The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that raising the height of wind turbines from 80 to 140 meters would almost double the land area across the country where wind power is cost-effective. Loth wants to go higher yet. He envisions 500-meter towers capable of generating 50 megawatts (MW) — roughly six times more electrical power than today’s largest turbines can pump out.

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This is uncharted territory for wind power.

“No one knows what next-generation 12 or 15MW turbines will look like,” says Scott Larwood, an engineering professor at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. “Eric is looking way ahead and saying if we really want to get huge, what will the configuration have to be?”

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A wind turbine in Tehachapi, California. Mario Anzuoni / Reuters file

Think like a tree

One problem is that building bigger versions of the turbines you see on hillsides today simply isn’t feasible. Rotor blades tend to flex in high winds, raising the possibility that the rotors would strike the tower supporting them. Taller wind turbines will need stiffer blades positioned well away from the tower — which adds weight and cost.

Loth’s solution? Locate the blades not upwind from the tower — as is standard with today’s designs — but downwind instead. That way, high winds would cause the blades to flex away from the tower rather than toward it.

Loth also wants to create blades that change in response to the wind.

“We’re bio-inspired,” he says. “Oaks trees and palm trees are both tall trees, but if you’re in a hurricane-prone area near the ocean, a palm tree will survive where an oak won’t.”

His mega-turbine rotors would be hinged at their base, allowing them to flex with the wind instead of fighting against it. That, together with the use of high-tech materials like carbon fiber, should enable the skyscraper-sized blades Loth requires. “We’re also looking at ways to 3D print the blades, allowing much more novel shapes and geometries,” he says.

Wind turbines with downwind blades have been tried before. In the late 1970s, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) installed a large downwind turbine on a hill in Boone, North Carolina. Though the turbine operated more or less successfully for several years, the design caused annoying whooshing and thumping noises that rattled the occupants of nearby homes.

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But Loth isn’t deterred. “We’ve been working to understand that tower wake effect for a few years,” he says. “We’re pretty confident we can solve it.”

Loth plans to build a small prototype downwind turbine next summer, using a $3.7-million award from DOE. If that’s successful, he hopes to raise money for a larger demonstration model and eventually to commercialize his 50MW mega-turbine, which he estimates could cut the cost of wind power in half. “But I wouldn’t expect to see our turbines out there in the marketplace for maybe 10 years,” says Loth.

Towering ambition

Not all wind power researchers want to wait that long. Eric Smith, CEO of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Keystone Tower Systems, has a wind technology that he thinks is almost ready for prime time.

One big obstacle standing in the way of bigger wind turbines is the high cost of building them. The largest turbines now in use require towers that are wider than the standard gaps beneath highway overpasses. That means wind farm operators cannot simply truck in modular tower sections.

Smith says he’s developed a way of modifying the continuous welding technologies used to lay long-distance oil pipes to produce the tapered shape necessary for turbine towers right on site. “We can produce a tower using about a tenth of the labor per ton of a conventional tower factory — instead of 200 workers, we can have a 20-person crew,” says Smith.