New Zealand company Gyro Technologies has been chosen as one of just 15 startups to pitch to 700-odd investors at the upcoming Cleantech Forum to be held in San Francisco next week.
Warren Snow, director of Envision New Zealand, which provides management support to Gyro Technologies, will be making the pitch. “This is an amazing opportunity for a small kiwi startup. We have struggled to get support for developing the technology in New Zealand.”
Gyro Technologies recently signed development agreements with Narec Capital in the UK as well as a US consortium of Texas Tech University Department of Mechanical Engineering and renewable energy development company Group NIRE.
“We now have alliances with two international centres of Excellence in the US and UK who are willing to help take the technology forward. But we still need to cover our share of costs and we are hopeful that we will gain the necessary financial support at Cleantech.”
Cleantech Group senior programme manager Heather Matheson said Gyro Technologies was selected because of the potential of its technology.
Gyro’s technical director Jega Jegatheeson ?has worked for more than 15 years to solve the problem faced by the wind power industry of gearboxes breaking as a result of the massive wind gust forces they are subjected to.
His innovation instead uses gyroscopic reaction forces to transfer power from blades to generator. This is known as Gyroscopic Variable Transmission (GVT), and recently featured in a new book, Innovation in Wind Turbine Design (author Peter Jamieson described it as “being on the leading edge of wind power technology”).
“In the past we aimed to build a large GVT transmission and test it in a full size working wind turbine. A major New Zealand power company offered us a turbine for the trial, but the problem, as always, was funding. Unable to find a suitable partner and support in New Zealand we have had to look overseas. That’s the reality of developing such challenging technologies in a small country,” says Jegatheeson.
“Wind power is growing at a phenomenal rate worldwide and it would be nice if a New Zealand invention could be powering wind turbines of the future”.
