Finnish company envisages better utilisation of wind energy to provide power for electric vehicles

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The batteries of electric cars, scooters, and moped could be charged overnight by plugging them into small-scale wind turbines, says financial director Esa Salokorpi of Nordic AC, a Jyväskylä company that specialises in masts, wind turbines, and generators.
     
Small-scale wind generators could be set up in cities, the countryside, or wherever, in places where electricity is primarily used in daytime hours.
      “The excess electricity” produced at night could then be utilised, for example, by moped rental businesses, pizza taxis, courier companies, the post office, gas stations, or even the neighbourhood police.
      Nordic AC manufactures masts for small-scale wind generators in Kihniö. The company’s clientele is primarily in Europe.
     
The company’s head of design and production is Pauli Simolin, a former machine shop entrepreneur, who has even patented his honeycomb-structured mast innovation.
      Large car manufacturers are still very much just developing their electric cars, but capable two-wheeled electric vehicles are already on the market even in Finland.
      Simolin has devised a mast resembling a miniature Eiffel Tower, at the top of which rotate the blades of a wind turbine. The customers could ride to the mast and plug in their vehicles.
      Salokorpi describes the Eiffel mast as an “image whirligig”.
      They would not be erected in locations where the best wind conditions are but in places where the recharging of electric vehicles could easily be done under people’s noses.
     
Nordic AC will launch its charging mast idea at the Electric Motor Show 2009, which opens today at the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre.
      The masts can be between 6 and 48 metres in height and they can accommodate wind turbines with a maximum output from 1-45 kWh.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Prime Minister Vanhanen: Helsinki should invest in wind power (14.10.2009)
  Wind turbines to be used even in apartment buildings (13.10.2009)
  Emission targets add urgency to development of electric cars (5.11.2009)

Links:
  Nordic AC
  Electric Motor Show 2009
  Wind Turbine (Wikipedia)

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