Most wind turbines are meant to stay in the place where they are installed for the life of the unit, but one company is working toward an adaptable and portable wind power solution that can fit inside a standard shipping container and be pulled to the remote job site with no specialized equipment.
Installing a wind turbine, in most cases, is somewhat of a permanent affair - you can't just dismantle the unit and mast and move it to a different location very easily - so having a portable wind power option might just be the ticket for some installations. The team at Uprise Energy, in San Diego, thinks they have an answer to that, with their Portable Power Center (PPC), a self-contained 50kW wind turbine unit that folds into a shipping container and is said to deliver renewable energy at a cost competitive with current fossil fuel rates.
According to the Uprise website, the unit they are developing can be pulled behind a truck and set up in a couple of hours by a single person. Once installed and operating, the Uprise wind turbines can be grid-connected, used to produce hydrogen (or power other energy conversion methods), or store the electricity in the unit (no details about storage type or capacity). In addition, the turbines are said to integrate over 40 innovations in their Energy Conversion System, "a new and improved method of efficiently converting wind energy to electricity"
"Through intelligent programming, the machine is constantly monitoring weather patterns and adjusting itself to best capture energy from the wind. The machine rotates 360º to face the wind and adjust blade pitch and speed for optimum capture. When the wind is too strong, the computer automatically parks the rotor and lays the mast down to avoid damage." so Uprise.
