A summer update..

Time for another update! Here at the Power Collective, it has been an interesting time recently - a number of big decisions to make, and some interesting developments.. So what is new you ask? Well, As far as the RidgeBlade is concerned, we have been busy overcoming a number of small obstacles. After initial testing, we have decided that the units were too heavy, and that it would be sensible to produce most of the major components out of recycled plastic. In addition to reducing the weight (which makes the RidgeBlade quicker and easier to install) this will also have the effect of reducing the cost to the customer, and will reduce the amount of embedded carbon in the unit. However, making things in plastic requires a lot of effort on the pre-production design, a lot of cost for the tooling and more time.. Because we are desperate to see RidgeBlades on as many roofs as possible, it was this additional time that really made us think twice about going down the plastics route, but in the long run it will be worth it -the RidgeBlade will be inexpensive, lighter and easier to assemble/install. We have been in very detailed discussions with a major plastics manufacturer here in the UK, who are currently working on the initial designs and will have production plans ready within a couple of weeks.

All of this unfortunately means that we have pushed back the date when RidgeBlades will be available, but in the meantime, we have been busy on another version of the RidgeBlade (we haven't named it yet, so the working title of RB2 will have to do!). The RB2 is specifically designed for use on industrial, commercial and agricultural buildings, and is roughly twice the size of the original. There are a number of technical differences to the RB2 to take account of the huge roofs that they will be installed on, and the differences in airflow. These units will be rugged and powerful, and are designed to pay for themselves in a relatively short time without governmental support in the form of a feed-in tariff . We expect the RB2 to be on sale within the next 2 months. Photos will be on the website as soon as we can. On the issue of planning permission, we have been working with the North York Moors National Park Authority, who tell us the the RB2 will not need full planning permission, (just agricultural notification - much less complicated) so that's another reason to choose RidgeBlade!

Anyway - back to work now!

The sincerest form of flattery is...

Over the last week I’ve been sent a number of perplexed emails pointing me in the direction of the Ecomagination competition run by the good people at GE http://challenge.ecomagination.com/ct/ct_list.bix?c=home), and more specifically to an entry called the “RidgeBlaster”. If you care to take a look at this entry, it may occur to you that it looks remarkably like the RidgeBlade. So much so that many of you have been asking "why have you changed the name and entered another competition when you have already won Europe's biggest prize and created a revolution in effective, discrete, low cost micro-wind technology?"

Well, to be absolutely clear, we have nothing whatsoever to do with the “RidgeBlaster”. As you can imagine, all of us at the Power Collective were amazed by the coincidence that the looks, function, claims, and name of the “RidgeBlaster” are so remarkably similar to that of the RidgeBlade. So amazed were we, in fact, that we had to ring our good friends at international law firm Macfarlanes and ask them if they were amazed too because, like us, they are great fans of genuine innovation. I note that the person who has put entered the “RidgeBlaster” into the competition has a number of other entries, and I’m sure that if all of his ideas are as original as the “RidgeBlaster”, then he will certainly achieve the level of commercial success that he deserves.

So, here at Power Collective HQ we all wish the entrant well and I’m sure that, like us, he will appreciate the huge task that is ahead of him. When we won the Green Challenge with the RidgeBlas, sorry, RidgeBlade (confusing isn’t it?) we had 2 years of R&D behind us and a working prototype designed by our Technical Director, a former Rolls Royce engineer, trained in turbine blade design. We were also well advanced with the trivial issue of intellectual property and our leadership team contained one of the UK's leading manufacturing specialists and a man who is known as the 'National Grid' given how well connected he is in the legal, environment and energy markets. Even then we underestimated the task ahead of us in turning the concept into a marketable product. Noise, vibration, safety, performance, certification, reliability, insurance, every one of these issues has to be tested and addressed thoroughly before a product can be put on sale. Any defect or design flaw could necessitate a recall, and if that were to happen, then not only would the RidgeBlade be a flawed product, but the whole concept of low cost roof mounted urban wind turbines would be discredited.

As you will know if you’ve been following this blog, we are now testing the final product, and whilst I’m sure that this could have been achieved more quickly if we had unlimited resources behind us, I don’t think that we’ve done too badly. When the RidgeBlade is launched we can be confident that it has been thoroughly tested, and will produce useable electricity safely and without noise or vibration. It’s the real deal, and it’s worth waiting for.

At last we have some good news to report! As I mentioned before, we have had delivery of the first 10 RidgeBlades. After a slight delay due to the heavy snow, we have now got the first two units installed, and we are very pleased with the results. As you can see, the finished unit looks very much like the artist's impression in the previous blog entry. As with any new product we have encountered a few small teething problems which are already fixed, and will be incorporated into future production versions of the RidgeBlade. Until you actually have a builder on a roof installing the things, all you have is theory, and the modifications are mostly to do with making the units easier to work with and install - I'm pleased to say the the actual operation of the units is exactly as we had expected. It's too soon for any output figures yet, but there's nothing to suggest that we are going to be disappointed. One thing that I can say is that the units operate almost silently - so that's another objective achieved. As ever, we seem to be progressing much more slowly than we would like, especially given the level of interest around the world, and it can sometimes be very frustrating, but I recently spoke to someone within a much larger wind turbine company, and they were amazed at how far we had come in so short a time, so I suppose that it is all a question of perspective. So our "to do" list is pretty clear: incorporate modifications into the design of the next production units, install the remaining 8 RidgeBlades, gather lots of data about real-world performance, and then see if anyone wants to buy one....

A Quick Update..

I know that it has been a while since I updated this blog, but in my defence we have been very busy here at The Power Collective. Since the last update we have made a few small (but important) improvements to the design, and started manufacturing RidgeBlades. The finalised design will look something like the artist's impression that you see here, although in this picture the scale is wrong, and the RidgeBlade is actually smaller than shown. The first batch of units are all due to be installed on locations in the UK and in the Netherlands for a period of testing and evaluation. The test sites include domestic houses, industrial, commercial and agricultural buildings. We Expect to receive the first batch of manufactured RidgeBlades in the beginning of December 2010, and we will be updating the website in the new year with specifications, initial test results and photographs of the installed turbines (assuming that the snow holds off long enough for us to actually get on roofs safely!). Talking of websites, we will soon be moving most of our information over to www.ridgeblade.com, so be ready to update your bookmarks.

On other matters, it seems that we will not be able to get the RidgeBlade tested against the Microgeneration Certification Scheme. This is not because of any problem with the turbine, but simply because the standard does not make any provision for "unusual" types of wind turbines such as ours.. Until this is resolved, it does mean that The RidgeBlade will not be eligible for the enhanced feed in Tariff in the UK. Rest assured that we are working hard to rectify this, but we do not expect this to be a quick job..

Interest in the RidgeBlade has continued to be phenomenal, and we are still receiving enquiries form all over the world. We simply don't have time to respond to all of them, but we do log every enquiry and will keep you all informed when we are in a position to start selling. In the meantime we have been having a number of very interesting conversations with potential users including social housing providers in the UK and Europe as well as some very large commercial and industrial companies, so watch this space!

The Power Of The Shed

This year's Green Challenge Competition is open for entries, and the organisers asked me to write a few words for their blog - www.greenchallengeblog.com, so in a shameless act of laziness, I thought that I'd repost it here...

Sometimes we all need a little encouragement – the problems in front of us can seem too big, too difficult, and it can seem that the future just holds more work and little in the way of reward . That’s when it’s nice to get a little encouragement - just a pat on the back, or recognition of the work that you’ve done. My encouragement came last week when I was visiting a company in the Netherlands.

the meeting itself went very well, and when I was leaving their offices, I noticed poster on the wall that echoed a firmly held belief in the power of the shed. Here’s some of what the poster said:

Believe you can change the world

Know when to work alone, and when to work together

Share – tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues.

No politics, no bureaucracy (these are ridiculous in a shed)

Radical ideas are not bad ideas.

Believe that together we can do anything.

Invent

So what is the power of the shed? Right now, across the world, ideas are being hatched, and technology is being invented that will help to save our planet. Ideas that will save energy, ideas that will help us to grow more food, ideas that will lead to better lives for all of our children. And these ideas are not being developed by huge multinational companies; these ideas belong to ordinary people, working with limited resources – in sheds, garages, and in houses around the world. The danger is that these ideas might not be recognised, and be lost forever before they have had the chance to prove their worth. Every day, people are having moments of insight, and having ideas that could be as important as the invention of the wheel – but their voices aren’t heard, their ideas aren’t explored, and we run the risk of overlooking something that could change our world. Because the men and women behind these ideas don’t have the backing of huge companies, it can be a difficult task to get your ideas heard, and more difficult still to persuade people that your ideas can make a real difference.

It could very easily have been a very different story for The Power Collective. We had designed and the RidgeBlade, we were convinced that the product was a good one, and that it could make a real difference in terms of carbon reduction and fuel poverty, but sometimes that is not enough. Market forces do not always work in favour of new ideas – too often small or new companies are left to fail for lack of finance or recognition, and we were funding the company ourselves, paying no wages, and struggling to make progress - until we got lucky... We entered and won the Green Challenge Competition!

The Green Challenge means that there is somewhere to go with the ideas that can change the world. It means that at least some of the ideas that can change the world will be given the chance to prove themselves, and that those lucky enough to win will be given a huge helping hand in the form of prize money to realise their ideas. So there is no excuse – if you have an idea that can change the world, even in a small way , get out of the shed and enter the competition. People want to listen to your ideas, and who knows – you could even win!

How to kick off a new blog? Perhaps the story so far might be an appropriate staring point. The Power Collective was formed in February 2009 after 3 years of research and development into cost effective, low impact wind turbines. The end result of this work was the RidgeBlade, and the company was formed to bring this new piece of technology to market. Our plans were, however, changed somewhat by an email on the 30th July 2009:

"Massively late on parade, but I just clocked this…www.greenchallenge.info "

So we had 2 days before the closing date for applications for the Green Challenge competition, and a chance to win €500,000. Cue a couple of late nights, much coffee and an entry duly despatched. We thought no more about it until a phone call from Holland a couple of weeks later - we'd been shortlisted! Cutting a long story short, after a week in Amsterdam with the charming and hospitable people form the Dutch Postcode Lottery, we won. Which was nice.

So, 2010 finds us in a very different position to this time last year.. 12 months ago we were a small group of people with a big idea, and now we are a slightly larger group of people with a company, offices, investment and a plan (as well as a big idea).

So what have we done since? Well, the product design has carried on, we have put a lot of effort into strengthening and expanding our patents, and we are now planning our first production run. We expect to roll out the first test units in the summer, and make a start on installing the RidgeBlades for an extended period of testing and evaluation. Micro wind technologies have suffered in the past from a lot of bad press - from under-performance, issues with installation and safety, issues with noise and so on. We want to be absolutely positive that the RidgeBlade will meet all of it's design criteria - to be cheap, effective, quiet and easy to install, before they go on sale.

As to where the test units will be placed - at the moment we are in conversation with a number of local authorities, private individuals and multinational companies who will be helping us in installing the units in a variety of locations across the UK and Europe. For those of you that have expressed an interest in having a unit for test - thanks - but we have all of the locations that we need for the moment.

Obviously, until we have completed the testing we will not be publishing any figures on price or performance, but the whole reason behind RidgeBlade was to produce something that was cheaper and more effective than existing technologies - and we are still on target for achieving this.

One of our next steps will be to develop the website a little, and by the time you read this there will be a new enquiry form that will allow us to respond more effectively to your questions.

All the best,

The Power Collective