Estonia - Innovative ideas for how to produce wind energy in the future

Two months before this year’s Global Wind Day, the Estonian Wind Power Association announced an imaginative contest with the aim of generating innovative ideas on what a wind turbine might look like in the future.

On the 15 June, when the energy from wind was celebrated all over the world, the winners of the contest were announced and an exhibition showing many great ideas for the future opened.

The idea behind the contest was to bring attention to the fact that wind energy is not only about green energy, which indeed is an important factor, but it also produces long-awaited growth in the energy industry sector and creates new jobs.

This improves the economy, which has been weakened in most places in the world. Martin Kruus, the CEO of Estonian Wind Power Association said at the Global Wind Day event that we should not talk only about wind turbines and where they should be installed but also about the opportunity for a small country like Estonia to become recognised as a major player in the wind energy industry.

“The aim of the Future Wind Turbine contest was to motivate people to brainstorm about wind energy in the future,” explained Kruus. “Our companies have already been active in this field – proven by the latest news about the Estonian Wind Energy Cluster receiving co-financing from the European Regional Development Fund which will enable wind energy related organisations to cooperate more actively.”

The Future Wind Turbine contest had two categories. The youth group winner was Anton Rosner, a student of power engineering at Tallinn University of Technology.

The jury found his idea of wind turbines in a large city remarkable because of the way it presented a possible solution on how to integrate wind energy into the architecture of buildings. In the opinion of Anton Rosner, the buildings should be built in a cylinder shape that does not cause obstacles for the wind.

The walls are covered with several hundred vertical axis wind turbines, whose blades are slightly tilted in order to avoid a major obstacle for the wind. The wind turbines may be the same colour as the buildings or transparent or with bright colors that turn the building visually vibrant. Rosner won a trip to WinWind’s wind turbine factory in Finland.

The winner of contest’s main category was Teri-Liis Toome for her “Earth and Sky” with the message that in future technology should blend more into the natural environment and look less like machines.

Variable wind turbines should replicate the diversity of nature so Teri-Liis Toome envisages wind plants the shape of trees or clouds. The idea is novel because of the symbiosis of design and use of space and, even though the idea is an artistic imagination, the author hopes it will be a source of inspiration for engineers. Toome won the use of a Toyota Prius for one month.

By Tuuliki Kasonen-Lins, General Manager of Estonian Wind Power Association, blog.ewea.org/

For more information please contact Trevor Sievert at ts@windfair.net