[jacquesm]

Every couple of years someone will jump out of nowhere and claim the wind energy sector has it all wrong, the list is very long. Windtree, Makani and many many others that replace simple and sturdy as well as well understood mechanisms with highly variable and fragile ones, usually without having studied the corpses of those that came before and died on the hill of unnecessary complexity. The closest that ever came to realization was the Darrieus rotor project in Canada, that consumed a ton of resources and resulted in the Aeolian (Eole?), a huge (100m, I've seen it up close before they tore it down, most impressive) VAT that ended up running for a couple of hours before its lower main bearing gave up the ghost under the vibrations.

http://www.wind-works.org/cms/typo3temp/pics/EoleCapChat045x...

Wind turbines are hard, and the standard shape that we've settled on was not due to a lack of creative ideas but simply because it is by far the simplest and most robust shape that gets the job done.

Any company pitching some complex alternative should at a minimum mention in their deck the degree to which they have researched the failures in the field of predecessors and what will set them apart.