As consumers look for greener energy alternatives, small wind turbines are becoming more popular. In New Hampshire, there are more than 60 residential wind turbines in the state, up from a little more than a dozen just two years ago. But those systems can be expensive, and not every potential customer lives in a windy enough location. As New Hampshire Public Radio's Amy Quinton reports, one Granite State inventor thinks he's developed a wind turbine that could reshape the market.

"It's got a small front set of wings, three blades that actually spiral," says Dan Parker, as he stands outside Blanchard Machine Development in Hillsboro. He's holding onto a pole that's attached to his new invention. Parker calls it the Spiralairfoil.

"You can see she's very responsive to the wind -- it'll find the wind every time," he says.

The Spiralairfoil (pictured above) is a funnel-shaped wind turbine that's six feet in diameter and 10 feet long. This prototype has plastic blades that spiral in the wind like a corkscrew.

"A lot of the wind spills over the front blades and then wraps back in and collapses into the back set of blades," Parker says.
As a result of the spiral, he says the contraption pivots itself into the wind like a weathervane. Parker has spent the last three years trying to perfect the turbine.

Dennis Noonan, owner of Blanchard Machine Development, is Parker's engineer for the project. He says they've tested different types of materials for the turbine's blades-- from stainless steel to plastic.

"We're looking into a carbon composite material, which a lot of traditional three-bladed windmills use, a carbon composite material which is very rugged, we've been told that that material can also be colored so it can match a person's house if they wanted it to," Noonam says.

But what makes this windmill different from much of the rest -- it functions at a much lower wind speed. Parker says it starts up at just 1.6 miles an hour. "So we're actually gaining power earlier than everybody else, so it will produce more power on a given day than anybody else's wind turbine."

Squeezing more power from available wind is ideal for customers who may not live in extremely windy locations. Low wind speed turbines are beginning to hit the marketplace -- a Michigan-based company has developed one that it claims can operate at speeds as low as two miles an hour.

But a lot of engineers are making claims about their turbine, without the science to back it up. Parker points out that the Spiralairfoil is very much still in the development phase.

"The thing that everybody wants is independent verifiable data, and we haven't been able to get that far yet," he says. "We can make all the claims that we want about it but without that independent verifiable data no one wants to really pay attention to you."

But if their preliminary testing holds true, Parker and Noonan think the turbine could make wind systems more affordable.
Parker is hoping the Spiralairfoil will cost only about $1,000, not including tower or installation costs. Small wind energy systems typically cost between $3,000 and $5,000 installed for every kilowatt they produce.

Parker says he has also set a higher goal -- creating jobs. "We've made so much headway so far, we're just at the break point right now. Once we get that data, the whole program will unroll and we will create jobs for people here in New Hampshire."

Parker says he's already had inquiries from a company in India, but he wants to produce them here. The wind turbine project needs capital to continue testing with viable prototypes -- a hard thing to come by in a poor economy. But Parker says he isn't giving up -- and the Spiralairfoil has a patent pending with the U.S. Patent Office.