This wind turbine prototype promises more height, efficiency and energy. Its creator: a 92-year-old retiree

Horst Bendix accumulates more ideas than years. And that is already 92. After a long career as an engineer in charge of research and development in Kirowa German heavy equipment manufacturer, Bendix decided to do what it does best: look for simple solutions to complex problems.

He was not daunted by his age, nor the difficulties or the size of the challenge and when he retired, in 1995, decided to dump all the baggage that his years of study had given him in a challenge of depth. In the late 1990s, she started thinking about how we use wind energy, and especially the huge turbines we use to generate it. Was there any way to improve them? gain efficiency?

The old engineer was convinced that it was and for ten years he searched for the best way to achieve it: he investigated, reflected and tested until he designed a high-altitude turbine that, at least based on the tests carried out to date, offers certain levels of efficiency remarkable. In fact, it has been the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovations (Sprin-D) German which has been responsible for making known both its peculiar design and the even more peculiar and inspiring story from Bendix.

What if we rethink design?

The engineer focused on one of the great problems of wind turbines, their size. The taller they are, the easier it is to benefit from gusts of wind strong and steady that blow at high altitudes, but it is more difficult to deal with the weight of the nacelle.

With its current design, if we wanted to stretch the wind turbine towers we would risk making them too unstable. Not to mention that the bill for its construction would skyrocket. How to solve it? How to achieve towers capable of reaching even greater heights?

For Bendix the solution was clear. He had to rethink the starting design. Of course, this is much easier said than done, but the Leipzig retiree, seasoned in German industry and university and accustomed to dealing with heavy machinery, was not scared by the prospect. Today we have the result: a design that applies some important innovations to conventional towers.

The main one, perhaps, is the relocation of the generator.

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Instead of housing it in the gondola, behind the blades, the Bendix prototype moves it to the bottom, which means the tower can go higher without its weight shooting up. There, at the base, several generators connected to the upper part through an ingenious system of belts are installed. “The mass no longer increases disproportionately to its height”, explain from Sprin-D. The structure is also manufactured with standard steel tubes that help reduce costs.

Bendix’s design would allow for a hub height of 250 meters —some German media point out that the engineer aspires to even higher levels— and achieve “increased energy efficiency”. “With such a large system at such a high hub height, you can harvest more than 20 to 30 gigawatt hours per year. With a conventional one, for example, ten”, shares Frank Zeulner, an expert in the sector, in statements collected by Trends der Zukunft.

Sprin-D also points out that the design reduces the weight of the tower by 50% and cuts the investment by 40%. “This is not just innovative from a technological point of view; It is also encouraging from an economic and geopolitical point of view: the reduction in manufacturing costs drastically reduces the costs per megawatt hour of generated energy”, reflects the agency.

The prototypes of the German engineer also show how the turbine no longer rests on a single tower, but on a kind of tripod, equipped with a vertical column and two supports. The designs that Sprin-D disclosed do indeed look like peculiar homemade copies of the Eiffel Tower.

Now his goal is to go from paper, models and prototypes to reality.

According to the newspaper bild, the first demonstration could be achieved on his own land, in Leipzig. Endeavor is not lacking in his creator, who throughout his career has achieved a doctorate, worked as a university professor, accumulated 60 improvements and industrial innovations and even took charge of the crane design for the extraction of lignite in the former German Democratic Republic.

At 92, he has more desire than years.

Images | SPRIND GmbH