If wind and solar energy can help decrease businesses’ and households’ carbon footprint while reducing energy costs, they also have significant shortcomings. First, solar energy can only be collected during the day, while wind turbines are much more efficient at night. Then, standard wind turbines’ unidirectional axis perform poorly in turbulent, changing urban wind conditions… In other words, these energy sources need backup from standard electricity grids or powerful battery technology to sustain a 24/7 electricity demand.

This is where Omniflow comes into play. The patented technology, which recently received EU support under phase 1 of Horizon 2020’s SME instrument, solves all of these problems with a novel turbine design harnessing both wind and solar energy simultaneously. Because two sources of energy are combined instead of just harnessing light or wind, it’s not necessary to resort to the big battery banks required by standard equipment. And the Omniflow batteries will last longer because they discharge less and have less cycles over time. Also the fact that wind usually blows stronger during the winter and that the sun shines longer in summertime makes these energy sources complementary, which is very convenient for the storage components. This way we can have more stable and reliable systems, with batteries lasting 16 years or even longer.

More information: http://www.heatexchanging.com