New Patent Applications Filed for Unique Wind Turbine

New Patent Applications Filed for Unique Wind Turbine

Davis, California: On April 3, 2023, Briggs IP filed four patent applications for innovations on Wind Harvest’s design of its Wind Harvester 4.0 turbines. Their prior art search found that none of these ideas had ever been used before for wind turbines.

Being first-to-market in the mid-level wind market with a utility-scale vertical axis wind turbine gave Wind Harvest the opportunity to break new ground in VAWT design. For example, a polygonal mast that uses nutbars inside on its flat sides has never been used in a VAWT before and has many advantages over traditional pipe masts.

“It will be difficult for future competitors to build a rugged, efficient, simple turbine without licensing the Company’s pending patents,” said Kevin Wolf, CEO and co-founder. “There are only so many ways to put together a steel and aluminum turbine and our engineering team found unique, cost effective solutions for the most problematic parts of VAWT design.”

The Company released one of the four patents for public viewing. Prior to the “Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Polygonal Mast” innovation, Wind Harvest and other VAWT prototypes have mostly used steel pipe for their masts.The pipe and flanges and welding the sections of the pipe to flanges, bolting the flanges together and connecting that three piece mast to the drive shaft are expensive. The Wind Harvester Model 3.1 mast cost more than $30,000 for a single turbine. The Model 4.0 mast costs less than $8000 which include fees licensing the nutbar patent for this unique application. 

“We are pleased that our nutbar fastener packs (U.S. patent 8,713,896 B2) allow Wind Harvesters to make use of a polygonal mast and drive shaft heads,” said Jeff Willis, CEO of Northstar Wind Inc. and inventor of the unique nutbar. “Six flat sides on the mast make it easy and inexpensive for plates and flat bent pieces of metal to be bolted together with nutbars deep inside the hollow mast. That is the breakthrough that no one has ever done before.”

Wind Harvest’s Model 3.1 used three pieces of pipe with five forged flanges horizontally attached to their ends with expensive “full penetration” welds. In contrast, the 4.0’s polygonal mast uses two sheets of metal where all the holes are made while flat. These two pieces are then bent with much simpler vertical welds bringing them together. The single polygonal mast is much easier to install as well..

“All of the new patents we recently filed are similar to this in that they make our Wind Harvesters easier to make, assemble and install,” stated Dr. Ola Ojala, Wind Harvest’s Principal Engineer. “Two of the patents also make the turbine more efficient by reducing the drag it experiences as it rotates back into the wind.”

For more information on Wind Harvester turbines, see the Company’s website and blog. People interested in investing can do so via this Invest Page or through the PicMii crowdfunding platform.