Powercone® Skyway8 wind farm pilot

Lead Proponent

Biome Renewables

Solution

The PowerCone® is a passive aerodynamic enhancement technology that bolts to the center of a wind turbine and increases the energy production while reducing loads and noise by industry leading figures. With no moving parts, it co-rotates with the main rotor blades and represents the biggest fundamental change to wind turbine design since the dawn of the three-bladed concept.

Project

The project aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of the PowerCone® technology at the wind farm scale and determine the cumulative beneficial effect by installing multiple PowerCones on adjacent turbines in Ontario. These effects include wake recovery, increased productivity and energy yield as well as load and acoustic impacts of the technology at scale. With this, the technology can scale globally.

Expected Outcomes

The fundamental impact of the PowerCone® is to increase the incremental clean energy output from existing wind turbines, while enhancing reliability through decreased operations and maintenance costs, and reducing noise emissions, decreasing their environmental impact. The project will place Canada on the wind technology map, enabling the company to become the first Canadian OEM and join the global wind industry, creating wide and long lasting economic impacts for Canada.

The PowerCone® has a magnified impact in lower overall wind, due to the effect of the power curve shifting to the left. The impact of the PowerCone® when wind speeds are between 5-6 m/s could increase a turbine’s output by as much as 50%, dramatically reducing GHG emissions. Over a year, the PowerCone® is expected to reduce GHG emissions by 197.8 tons of CO2 (tCO2) per turbine. As such, for the project, the net reduction would be 1000 tCO2 (5 turbines over a full year). As the PowerCone® opens up new markets to wind, and as the average turbine size increases, by 2026/27, the PowerCone® technology could reduce GHG emissions by ½ GtCO2 per year. The market for the PowerCone is vast today: over CND $525 million in Ontario, over $1 billion in Canada, and $50 billion globally for the first iteration of the technology.