BYU Invention Nets a Grant -mammoth wind turbine towers able to more than triple the electrical output of existing steel models.

A superstrong
composite developed
by Brigham Young
University scientists
has received
financing for its first
practical application
— mammoth wind
turbine towers able to
more than triple the
electrical output of
existing steel
models.

BY BOB MIMS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Under a $100,000
grant from the federal
Department of
Energy announced
Tuesday, Pyramatrix
Structures Inc. eventually will try to build towers up
to 600 feet high, or three times taller than standard
steel wind turbine structures.
Researchers say the new towers could generate
five megawatts of power, compared with a typical
200-foot steel tower’s 1.5-megawatt cap. Such a
breakthrough could make wind generation — now an
interesting but costly sideshow — a major player in
the alternative energy field.
The composite, the fruit of seven years of
research by BYU professor David Jensen and his
civil engineering students, is 91 percent lighter than
steel and 76 percent lighter than aluminum.
Pyramatrix owes its strength to its
carbon-fiberglass filaments and geometry, with the
composite weaved into a variety of hollow lattices of
reinforcing pyramids.
Dramatically lower costs of transportation and
installation purportedly make the lightweight
material a construction godsend. Tracy Livingston,
PSI chief technology officer, said it would cost more
than $3 million to erect a 500-foot-plus tower of
tubular steel, a structure topping 1 million pounds.
A Pyramatrix tower of roughly the same height
would weigh in at 30,000 pounds. Resulting savings
in manufacture, transport and assembly alone could
exceed 50 percent, compared with steel.
"The energy cost from large wind turbines using
Pyramatrix technology approaches that from
environmentally dirty nonrenewable coal-fired power
plants," Livingston said.
Initially, the DOE grant only seeks Pyramatrix
designs matching the 1.5-megawatt output of
existing steel towers. Even at the smaller heights,
studies by the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory and the Wind Partnerships for Advanced
Component Technology project forecast cost
savings of 37 percent.
Once it has proven itself at standard wind turbine
heights, the company envisions towers stretching
the length of two football fields.
Potential uses for the composite include
buildings, bridges, highways, sports gear,
recreational vehicles and spacecraft and
extraterrestrial habitats for interplanetary colonists.
NASA is eyeing the composite for use in a "solar
sail," which would propel a spacecraft through the
cosmos by harnessing solar flux. Pyramatrix
appears to answer the need for a very lightweight
material to frame the sail as it is deployed.
[email protected]

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