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The Most Efficient Urban Wind Turbine: Liam F1

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Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine is “World’s Most-Efficient”
Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine is “World’s Most-Efficient”

The Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine might change the way portable wind turbines find their way into residential settings.

Currently, the most-efficient wind turbine designs aren’t particularly suited for residential installation. They’re require enough height to catch the wind to be of any use, and then there are the noise complaints. Could bird strikes be a cause for concern, similar to large-scale wind farms? Scaling down wind turbines doesn’t help a whole lot with these problems, so residential systems remain an oddity.

A small company, The Archimedes, may change all of that with an entirely new small-scale wind turbine design. As the company name suggests, the Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine’s unique turbine shape is inspired, partly by the Green mathematician Archimedes, and by the natural spiral design of the nautilus shell.

Liam F1’s logarithmic spiral, the company claims, make it the most efficient urban wind turbine in existence, able to operate at approximately 80% of the Betz Limit, or 47.4% overall efficiency, which states that the theoretical maximum efficiency of any wind turbine is only 59.3%. Commercial wind turbines max out at 50% of the Betz Limit, or just 29.7% efficiency.

Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine’s unique design is not only efficient, but far more compact and quieter than traditional wind turbine designs, making it a far better candidate for residential installation.

A single unit, according to The Archimedes, is capable of generating “an average of 1,500 kilowatt-hours of energy [per year] at a wind-speed of 5 m/s [16.4 ft/s], which resembles half of the power consumption of a common household.” Officially-available July 1, the unique wind turbine will go sale for €3,999 (≈$5,450).

Image © The Archimedes

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3 COMMENTS

  1. EdwardLaBauve I have to agree with you on that. My current electricity bill is $40.mo ≈160 kWh (i’m in the highlands of Perú). This wouldn’t pay itself off for over a decade. On the other hand, a complete solar power system might be just as expensive.

  2. At it’s maximum the payback on this is 33 years.  I would wait for better technology and less hype,  While the idea is good, the cost is at least 2 to 4 times too high.

  3. Very impressive! I do think the statement that an average household uses 3,000 kWh every year needs to be clarified though. I don’t think that’s in reference to any US household. According to the eia.gov, “In 2012, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,837 kWh, an average of 903 kilowatthours (kWh) per month. Louisiana had the highest annual consumption at 15,046 kWh and Maine the lowest at 6,367 kWh.”

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