231: A Closer Look at the O-Wind Turbine

https://youtu.be/2FqmtznDCd8

Matt spoke to Nicolas Orellana, Founder / CEO of O-Innovations, about their O-Wind Turbine. The turbine Nicolas designed can accept wind from any direction, horizontal or vertical, and is meant for chaotic wind in places like urban environments (think tops and sides of buildings!). Do you think this kind of innovation is worth exploring?

YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/stilltbdpodcast

Get in touch: https://undecidedmf.com/podcast-feedback

Support the show: https://pod.fan/still-to-be-determined

Follow us on X: @stilltbdfm @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf

Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/undecidedmf

★ Support this podcast ★

Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Still To Be Determined?

Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.

On today's episode of Still to be Determined, Matt is going to be talking about something and a man named Nicolas is going to be talking about something, but Sean's not going to talk about anything. Take that, Matt and Nicolas. That's right. We're talking about a long form interview that Matt did with Nicolas Orellana.

But first, a reminder. This is Still To Be Determined. This is the followup podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell. And as usual, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm Matt's brother. I'm a writer, and I'm just generally curious about technology. And Matt is of course, that Matt from Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives, and this week,

Matt had shared a conversation, a interview that he had done with Nicolas Orellana, who is the founder and CEO of O-Innovations. And we're going to be sharing the long form interview here. O-Wind Turbine is the company responsible for a turbine development that can accept wind from any direction, horizontally or vertically, and it's meant for the chaotic wind environments in places like urban settings.

Think on the tops and sides of buildings. Matt and Nicolas talked about Nicolas's background and the original idea that spawned this innovation. We're very excited to be able to share the long form interview here and we hope you do enjoy it.

Thank you very much for joining me, Nicolas. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

I was really excited to bring you on because I've talked about your company, O-Innovations and O-Wind before in previous videos. And I was really excited to kind of talk to you to get more into the, as I said to you before, into the weeds about what you guys are doing. But before we get into that, I was hoping to find a little bit more about you.

I'm curious about your background and how you ended up doing what you're doing right now.

All right. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Uh, and my pleasure to, to be in your show. So I did industrial design as, um, uh, an undergrad. And when I was doing my final degree project, I wanted to do something exploratory, like a device exploring space.

In this case, the desert. And I was using wind for it. But then I saw NASA was trying to do exploration in Mars by using balls, just like a beach ball. Uh, they call them the, uh, tumbleweed rover. So they, they actually try some in the, in the desert. So I thought pretty similar to what I'm trying to do, um, not too far away.

But um, then I thought if you want to explore Mars, which is a big planet and you only have one ball, you're, you're only going to be able to reach out to a couple of points. So if you wanted to explore a surface, wider area. You need a number of them, right? It makes sense to put a number of them in a ship and get them to explore the whole area.

But if it's driven by wind, and they're just balls being driven by will, by wind, then you put them all together in the same place and they go, uh, through the same path, right? So it doesn't really make sense. But, then, the further study is, if each one of those would have their own path, of their own direction preset.

Then you put them all together, they spread out, and they map the whole surface, or a wider space. So, um, I set myself to do that, um, nothing to do with NASA, but, um, just for myself. I wanted to develop something that would do that. Um, so I had this little device, Which, uh, it only had one direction, and by using crosswinds, it would go forward in that direction.

So, no matter where you put them, each one would have their own direction and spread out. So I did it, I prototyped it, I took it to the desert, which is where my family lives at the moment. And with it, it did pretty well, it went 17km in 6 trials. So, I was pretty happy with that. Um, and then since it, it was using wind, uh, I thought at some point this might be useful, useful for, uh, using, uh, generating electricity out of it.

Uh, but it didn't do that at the moment. Uh, I just went off, started working, 12 years went by, uh, and I was finishing my master's degree, here in the UK afterward. And I came across an opportunity to, uh, apply for a contest. And the scope was pretty wide, uh, anything that's also a problem. So I thought, why not? Let's try and dust off this, this old invention that we're going to see if it can do something.

And it did well. Uh, so we won the award nationally in the UK and then internationally, and that's where the whole attention came in and we started working on it more seriously.

What I love about that story is oftentimes when I talk to innovators like yourself, you It always comes down to a, there's something like a, like a little earworm.

Something gets in your head and you can't let it go. And you just want to scratch that itch because you're trying to figure out how something works and how to do it yourself. And it just kind of snowballs into something completely different. I love that. That's really kind of fun. Yeah. So, so you started O-Innovations and then tried to take that idea and bring it into kind of urban wind capture.

Um, so could you kind of walk through at a high level just for people who are listening and watching to this? What it is about your turbine that kind of how it works and what sets it apart?

So this is just small mock up really, uh, not a prototype. It's not working. It's not functional. Uh, because it's not going to be this size.

It's going to be much bigger than this. But um, so the thing it has is that it can take wind not only horizontal, but also vertical gusts and from above, from below. Um, so really omni directional. Um, the word omni directional has been misused in the past by vertical axis wind turbines. Um, but omni means all, so all winds includes vertical thrust as well.

And in this case, so we had to make it redundant, and now we call it 3D omni directional. So, um, there you go. It's the first one in the market, and the way, well, that's unique on its own, but Um, the reason why it's important is because in cities there are places where the wind gets accelerated and the funnel unaccelerated,

in ways that are really, uh, difficult to harness. So, uh, in those places, you have really very accelerated winds, a lot of energy, we call this high energy potential spots. In these places, the wind can go up to 3 times the speed, uh, as in a normal open space, and that means 27 times the energy. But harnessing that wind, Which goes in different directions, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, eddies, everything.

And it changes speed as well, it changes and changes all the time. So it's really difficult to harness for any other wind turbines. Wind turbines are regularly designed for clean wind, that's what they call it. And that's why these big fans are located, this is, um, offshore or onshore, but in really specific places where

they can harness that. Clean wind means a steady direction, steady speed. This wind in cities is totally the opposite. So no existing wind turbine at the moment in the market can harness that effectively long term. And that's why we're very excited about this because this turbine is sound in structure.

It can hold off, it can resist strongest, stronger gusts and strongest change in direction and speed. So, Structurally sound and 3D omni directional means it's the perfect solution for that spot where the energy is. Because if you think of this size, uh, micro wind turbines, uh, in the UK there's a limitation for micro wind turbines up to 3.8 swept area. So that's why the limitation on the size is. We are planning for 2. 2 meters diameter. At that size, there is not much any wind turbine in the world can do, because there's not just, not enough energy for a wind turbine to do much. But, if you find this accelerated wind You have up to 27 times the energy and that means that's where you can actually get something out of it.

But you need this special kind of turbine to do it. So we think we got the match, uh, the right match there.

I used to work in, um, downtown Boston in the financial district and walking down those streets it, you could tell the wind was much faster and harder than you would expect just because the buildings were funneling the wind in all different kinds of weird ways.

So you're focused on the urban environment, um, to kind of, and your model again, I mean, the wind, no matter how it comes in, it's getting channeled on the inside, uh, which forces the turbine to spin in one direction. Is that correct? That's it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So every channel is slightly different. Uh, and it's directed towards the inside in a way that

it makes it spin, uh, every time in the same direction. Uh, so it has one single axis of rotation. It always goes over the same axis. Um, and that means there is less moving parts. Uh, it doesn't need to be re steered. Uh, no matter how far, how fast the change of direction is, it, it will still, uh, make use of it, uh, no matter what.

You're focused on the urban environment for these, but are there other use cases for it that you think it would also apply to? Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, it's,

the design is made to be used for in every case where wind goes wild, uh, chaotic. There are two winds. And that can happen whenever obstacles are.

And that means in cities of course, buildings are the obvious ones, but there are other ones. In nature there can be cliffs, or mountainsides, or rocks, or any other places. I mean, within hills, in hilly cities, even though they may not have tall buildings, they may still have these effects, and that's something we need to explore as well.

There is a nice case for sailboats, for instance, um, because they have their sails straight and they have wind turbines on top, and most of the times, vertical axis wind turbines, and they work pretty well when boats are still on the dock. But then they go out sailing, they hit the strongest winds, and they go sideways.

And then they work much less because they're not getting the wind horizontally, they're getting it from the top, or diagonally, and that's why they don't work. We've been approached by people, uh, owning these sailboats saying, we need, this will be great. Um, but that's a smaller version and we need to work it out as well.

Right. Um, those are just a couple of them. Um, the ones we see more, more usually, um, more often, but, um, under the water, it's something we haven't explored yet. Um, there are a number of other applications. I hadn't even

thought about that. It's all fluid dynamics, so it's, it kind of makes sense, but didn't even think of that.

Yeah. So what about the, uh, So, because they're in an urban environment, they might be close to where people are, like on a sailboat or attached to the building where you're sitting very close to it. What's the noise level like of these?

Well, we don't have instrument readings yet. We're going to be doing that later this year, but so far, nothing.

It's zero. We have a pilot on, on a setup right now, uh, in a farm, and whenever the wind is blowing, you can hear the wind. You cannot hear anything coming out from the, from the turbine. So it's virtually silent so far, and we're going to have the numbers pretty soon, hopefully.

That actually was one of my questions, which was, uh, I know the stages of development for bringing something like this out to the market can take a very long time.

I was curious what stage you're kind of at. I was curious if you had pilot projects. Um, or partnerships that you're working on. Is there anything you can talk to there?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good one. Well, we've had, uh, a previous version prototype on a pilot for a year and a half now. That's where we have our testing.

Uh, it's, it's been great. Uh, that's, but that's version two. We're now up to version three. Which we developed based on that one. We need to build the latest version, uh, full size, and test it. Right now we're raising the funds to, uh, manufacture this larger version. Uh, the latest version. Uh, 2. 2 meters diameter.

That's gonna be a pilot that we need to set up somewhere in a big city. Uh, I wanna say London, but that's not certain yet. We have already signed an agreement with Spotify for them to be the sponsor for the first pilot. On the manufacturing side, we are ready to get it manufactured by the National Composite Center in the UK.

Uh, which is the expert ones, uh, these guys work with, uh, formula ones all the time, and this is, uh, they know what they're doing. So they're going to be building, uh, our first prototypes. We're going to install one of those. Spotify is going to be the sponsor, and we're ready to go for it. All we need now is the money.

And after that one is being tested and demonstrated publicly that it works, then we can go to the market. That's right. That's, that's one of the questions I

always ask and it's always hard to map this out because things can happen, but like for timescales, like are you thinking that might be two or three years from now timeframe?

Like what's the timeframe you expect before you get to that, that market stage?

To hit the market, uh, hopefully end of last, uh, of next year. Yeah. Okay. End of next year.

Okay. So you're looking to get that Spotify project done quickly, get that data, and then move on to the market

pretty quick. Yeah. We've done pretty much all the R& D so far.

Uh, it's all been done through, well, the previous version was, uh, prototyped and tested in a wind tunnel, then on the pilot that I just mentioned. So, we have the data, um, from that one. Then we relied on simulations to, to keep on development. So now we, we're pretty confident that this one's ready to be put out there.

It's going to be working. And after it's demonstrated, it's not going to take us that long to, to make it to market.

What has been the market response so far? I mean, Spotify getting in on this sounds like it's been pretty good, but what has the response been from different industries and people you've talked to?

Well, there's quite a lot of interest. Since we won the James Dyson award back in 2018, there's been thousands of people coming in saying I want one. Problem is we didn't have one at the moment. So it's been maybe four years now or five years that we've been, we've been developing. So now we're almost ready to have something to sell.

So we've been hearing responses from individuals who want one for their apartment or their house. From governments, uh, councils, from distributors all over the world, from potential investors and fundraisers, uh, journalists and media. So all in all it's been nearly 5, 000 inquiries. We only recently started actually, um, Measuring that more and more accurately, because we have a new website, and with that came a new tracking system.

From the end of January, it's been like a thousand, just 1, 000 inquiries written, like people writing up on the contact form saying, I mean, not just the last three or four months. So, it's been like that for the last five years, and we know people are interested. Uh, we know there's, there's traction there. Um, we only need to make sure we hit the right spot in the market, because we don't, we don't want people to be frustrated by the fact that, like many other wind turbines have done, they just come up with something, they sell it outright.

They don't explain very well to people what they need to, uh, what they need to be careful about before installing one. So people go put it on the rooftop or in the backyard, they don't have enough energy and they just get frustrated because it doesn't do what they expected. And the main problem is, there's just not enough energy in the wind at that size.

Now, if you put it in an open space, you need these accelerated spots for the energy to be there. Um, and that's why what we think is going to be different. Um, so Our market approach is going to be different as well. Uh, we may, we may be selling them, but we need to make sure people understand that if you put it out there in an open space, you may not, uh, get enough energy, all the energy that you're expecting.

It's really the use case that's, this is not the turbine that's meant to take out all the other turbines in the world. It's not going toe to toe with offshore turbines. It's meant for a specific use case, which is the turbulent wind in cities and structures.

Exactly. And I think that that's the way some of the people in, uh, some of the actors in the industry are going to, uh, which is, we think it's the right way to do it.

Uh, some of them are going for the right, the angle at the top of the, uh, roof or, uh, accelerating wind in different ways, which is, I think, a smart move. Um, but just putting them out in the open is just not enough there. Um, yeah, I think people are going to be starting to understand better what they can do and what they can't do with, uh, with wind, um, so as the industry progresses and the public gets to understand, uh, what they can make use of it, yeah, that, that's the way it's going to work.

Um, it shouldn't be long before it, it breaks in.

This is going to be a tough one. You may not have, An answer to this, but what is the, do you have a kind of price point you're trying to hit with this, or if you can't really talk about price quite yet, how do you think this is going to compare? Like, per kilowatt hour versus something like putting solar panels on top of a building.

Like, what, what are the comparisons or market price that you're trying to hit?

That is a tough one. Um, cause we do have estimations, but I wouldn't like to make them public until we search about them. You know, you put a number out there and it multiplies. Every calculation we've done, uh, on the more and more, uh, they can, as further we move, the closer we get to it.

We think it's going to be comparable to the standard solar panel installation in the UK. Given the solar conditions in the UK, it's going to be pretty much there in the price tag and ROI as well.

What are the biggest obstacles that you've had to overcome to get to where you are right now with O-Wind?

I would say more challenges.

Challenges are one thing basically. Um It is an industry that's been beaten by a number of previous attempts that have failed because of, I think, mostly because they just come up with something, try to sell it, don't educate people, and they get frustrated. They get bad reputations, and they go badly.

So I think, personally, that's the biggest problem in the industry. And any player in the industry is going to face the same challenges. So funding is one. Technical challenges, um, because of the size of this machine and the complexity of its geometry, manufacturing prototypes is not that easy. So, right now we have a 70cm prototype which is working and it's answering some of the questions and that's great.

But then going up to two meters, that means tooling, which is really, really expensive. And that means, um, that's a bigger challenge. Um, that's what we're dealing with

right now. So it sounds like the, one of the biggest challenges is just manufacturing. This is making it. Yeah,

that's

it. Yeah.

Yeah. And if you don't get it right the first time, you need to spend the same amount the second time.

And we're trying to avoid that.

I, I'm going to ask this and I already know the answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway. There's a lot of concerns whenever you talk about wind about, uh, birds and the environment. How safe is your turbine for the natural environment? Is it going to be disruptive for birds or other, um, wildlife that's out there?

Uh, good question. We have had so far in the pilot that I mentioned one and a half years, and it has, we haven't had any incidents with any kind of environmental issues or, or wildlife. No birds, no insects, no ants, uh, no nests, no nothing inside. It's been great.

I was pretty sure that was going to be the answer because it seems like a device that's not going to be prone to wildlife flying into it or causing problems with it. So you've talked about where you are right now with this and what you think is going to happen in the next one to two years with it.

Are there other things that you're, what are the future plans for O-Innovations? Like What else do you have your eye on? Is there anything that you can, uh, talk about, about future plans or anything that you're kind of giving a little side eye to?

Well, we have wild ideas in the head. Um, nothing concrete yet. Um, we know this one is going to be a challenge on its own.

Uh, having different versions out there is going to be, well, the first one is going to be the 2.2 meters diameter version for urban use. But then of course, as I mentioned the other ones, will have their own challenges, I think. So it's going to take some time. We're going to be on it for several years, I think.

After that, um, hopefully we can keep disrupting urban energy and urban access to renewables, uh, in different ways. We know there's a lot of energy out there being used, uh, or being wasted, uh, as people walk and commute and spend energy in different ways, heat and movement. Um, I know there are, there are a lot of ways and a lot of things we can tap on to, to keep recovering that energy before it gets lost.

So we can transform into something useful.

For that 2. 2 meter version in ideal conditions, like what would the power output look like for that one?

So we're looking at somewhere between two and 5, 000 kilowatt hours per year. That's for the 2.2 version. And it is quite good that the average, sorry, the standard, uh, household in the UK spends 2.9 thousand kilowatt hours per year. So it would cover the whole, the full requirement of a house in the UK. Um, but that's in the right spot. Yeah. It's always linked to, to be located in the right place.

What's your, this is kind of a personal take, not about O-Innovations, but just about the wind sector in general.

What's your current feeling about how the industry is progressing?

It's kind of taking different leads in, in the different sectors within the industry, right? So, offshore, so it's, it's something they're going, floating now, and they're trying to develop that so they can reach out to, to different places.

Uh, inland, um, onshore, they have their own regulations, so, and limitations as well. Acceptance is, is a tough one. Uh, people are, are, People are getting more and more reluctant to, to accept those nearby their homes. That industry, even though it's still growing, it's still strong, uh, it may be challenging in, in dense, densely populated countries, um, like in the UK.

It may not be the case for you, but here there's, it's, there's always someone living nearby the place where you, you want to see your farms, so it, it may be challenging. But urban is, is kind of an unexplored area. There, there are attempts, right? We know in history there are many, uh, manufacturers that have tried to install stuff.

There are turbines out there, and there are some people trying them. But, all together, it's not mature, right? There's still a lot of space for urban implementation, and there's not one yet that has made a breakthrough. So, we hope we're going to be the first one to start populating the Uh, the urban space with energy.

Yeah. I gotta say yours is one of the prettiest ones of the ones I've talked about. It's appealing to look at. So it's, it's almost kind of like a little work of art that I can see attached to the sides of buildings or on the top of buildings. It's, there's something fascinating about just the look of it.

Thank you. Um, yeah, that, that's just, uh, just right. It's, it's an opinion, right? Um, it can be my opinion as well. I mean, I look at it and I like it. And many people have come back saying that, um, it's not something objective that we can say to people that, like, it's beautiful, well, you may think so, but it's subjective, that's probably, uh, but we are Being told by architect firms, um, some of them quite big, that it is appealing.

So, it may be complementary to urban, sorry, to modern architecture, that's the way we put it. So, yeah, it's a nice thing to see, hopefully people will accept it. It's going to be a very important part of our business model, that people accept it, and they're willing to have it. The nice thing about it is that it doesn't create any noise, it doesn't create any flicker effect, um, it doesn't, well, I mentioned no effect on environment or wildlife.

So, it reduces all of the, every single reason for onshore winter bias to be placed, to be rejected. This one solves, solves them all. So hopefully there's not going to be a new one that hasn't been mentioned. Um, and we, we should be all right to be placing in cities.

Well, what, what keeps you motivated to keep kind of pushing forward in the kind of renewable energy space?

What keeps you going?

More than half of the population in the world lives in cities now. Uh, it's got to keep growing and growing and, and the energy demand is, goes growing right now. We need two things. First, we need to realize and understand and make it flesh that we need to start worrying about how much energy we ask.

And how much we require, and how that affects the environment as well. So we need to make people understand that it's not just an invisible thing that comes out of the wall. It's something that you need to create and that has an impact, so you need to at least understand that you're responsible for it.

And even if you have to put one of them out of your house, you understand the problem. If you live in a house, uh, In the rural areas, you can put up solar panels or whatever, and you make yourself responsible for it. But in urban spaces, there's no way. You're not responsible for it. You're just giving the problem to someone else.

You just require a number of kilowatt hours per day. So, first of all, raising awareness, making people understand that it is a problem that they need to be a part of. And secondly, giving the possibility to To solve a problem, right? It's not just me feeling bad that I'm requesting something that I can't provide.

It's actually something I can take action on. So that's something that I think needs to be tackled somehow. Even if it's not wind. There needs to be some way for us to understand what the problem is, and that we are creating the problem, and that we need to be able to solve it, not just Give it up to someone else.

And me personally, I, as an industrial designer, I really look forward to having a product out there in market. And so for people to see it and for it to live on its own, um, so far, it's very much a push for us, but at some point it's going to be out there and it's going to have its own life. And I really look forward to that.

That actually leads nicely into one of the last questions I had for you, which is, What advice would you give to a young engineer or innovator that's just getting out of college and they want to get into the renewable energy sector? What advice would you give them?

There is a lot to be done. Uh, I'd say go for it.

I think it's, the future is going to bring a lot of challenges in that front. We need to, to find new ways to, to make use of the energy that we have around. And I'm sure there is a lot of, a number of untapped resources that we haven't been looking at. It's just, Ingenuity that's required. So yeah, we need them.

Yeah.

Yes, we do. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. It's, it's been a lot of fun and it's been nice to kind of get to know O-Innovations, and yourself a little bit better. So thanks again.

Thank you, Matt. I'm really happy to have been invited. I thank you so much for it.

So viewers, listeners, jump into the comments.

Let us know what you thought about Matt's conversation with Nicolas. Were there any questions that Matt didn't ask or any topics that Matt didn't touch on that you think would be interesting if Matt has an opportunity to do a follow up? Let us know in the comments. They really do help the content of the show.

They help support us as well as reviews wherever it was you found this, and also sharing it with your friends and subscribing. And if you'd like to support us directly, you can click the join button on YouTube or you can go to stilltbd.fm. Click the join button there. Both of those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads.

We appreciate the welts and then we get down to the business of talking about hot air blowing in cities. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen.

We'll talk to you next time.