Why Bigger Wind Turbines Aren’t Always Better | Ep. 79 [Frank Gagnon]

In this episode of Industry Ignited, we challenge one of the biggest assumptions in renewable energy: that bigger is always better. Host Dr. Leeanne Aguilar speaks with Frank Gagnon of Wind-Do Energy about a new model for wind power, mid-scale turbines designed to work in networks, not just massive standalone farms.

Frank shares how his industrial engineering mindset led him to rethink wind technology from the ground up, focusing on cost efficiency, manufacturability, and real-world deployment. The discussion covers everything from why large wind projects often face resistance to how smaller turbines can be integrated into farmland, remote communities, and distributed energy systems. With insights into scalability, grid stability, and future innovation, this episode reveals how a shift in design philosophy could make clean energy more practical, more accepted, and more widespread than ever before.

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Transcript

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 0:06

What if the next breakthrough in wind energy isn't building bigger and taller turbines, but designing the right size systems that communities actually embrace where power is needed most? Welcome to Industry Ignited, the podcast where we explore the leaders driving transformation across industry, manufacturing, and technology. I'm your host, Dr. Leanne Aguilar, and today I'm joined by Frank Gagnan, founder and CEO of Wundu Energy in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Frank, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Thank you very much for the invitation.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 0:38

Yeah, I'm excited to learn all about what you're developing in wind technology. I know uh you've run several manufacturing companies of different sizes. What experiences from the manufacturing world most shape the way you approach energy technology today, especially around cost, reliability, and scalability?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yes, that's a good question. I'm first an industrial engineer. So my thinking is like an industrial engineer. I don't try to reinvent everything. I take a product and I think the way I can make it better. And in my approach, I try to put myself in the place of my customer and see what's their need and what can I give them that's gonna enhance their business or their life or whatever their need. And sometimes I may come even with product that they don't expect. So what I've designed as a wind turbine, nobody did ever see it before. So it's something that could be extremely useful for a lot of people, but I'm gonna have to make some medication about it because people never had sealed in the past. So it's gonna need to make some kind of demonstration about it. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 1:47

So you're approaching innovation and technology from an industrial engineering background and looking at the entire problem and you know, coming to solutions that way. So it's not necessarily what someone might expect, but it it's looking at it in a big picture.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

They call that in the I'm an engineer since many years now. They call they call that re-engineering. You start with the product and say, what's the good of it? What's the bad of it? And how can we improve it? How we can improve the good and reduce the bad. And this is what I try to do with wind energy since many years now. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 2:24

So was there a specific moment or problem you saw in the wind industry from the insider as an observer that made you say there's a better model than bigger is always better?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, I there is the giant wind turbine is mature technology. We understand that. It's produced good quantity of energy. It's spread all around the world, and it's very helpful to produce more clean energy. But there's a lot of problems with it. They are not accepted everywhere. You cannot make wind turbine in a city, for example, even near a city or near a village. The electricity production is random, so you cannot depend only on the wind energy. There is noise and visual disturbance. Right. Having a profitable wind farm with giant wind turbine, you need to make a very large project. You know, it costs many hundred million dollars. So sometimes it takes uh years to start the bid, to tell the tender. Then it's start and you need to talk with people, and sometimes you work for ears on the project, which is cancel because people don't want to see it nearby in their background. And there's also some decommissioning problem. Decommissioning problem. We know today that the blade, the large blade, uh their synthetic product, they start to be able to make their use of it to make uh recuperation. But that there's a lot of them that uh have been directly garbage. So there's few problems around that. But it's clean energy and we need clean energy. So if we can add, we can change something, make something better, there is a room for it. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 4:02

And how did your background as an industrial engineer shape your view of the energy sector and ultimately lead you to build a company focused on mid-scale networked wind turbines rather than traditional large-scale models?

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Okay, I'm an industrial engineer again, so what I try to do is something that can be produced in series, in large series. So with automation. Large wind turbine, every wind turbine is almost a custom project. Today it's less than that, but it's a very big project. You have to do engineering every time you install a wind turbine. And it's big factories that are one-purpose factory. They do have a factory that dublade, they don't need that. So it's not the way in industrial engineering thing. So I want to make something that I can put the input in one side. I have some robots in the between, and on the other side, I have a product. It's not, of course, that simple as that, but that's the basic principle. It's not useful to try to replace a giant wind turbine. It's a good product, it's mature. But we I can I can we can try to go where they cannot. So that's why I think to make it smaller, to reduce the noise and visual disturbance. And based on that, I start to make some the base, the first step is to make calculations. What's the good size? What's the good you make approximative cost? What if I make five kilowatt, kilowatt, 20 kilowatt, 50 kilowatt? And there is a kind of sweet spot. You know, if you make it too small, the cost is too is too high for per kilowatt. And if you try to get bigger in between the giant wind turbine and uh the the mid-scale wind turbine, there is also a gap, a place that it's not it's not very profitable. So 20 kilowatt is very, very good after minimized on that. That's the best uh that's the best option. I decide to. Maybe some may decide uh other thing, but what I offer is based on 20 kilowatt.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 5:57

Okay, so you really did the research and establish like what that that mid-range size would be as far as efficiency and and cost and the installation, the quick installation, we need something that can be deployed fast.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

So the way, the way the concept, okay. I don't try to sell one wind turbine here and there. I try I want to sell wind farms of many wind turbines. So we you put a team on the field with a large contract of wind turbine, they come, they hammer the foundation, steel foundation, they can they can make five or ten foundations per day with the with the good equipment. And then another team comes to make the assembly of the wind turbine, they can assemble it one wind turbine every day, two, three people, four people. So uh this is a different way to approach that.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 6:46

Right, a whole whole nother model, right? Because I know right now the wind energy, it's it's pretty much dominated by the well-established players and large turbine economics. Yeah. And you're you're more looking at that mid-scale operation. And you're saying that you're going to create farms, the farms of the mid-size wind turbines. And so, what convinced you that the mid-size network approach could succeed, not only from a technical standpoint, but as a commercially scalable and competitive business?

SPEAKER_00 7:14

That's a very good question. There's many, there's many points for that. First, we want to offer something more reliable for the grid manager, for the electric operator. So if you have one giant wind farm of 100 megawatt, one day you're gonna have 100 megawatt of electricity. And the day after you're gonna have nothing. Now, if you have instead of one big farm of 100 megawatt, 100 1 megawatt farm spread everywhere, you're never gonna have 100 megawatt total. You're never gonna have zero. So it's gonna be much easier for the grid manager to use that. Now, coming to a size of one megawatt, I can I can go, I can change the pattern. It's not anymore a giant corporation, international corporation, that's gonna produce electricity. It's gonna be farmers. They're gonna install in Delane, which is the best place for Bitcade Winter Bank, they're gonna install winterbine on Delane and they're gonna sell electricity to the grid. And they're gonna enhance their business model. They're gonna make, they're gonna have stable product. You know, uh farmers, they they don't have some uh stable product. One year they can do good money, the next year they they make nothing. With fixed revenue or very, very stable revenue in energy, you make their life much more interesting. So it's interesting for everyone. And once once again, I do not intend to replace giant wind turbine. We're gonna go where they cannot. There's a lot of good, windy place that they have refuse giant wind turbine. We can come there, nobody's gonna complain. We're gonna put one, two, three at the beginning on the area to make people comfortable with it. And after we're gonna install 50 in one field or 75 in another field, and it's it won't bother anyone because it's the size of a tree. So uh at 300 meters, well, at a thousand feet, you don't see it. Well, you see it, but it doesn't bother. Uh but it doesn't bother at all. You don't hear it either.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 9:08

Yeah. So you're basically making wind energy more accessible and putting it in places where the large wind turbines can't be placed currently. So for listeners who picture wind turbines as these massive structures, walk us through what wind dews turbines look like and and large tree footprint concept and the core design philosophy and and let us know you know what's what's fundamentally different. Explain to us.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

You want to see uh an image of the wind turbine?

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 9:34

Sure. Yeah, I know you you know, for those viewers watching on on YouTube and by video, you can actually see. And then for those listeners who are joining us on a podcast, I guess talk us through the differences.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

So for those who see the image, you have the wind turbine. It's an old concept. The Rio's wind concept is an old concept, it's necessary for mid-scale wind turbine. We can talk about that later on because it's a very, very simple machine. Basically, there's one moving part. But I have a few stairs of arms with blades at the end, and they are they are offset one to the other. So the the the torque on the generator is very equal. The the force on the structure is very equal to. But each blade is 10 feet high, three meters. You can see on on the other picture, one of my partners beside one of the blades. This is the standard blade. So every model uses exactly the same blade. So this blade can be assembled in an automatic system. Now, in this second image, you see that we are gonna produce four models of wind turbine. Okay, we have a model with three levels of blade, and we have a model with four levels, six level, eight level. Wind is a soft energy. Okay, you need to catch a good quantity of wind to produce electricity, and the wind profile is not the same everywhere. There is area that the profile is quite low. Produce 20, the same 20 kilowatt, we need to catch more wind because to have a wind turbine that is efficient, you need to produce at least a nominal uh capacity, uh, 2000 uh uh hours a year, at least 35, 40, 45 percent of the capacity of the wind turbine. So sometimes it's need larger turbine, sometimes it's it's need lower. But it's always the same blade, it's always the same arms, it's always the same generator, always the same structure. Just only the size of the head change. So the largest one, you're gonna have 20 kilowatts with wind of 12 to 13 kilometers per hour. While the large the larger one, the smaller one, you're gonna need more wind. You're gonna need maybe 25 miles per hour wind to produce. Except that when you have a large turbine, you have to stop it earlier. When there is too much wind, you can have structural problem, electronic power electronic problems. So you have to stop. That's why one model is better in one place, another model is better in another place.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 12:03

Okay, just depending on the environment, the landscape, and exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah, okay. Yeah. In this picture, you can see how we install the wind turbine on the farmland. We're gonna put that in ditch. So we don't use a square foot of cultivated land. This is very important. We enhance their model, business model, but we don't reduce their culture, they're the cropping. It's very important that they they can produce, they don't stop their basic work. So it's it's become, and for us, it's very it's the best place because they are not too high. We don't want them to be too high. So we need a place that is relative clean. So it's it's a good fit.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 12:46

Yeah, okay. So you're you'll you'd work alongside farmers and place them strategically in areas and so they're not interrupting the productivity of the fields, they're not taking up much space, and they're basically like large uh large trees that you're putting inside of the irrigation canals, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

They have all those uh this kind of small irrigation uh in the in their land, they have too when they have a large rain, they need to be able to evacuate the water and everything. So uh they all that they all have that.

unknown 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

And even if if they don't, it's not doesn't take it's take uh each winter mine take take about uh 10 square feet on the floor. So it's not it's minimal.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 13:24

Yeah, minimal. And you've also made a good uh point about lower noise and lower visual annoyance, plus improved safety for birds and bats. How do you engineer for community acceptance and environmental impact without sacrificing performance?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Okay, that's a good question. Birds, it's coming sometime on a discussion. There's a lot of space in between the blade, and the blade run at 200, 300 kilometers per hour, 150 miles per hour. Our blade is gonna work a bit slower. It's still fast, it's still 100 kilometers per hour, 60 miles per hour, but it's 12 meters wide. So it's always on the vision of the bird. So they cannot miss it. When it's giant when turbine, they can they can have the impression there is nothing and sudden, suddenly the blade passes. So there is possibility of impact, which is not as bad as people say, but that's another question. But this this this system, they're gonna see it. And for for the the the the paratrooper or the eagle, the top of the blade are painted in red. So when you're gonna come from the top, you're gonna see the wind turbine miles and miles away. On the floor on the ground, you won't see it. But uh when if you can't if you come from the top, you're gonna see it. So it's cost nothing more to do, and it's more safe for uh for the bird and for the people. That you can can have a small plane, you can have you know. This can be installed not not far from a small airport, and uh there will there would be no risk with it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 14:48

Yeah. And Windu also uses standard components and a modular design to enable automated manufacturing and assembly. Which cost drivers are you targeting most aggressively? Materials, install installation, maintenance, or downtime?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Okay, I'm an industrial engineer again. And can't calculate all the costing in the process. Okay, we're gonna have to start with a smaller factory uh because it's need capital, and before we can have money to have a larger factory, we're gonna need to make orders. You know, we're gonna go step by step. We're gonna try to run before we we we work correctly. And in the production, every every component of our wind turbine can be uh done by subcontracting. So I cannot have a bottleneck somewhere that uh okay, I cannot produce this, I cannot produce this, because everything can be produced outside the factory. We're gonna make that assembly. But if you want to be competitive on an international basis, you have to be uh integrated vertically. Okay, you take a BYD in China, it's not only because they have uh cheaper labor than us. They they have a factory the size of a city to produce the automobile, and they don't just assemble the parts like they do here in most of the uh automobile industry. They produce their own battery, they produce the raw material of their own battery, they produce their generator, and that's the same thing. So we we're gonna do a bit the same thing at our scale. We're gonna uh and integrate in our production what's gonna be the best cost efficient. Because we we we we're gonna be at the at the beginning very competitive, but we have to stay competitive and we have to be more and more competitive. Right. We're gonna keep an eyes on on costs, and sometimes we're gonna integrate that. Sometimes we're gonna integrate that and make more inside product so we don't have the multiplication of profit here and there that can moves the price for nothing, step by step.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 16:55

Yeah. You mentioned exclusive speed control on each turbine unit. What does that control system enable at the network level and how does it improve efficiency versus competitors?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

This is this is a bit a bit a delicate question because it's the it's concerned our high P. So I would not be too, I would not give you too much detail. Here's wind turbine is a very simple machine. We there is wind turbine that produced, uh there is corporation that produced wind turbine of 20 kilowatt, 45 kilowatt. They all do like giant wind turbine, horizontal axis wind turbine, which is correct for the giant engine, but when you come smaller, it's too complicated. So it's it's very costly. So our uh wind turbine is very, very simple. We have one moving part. All the turbine, all the top is one part that turns and directly to the to the to the shaft to the motor. As simple as that. But it's not simple. It's absolutely not simple to control that. A lot of people have tried to do direct wind turbine, they all fail because they they have not taken the time to analyze everything. They have not time to make computer simulation to optimize the blade. They have not time to to watch at the speed, the relation between the speed of the wind turbine, the rotation, the speed of the wind, the speed of the generator. All this have to work together to be efficient. So that's that's the difference. But I won't tell you more.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 18:21

That's okay, right. But no, it's it's it's interesting though, and yeah, I guess in in just creating that so it's the Darius concept. And can you tell me a little bit more about that that concept though and the the history of it?

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Darius, Darius concept is um a vertical axis wind turbine that got a blade like like like horizontal axis wind turbine, like plane. Okay, and it's in its turn around the vertical axis. It's been patterned by Mr. Darius 100 years ago.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 18:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

You know, it's it's a very old concept, and it's work. And a lot of people have tried things around it, and they all they all miss a lot of things. They have not done their their homework before they do the stuff. They think it's simple. Aerodynamic is not intuitive. You cannot you cannot have an idea and oh, it's gonna work. It's not that simple. If if you take the the way, for example, Sir Darius have described the patent 100 years ago, it doesn't work like that. Okay, it's work, the principle is correct, but the way he described that, it's the it's not working like that. If you make computer simulation, you see what's worked, what happened around the blade at every space, and then you can make optimization. Then after that, you have to think, okay, how many blades, how many, because if you put I'm gonna give you too much detail, but anyway, if if you have instead of two blades face to face, three blades is also good, but you see many wind turbines with four blades, five blades, six blades all together. But the edge blade work on the turbulence of the pre the previous one. So the efficiency dropped by 20, 30 percent, just that, regardless of the thing. Sometimes you see a lot of structure about uh around the the the the the the the the the the the the blade uh the way they hold it. They don't take in account the drag of the the the harm system and everything. If you look at my uh my the arm is very, very thin. It's need to be that. And even then, I have to take in account the drag that it produces in in the overall production. Right. There's a lot of detail like that that need to be put together before you can say you have a final product tested well working. Some some have tried in the past to put a product, a prototype, in uh in a wind tunnel and they say, Oh, with this, we produce this energy. In the field, it doesn't work. Absolutely doesn't work because what you see in a wind tunnel, you can see a few things in a wind tunnel, but you don't see what's happened in the real world.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 20:56

Right. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

In the real world, if you put a wind tunnel, then you say you have uh 25 uh miles per hour wind. In real life, 25 miles per hour wind does not exist. It's always moving. So it's more less, more, less a bit, and you have to be able to manage it. If you let that the turbine follow the wind, you're dead. It cannot. This is why we control the speed of the wind turbine.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 21:25

Okay. Yeah, in the real world, there's not that consistency. It's not constantly 25 miles an hour. You're gonna have those fluctuations, you're gonna have variations.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Never.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 21:34

Yeah, yeah, got it. Now, windu emphasizes wind farm networks optimized to local wind profiles and customer needs, including low wind regions. How do you model and configure a network, turbine types, quantities, placement to make a site economically viable?

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Okay, there is there is two parts in that question. First, of course, when you install a wind farms for a customer, you have to understand his name. The purpose of the wind farm, how are we going to install it? What is the average wind of that area? What is the area beside the surrounding? What is the obstacle? What is the size of the land? What is the number of kilowatt or megawatt needs? All this is basic work. But above that, because we are extremely scalable, we can offer a lot of different solutions that can improve, that can increase output for our customer, that can be more useful, more profitable for our customer. Maybe I have to show some image again. Okay. Now, on the top image, on the top graph, this is the standard production of a wind farm, of a wind turbine. You know, you have wind, you have, let's say, the line on the top is a one megawatt wind farm. Sometime you deliver one megawatt, and the day after you deliver nothing. And on the average, you're gonna, depending on a lot of factors, you're gonna deliver 30 to 40 percent of the nominal connection you have to the grid. If you have one megawatt, you sometimes offer to the grid one megawatt, sometime you offer zero. On average, uh over the year, you're gonna offer the equivalent of 300 or 400 kilowatt. So this is this is a standard system. All wind farm actually works like that. It's correct, but it's you know, it's for the grid, it's not easy to to to to manage because there's a lot of all that that you have to work with. Now, if we go on the bottom of the the second graph, if you say, okay, this bottom line is one megawatt, but I install four megawatt of winter of wind turbine. You know, instead of for one megawatt, it's 50 of our wind turbine, I install 200. So I produce much, much more electricity. One the the portion of the time I can offer one megawatt is now 60 to 80 percent of the grid connection. So we can offer something very, very consistent for the grid. The rest of the electricity you cannot put on the grid because it's not your connection, but you can use it, it's on site, it's there. So today the batteries, for example, are uh much less expensive than 10 years ago. You can take a part of the electricity and fill the hole here and offer something much more consistent to the grid. Yeah. Or you can use this energy locally. If you're a farmer, uh you may heat up some building, may heat up uh uh uh greenhouse, you may produce hydrogen. There's a lot of things you can do. So there is there is a splitting. Of course, you're not forced to do that uh for one. Let's say that one, okay, one megawatt is 50 wind turbine, you have a connection with the grid, a contract for one megawatt connection. But instead of installing 50 wind turbine, you install 60 wind turbine. You're gonna offer more electricity to the grid and at a very not at a much higher cost because the loss is gonna be very small. It's not useful to try to use it for something else. You don't have enough. You offer more, you sell more to the grid. Of course, if if your electricity basically costs you four cents per kilowatt hour, if you sell uh to uh five cents to the grid, well, if you drop your cost from four cents to four point five cents, it's no good. But if you sell electricity to the grid eight cents and it costs you 4.4 cents instead of four cents, so you deliver 10, 20, 30 percent more electricity, it's more beneficial for your production. And the grid will not complain on that, of course. And if you go higher and higher, you say, okay, I offer you, you you have a tender with a grid, you say okay, the basic price is four cents per kilowatt. But if you want an efficiency of 60% instead of 30%, instead of give me uh seven cents, you're gonna give me eight cents. The grid may decide, yes, I do that. You give them the choice. If they want more electricity, they're gonna accept. So it's extremely flexible, and above that, a farmer can start with a basic uh system. The year after they can add, you know, let's say you have 50, the year after you can add another 15 wind turbines, the year after they can add another 10 wind turbine, or install a greenhouse and install another 25 wind turbine. So it's very flexible.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 26:21

So basically flexibility.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Yeah. Based on that, we can build a lot of model for our customer. For example, here it's a farm. You have a wind farm in uh installed in the land of the farmer that produces wind electricity. So always the same principle, random electricity. And the farmer they pay very the price of the electricity is expensive. So they use the most important part of the electricity produced by the wind farm for his own purpose. So it's more profitable because if you sell electricity to the grid at eight cents, but you pay 16 cents, well, better you better reduce your 16 cents before you sell electricity to the grid. Right.

unknown 27:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Still, you can sell electricity to the grid, a good amount, that maybe pay all everything, even if you don't do benefit. It's make the rest free. It's make the electricity here free. And you have some excess that are more difficult to manage. The excess of energy, the random, you can produce heat with that very fast, high-temperature heat. You can have a very efficient heat storage system that you can use for uh eat a building or eat a greenhouse or stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

When I start Windu, I was aware of that problem. I also create a system for the heat storage, probable to finance windu, so it's useless to try to make two things at the same time.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 27:42

You also talk about optimizing for different outcomes, max grid delivery, uniform on-site production, or even overcapacity to cover costs via grid sales. How do you help customers choose the right optimization target and what trade-offs typically show up?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

First, they don't really know what we can do for them. So we have we're gonna have to explain everything. For example, the wind profile over a year is something, but the wind profile in summer and the wind profile in winter are different. You have most of the time twice the energy of the wind in winter. So if you want to have something equal all the year, you're gonna go on the lower part of uh the wind energy on summer, and you're gonna make your farm optimized to that level to reach your objective there. But if you want to eat up your building in winter, you're gonna do the reverse. You're gonna optimize your wind farm with the winter cycle. And in some cases, if you if you want something very equal, more equal with low wind and high wind, you may decide to have a wind farm with some large wind turbine when there is low wind, and some smaller wind turbine when there is high wind. So there is a lot of ways to do optimization on each side, on each, on each project. So that's why each project is different. And it's important to seize the objective of our customer. If they want to have the cheapest electricity cost possible to sell to the grid, we optimize the wind farm in that direction. But if you want to produce maximum electricity because he needs this electricity for himself, then the optimization is different. Especially if he got limited land, you can put more wind turbine in the small in the limited land. It's going to be a bit less efficient, but we're going to achieve the energy he needs. On the reverse, we can have a larger uh, if you have a lot of land, you can make maybe uh more wind turbines smaller and have some other kind of flexibility. But there's a lot of way to optimize the wind farm for our customer.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 29:45

And like you said, it really depends on their objectives, on their specific land and their configuration of the property and their overall goals. So let's talk about the headline claim. Cost per megawatt can be lower than giant turbines in many cases. Where does the cost advantage come from most often? Manufacturing, logistics, permitting, community approval, maintenance, or something else?

SPEAKER_00 30:07

That's a good question because all those points are important. And the very first thing you have to remember is there's no two projects the same. So some are going to have this advantage, some are gonna have another advantage, some are gonna have more wind to produce cheaper electricity, some they're gonna have cheaper capital. You know, the first expense after you have installed your wind farm, the first expense is the loan you put on it, the mortgage you put on it. So if you pay at cheap, if you pay a low, a lower interest rate, you produce at a better cost. There's a lot, there's a lot of variable that must be taken in account. So if someone comes and say, okay, my wind turbine produces electricity at four cents per kilowatt hour, run away because it's not working like that. I I need to show you another another token. So you have the cost of the electricity per megawatt for a one megawatt wind farm of 50 wind turbines. The annual cost may be of the wind farm, maybe$70,000,$90,000,$130,000,$150,000. There's a lot of variable.

unknown 31:17

Okay?

SPEAKER_00 31:17

It's not a fixed cost. You may need a longer mask, you may need, you know, it could be different. It may be difficult to reach, or it's very easy to reach. And depending on the model you choose and on the wind profile, you can produce two gigawatt hour of electricity per year, 2,000 megawatt hour, or three or four. So if you have the same cost, say$70,000 per year for a wind farm of one megawatt, but you produce, you have a small quantity of wind, it costs you$35 per megawatt hour. If you have the double energy, it costs you 17 cents. So it's exactly the same wind farm. Everything is the same. You have more wind, the electricity is cheaper. And average, average, we're gonna work between 2.5 cents, okay,$25 per megawatt hour is 25 cents at 2.5 cents per kilowatt to five cents per kilowatt. Most of the project is gonna be like that. But the most important is not necessarily what it costs. What is the benefit? What is the profit you can do with it? Okay, if you go up north in Norton Village, the cost for a one megawatt wind farm of 50 wind turbine might be 250,$300,000. So, and but they have a lot of wind. So at the end, their cost of electricity might be uh$43 per megawatt or uh$50 per megawatt. But their cost just for the diesel is$250 to$500 per megawatt. So even if the cost is much higher there, their uh cost for the actual energy is so high that they're gonna make they're gonna pay back their system in in two, three years. So it's not only the cost of electricity, but what what is the concept? What where is the place? Yeah. So if if you sell electricity to the grid and you had you had wind turbine, you increase your cost, okay. Let's say you are instead of$90,000, you make you add uh 20% wind turbine and you're 110, but you produce more electricity, so instead of cost you uh$30 per megawatt hour, costs you$31 per megawatt hour, but you sell 20% more electricity to the grid. That's profitable. So that's that's the main point. Where uh it's not only a question of what it costs, but what can what what you're gonna do with it?

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 33:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

What's your need, what, what, what benefit you can get of it.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 33:50

Yeah, exactly. Scaling climate hardware is a different game than scaling software. What is your manufacturing scale strategy, capacity planning, supplier strategy, quality systems, and repeatable assembly?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Very pleasant work for an industrial engineer again. No, it's not how can I say that? We have we're gonna have to start with a small factory with small capacity. And it is correct because our go-to-the-market strategy is not to try to sell, uh to go to the farmer and say, okay, you're gonna make a two million dollar project, you're gonna put 50 wind turbines on your field. This is they are very conservative people, it's never gonna work. And in its understanding, if I was at a place, I do the same. So we're gonna say, okay, we're gonna make you two, three wind turbines, you're gonna test this for one year, you're gonna produce electricity for your own purpose, and you're gonna see that the noise, the efficiency, and everything. From there, we're gonna get order for a larger system after a year, a year and a half. And then with this order, we're gonna be able to finance a larger factory and to produce, you know, make to make the vertical integration that we talked at the beginning. But it's gonna be it's gonna be step by step. And the fact that we're gonna go step by step, it's gonna be more efficient because when we're gonna make an investment, we're gonna know exactly what's the best thing to do at this moment to reduce our costs or to improve our product.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 35:14

Yeah. And where do you see the strongest early market fit, like industrial sites, municipalities, or remote infrastructure, um, commercial customers, utilities, and why is that segment best positioned to adopt mid-scale networks first?

SPEAKER_00 35:28

We have a very versatile project, and uh a startup must be versatile, must be agile. We have core potential market of grid village, not turn of grid village, but every other of grid village that depends on diesel is a very important market for us because they can spare a lot of money with us. Farmer is also an important market for us because they can sell electricity to the grid. And if half of the farmers in the US install one megawatt wind turbine in their field, they're gonna produce half the electricity need of the US. So the potential is tremendous there also. It also could be corporations or municipality that's gonna reduce their carbon footprint that can use our product at several size. We're gonna uh we offer wind turbine. For us, it's the same thing. All this is the same thing. But there is a market that's gonna, we're gonna have a faster response. We're a startup, we're gonna go there.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 36:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

If if if the Northern community understands that they can make a lot of saving with us, eventually a lot of benefit, they're gonna jump on our product and they're gonna overload us. We won't try to go anywhere else.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 36:37

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

But but they are conservative people, maybe it's gonna be the farmer, but they're also conservative people. The same thing, farmers, when we're gonna have two, three, four farmers that make a good success about that winter bind, they're gonna they're gonna come uh a hundredth of the time to have to have our product. If we have no demonstration, maybe it's gonna be the corporation or municipality because those people are more flexible for the kind of new changement, new stuff. Might be there that we're gonna go at the end. So I I cannot say I prefer this or I prefer that. I sell wind turbine. That's my point. Right. Yet to be determined. When I'm gonna go up north, for example, and they're gonna make projects for for the Northern village. My salesman's gonna sell either, well, it's gonna be distributor there on the way, but they're gonna sell wind turbine, but they're gonna sell batteries, they're gonna sell an energy management system, they're gonna sell each storage system. We supply the the wind turbine and the business model.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 37:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Tell them how to work, work it. Well, maybe we're gonna install also the same people, but it's gonna be distributor up north. So they can they can come and buy a wind turbine, buy batteries, buy and put it there and you know, give the best seller.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

We don't try to make everything, we want to focus on the wind turbine and make them inbeatable. You know, we if we if we don't want to be uh overcome by Chinese product, for example, we have to think like that's an integration. Don't try to sell the wind turbine to make a big, big benefit with it. We're gonna make reasonable steel factory benefit, and uh if they want to beat us, they're gonna have to work hard. That's the way I think.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 38:09

Yeah. Now you reference carbon revenue potential tied to emissions reduction. How do you think about monetization beyond electricity, credits, incentives, compliance programs? And how how material is that to your business case?

SPEAKER_00 38:23

From the very beginning, well, my intention was to put on the market a project that don't need subsidies. Because subsidies is dependent on politics. You know very well that in the US now, you know, it can change very fast. So you cannot build a business model on that. What I offer, I offer basically without subsidies. After if there are subsidies, yeah, we come. But we don't depend on that. Let's let's make an example. Let's make a quick example. If we get appropriate carbon tax for uh wind turbine and startup north that we place diesel, it's clear every megawatt hour we produce, it's megawatt not produced by Diesel system. If we have$100 per ton of uh CO2 emission cancel, after the expense, because it's expensive to have the you have to hire uh specialists and everything. Let's say you have$75 in your pocket. Diesel is 90 uh 900 kilowatt per megawatt hour. So if you have a wind farm of one megawatt up north, that produces three gigawatt hour, 3,000 megawatt hour. Theoretically the credit should be$200,000 per year. That the target target boot gun tax carbon tax return should be$200,000 for a wind farm that costs you less than$200,000. Theoretically, it's gonna it's gonna be free electricity. Brexit, I don't see that anywhere for the moment. Why? Well, politicians they take the money, they charge the tax. It's not clear what they do with it. So uh if uh a fair, a fair, fair trade market, exchange market, we should have a lot of people that produce electricity free with the carbon tax. For the moment it's not happened. Maybe one day politicians are gonna understand we are running to a big problem. Maybe it's gonna come. And at that point, it would be beneficial. Same thing for uh sold our system and large winter bank, for example. It's not only for our product. Right. But step by step. There is some subsidies. Yeah, one day they are there, the day after they're not. It just changes a lot. Yeah, it's not it's too it's too dependent on politics. Uh-huh. It's good if they can enhance that, but it's not necessary. For for winter for our product, it's not necessary. Yeah.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 40:43

So, Frank, looking ahead, you mentioned the structural parts are currently metal and recyclable with plans to assess carbon footprints against fiberglass structures. What improvements are next on your roadmap?

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Improvement we have first to put product on the market, and from there we're going to be able to improve rapidly what is physical. The next step may be in two years, we're going to be able to manage the wind turbine differently, installing the sensor all around the wind farm, let's say 10 sensor, and have a kind of learning machine. I don't, I've not said uh I say learning machine because it's all on a small computer. And instead of reacting to the wind, we're gonna say, okay, this wind turbine on the next five minutes, this is what you're gonna receive. You're gonna you're gonna go at that speed. The other one beside is different. The other one, oh, there's an obstacle in between. You know, this this could be an improvement, but you know, it's gonna be an improvement of two, three percent. Of course, it's free electricity at the end because it's the same wind farm.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 41:48

But so finding ways to really optimize the system and something.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

So regarding the re the recycling of uh of the product, the wind turbine, our wind turbine is done, it's it's still heavenized still 99%. So it's 199% recyclable, but it's built to last 50 years. So when we when it's going to be time to decommissioning, might not even be needed in 50 years. We won't be there anymore. So we'll see. But it's not, it's not, it's not a point because everything can be recycled.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

So if it if needed, it could be recycled.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 42:22

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Frank, for joining me and sharing about how wind do is rethinking wind energy and making it more deployable, more acceptable to communities, and potentially more cost effective through mid-scale turbine networks and manufacturing, driving innovation. So, for listeners who want to learn more, where should they go to follow your work and learn more about window energy?

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Well, you can go on our website, wind-do.com. But you're gonna have more interesting information maybe on our uh YouTube chain, windu preview. Because there, if you want to have information, for example, about computer simulation, you're gonna have. You're gonna see how a wind turbine works. You're gonna see how we calculate the efficiency of a wind turbine. So there is for for the one who really wants to go further, a YouTube chain is very good. It's very good place to YouTube to see it in action. They could they could also join me on Lincoln because I I talk a lot there.

Dr. Leeanne Aguilar 43:19

Excellent. All right, well, thank you, Frank. Thank you for the invitation. And to our listeners, if you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to Industry Ignited and share this episode with a colleague. And tune in for next time as we discuss uh more innovation and and other things happening in the world of industry and manufacturing. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and keep igniting industry.