Wind Harvest International Inc. is the winner in the Sustainability category of this year's Sacramento Region Innovation Awards. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is the runner-up.
Wind Harvest International Inc. has developed near-ground wind turbines that can essentially double the power output of existing tall-tower wind farms using the same real estate.
The company designs and builds turbines that can generate electricity from the more volatile air currents present near ground level, near the bases of tall wind turbines.
The company is now validating its data and turbine performance at the UL Advanced Wind Turbine Test Facility near Amarillo, Texas.
Once Wind Harvest has validated aeroelastic models and data on the performance of its equipment, the company has customers lined up. Wind Harvest is preparing to support customers with demonstration wind farms in Wyoming, Solano County and Barbados in 2022 and 2023, company President Kevin Wolf told the Business Journal. The company has invested more than $10 million in the technology over the years, he said.
“It takes a long time and a lot of money to go through all this prototyping and testing,” he said. “That’s why you don’t see a lot of new products going to utility-scale projects.”
As if the expense of validation wasn’t enough, Covid-19 supply chain problems and other factors have delayed and strained the company in the past year.
The company couldn’t get the rare-earth metal magnets from China it needs for its equipment, so it redesigned it to use alternatives. Some of its component parts from Europe were also slow in arriving. And then one of its suppliers of hydraulic power units, a company in Oroville, was forced out of its facility for a month because of fire this year.
“What a year to bring something into the world,” Wolf said.
The company builds some of the components in Sacramento and it has local suppliers, and then some of the component parts are sourced from companies around the world.
Wind Harvest plans to build the units on site, essentially shipping all the parts to the field where they will be assembled by a local workforce, Wolf said, adding that showing the creation of local jobs can assist in local permitting. The company is currently raising $2.5 million on equity crowdfunding site Wefunder.com, Wolf said.
The Essentials
Wind Harvest International Inc.
What it does: Develops near-ground wind turbines
Headquarters: Davis
President: Kevin Wolf
Employees: Eight, plus a dozen consultants
Annual revenue: Pre-revenue
Founded: 2006
Runner-up: Sacramento Municipal Utility District
Innovation: SMUD's Energy StorageShares program, which enables eligible commercial customers to reduce energy demand by investing in SMUD's off-site utility-scale battery storage and receive a monthly bill credit. The Energy StorageShares program is the first program of its kind in the nation and can serve as a model for other communities looking to adopt energy storage solutions.
The StorageShares program's lithium-ion batteries are stored at SMUD's Hedge facility in south Sacramento County. They will generate 4 megawatts of electricity and store 8 megawatt hours of energy, which is enough to power 800 homes for two hours. The units are housed in 20-foot storage containers. Each unit is made up of 3,840 battery cells stacked and connected together.
The StorageShares program is part of SMUD's strategy to reduce its carbon emissions to zero by 2030.
Top executive and executives associated with the innovation: Paul Lau, CEO and general manager; James Frasher, senior strategic business planner, Chris Brown, product services coordinator; Gabe Leggett, senior electrical engineer
Annual revenue: $1.47 billion in 2020
Employees: 2,200
