Monday, May 4, 2009
By Don Shilling
Austintown company crafts wind turbine to install on rooftops throughout the U.S.
Roth Bros. will add workers for its joint WindCube project with an Akron-area company.
Roth Bros. of Austintown has teamed up with a new Akron-area company on a wind turbine that’s designed for the rooftops of industrial plants, schools, retail plazas and big-city buildings.
“The market is huge,” said Paul Belair, president of Roth Bros.
He’s planning on adding more workers at Roth Bros., which employs 320 locally and provides energy management systems around the country.
Roth will assemble the unit and manufacture the frame in its Crum Road shop and send crews across the country to install the turbine and hook it up to a building’s electrical system.
Belair said Roth officials believe so much in the system that they have made a substantial investment to become part-owner.
Green Energy Technologies of Bath, Ohio, will unveil WindCube Tuesday at an industry trade show in Chicago.
The keys to WindCube are its size — 22 feet by 22 feet — and a design that doubles the speed of the wind as it hits the blades and allows the unit to shift into direction of the wind.
The wind speed is amplified by a shroud that funnels the wind into the blades. Without the amplification, the turbine would have to be 50 feet in diameter, said Mark Cironi, Green Energy president.
Such a large turbine isn’t feasible in urban environments because of the noise, safety and need for a 170-foot tower, he said.
Cironi, an Alliance native, said the wind power industry is now in the phase that the computer industry was in during the 1970s: It is figuring out how to deploy technology so people will use it.
He formed his company after noticing four years ago that large turbines were being used to add power to the electricity grid and small turbines were being used by homeowners and farmers. The middle market — factories, office buildings, stores — were not being served.
Cironi is used to helping businesses solve problems. He provided automation systems to businesses as an account manager for IBM and regional manager for Oracle, covering Ohio and part of Pennsylvania.
He said WindCube’s turbine blades were designed by David Spera, retired director of NASA’s wind tunnel program, and Jim Tangler, a scientist with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Cironi said he wants to make WindCube an all-Ohio effort so he has four subcontractors in the state building the parts that will be assembled by Roth.
The first unit has been installed at Lake Erie Business Park in Port Clinton, Ohio, and will be used by Crown Battery.
Belair said he intends to have two units installed this summer at Roth. He added that all of the company’s customers that have been approached about WindCube have asked for feasibility studies.
Cironi said the unit makes sense anywhere except in areas with low electric rates, low wind speeds or no state incentives. The unit begins producing power with 5 mph winds.
Cironi said Ohio offers a grant to help organizations cover the cost of installation and the federal stimulus legislation provides a tax credit.
With both of these incentives, the cost of buying and installing WindCube can be recovered in three or four years with energy savings, he said.
shilling@vindy.com