Presumably as it extracts more power per unit speed, at high speed it is subject to more stress & strain. How does it stand up to high wind speeds?
Historically the issue with wind mills has been that they produce power only 30 to 40 percent of the time and then only in areas that would be considered high wind areas. Clearly that is not what we are trying to do. We are trying to produce usable energy 80 to 90 percent of the time. The area were we are testing the Vortex would be considered a low to very low wind area, which is near obstructions (typical urban environment). Right now, at limited high speed test 50Km per hour we have had no stress or strain issues. As you may have noticed, the design of the Vortex is similar to a wind sock. The wind sock and vortex design have terminal velocity built into the design. When the wind gets to strong the turbine will become saturated and the excessive wind will spill over the edges. So far Vortex failure speed has yet to be determined and the destruction wind speed may be very high. However we estimate it be over 90 miles an hours in normal applications.
