The Heart of a Wind Harvester, Now in Oklahoma

Wind Harvester’s magnet generators safely stored in Concho, OK

Last week, two boxed permanent magnet generators completed a journey of nearly 6,000 miles, from Soga’s manufacturing facility in Italy, to a storage unit just a few miles from the Lucky Star Casino in Concho, Oklahoma. Wind Harvest engineer Omar Garcia drove from his base in Amarillo, Texas, to El Reno to operate the forklift and get the crates safely under cover. It’s the kind of unglamorous, hands-on logistics work that rarely makes headlines, but it represents a real milestone: the components for our two Oklahoma Wind Harvesters™ are now on the ground, and one step closer to being installed.

It’s worth pausing on why the generator matters so much. Every wind turbine, no matter its shape or height, is ultimately a machine for turning moving air into electricity, and the generator is where that conversion actually happens. A direct drive permanent magnet generator does this without relying on a gearbox to increase the generators’ speed. An external electrical supply to create its magnetic field. The magnets are built in, which means fewer moving parts, less energy lost to friction and heat, and a design that holds up well at the variable speeds typical of vertical-axis wind turbines like ours. 

In a Wind Harvester, the generator is highly efficient, and durable enough to run for decades with minimal maintenance. Every twenty years or so they would undergo rewiring with new installation and be ready for another 20 years of service at fraction of the cost of the original, and less than a new generator the same size would be likely to cost in 20 years. It does have “permanent magnets” that can keep their power for a very long time if properly maintained. 

There’s still work ahead: completing manufacturing of the remaining components, installing the turbines, and putting them through third-party certification. But every major project moves forward one delivery, one forklift run, one stored crate at a time. The generators are here. We are getting close to be able to finally put up the first Wind Harvester 4.0.