Comment by zdragnar
5 days ago
When people are asking for money, it is entirely reasonable to apply some skepticism to the sales pitch.
In this case, they're charging a lot of money for a flimsy-looking product that is unlikely to capture much energy (low wind speeds at ground level).
Um, yes. 4,900€ for a 1KW device. That's way above market price.
On Amazon, a 1KW wind turbine is $500 to $1000. About half that on Alibaba. This is a common technology now, with lots of makers. Almost everybody sells a bladed turbine that mounts on top of a pole and has a tailfin to make it pivot in the wind.
What's with this thing? It's at ground level. It's expensive. It's built out of plastic tarps that probably won't survive a storm. The scheme for making it follow the wind looks flaky. Their "business plan" consists of copies of the business cards of people they met at a trade show.[1]
When I read this article, I was near a little 200W wind turbine at a horse barn. Little five-bladed thing up on a pole, with a tail that makes it follow the wind. It powers a few lights. It's been running for years now with no attention. It's 2026, people. This stuff just works.
[1] https://www.windtowatt.com/doc/Market%20Validation%20En.pdf
If we ignore the price, which is astronomical and silly, then everything else is forgiveable, I think.
Yes it's made from plastic tarp, which makes it lightweight and easy to manufacture or repair. Yes it's got low potential at ground level but that makes it far safer and simpler to install.
This design or a variation of it could be built with PVC pipe and plastic bags and deployed in a field for next to nothing, bringing power to a community that didn't have any.
It's insanity to want to charge near 5k for this, but if this was an open source / free thing we'd all be championing the ingenuity
Based on the website, it looks like their primary strategic advantage is ease of portability / shipping for off grid scenarios.
The fact that it is made of plastic tarps means there's very little specialty material that is needed to repair damage, unlike relatively fragile turbine blades that need a bit more care when shipping, frequent assembling and disassembling and weather, etc.
I'll go on record as saying that I don't think that those advantages come close to making up for the cost, and I'd like to think they plan on bringing the cost down significantly when they grow up... but I'm not really holding my breath there either.