make use of the enclosure surface which is likely also exposed to the sun. 2 birds 1 stone.

I for one would put one of these up on the roof of my house in a heartbeat.

Yeah, Tesla's descendants would definitely not get any money, considering they don't exist. He died a virgin.

And to add to windykites comment, Edison was not an inventor, he was an entrepreneur. The only thing he personally invented, the magnetic ore separator, never worked properly.

Oh wait, I forgot that he inadvertently invented Hollywood, for the entire burgeoning film industry moved from NY to Cali just to get away from him because he was such an ass to work with.