Wandering around the exhibitors' stalls at the 2011 All-Energy Australia conference in Melbourne this week, it was, once again, a notably solar-dominated affair. Solar players big and small were showing off their wares, including a good amount of the latest inverter technology, with local solar players coming up against outfits from Korea, China, Canada and the US, to name but a few.

All this solar, of course, meant that exhibitors had to find canny ways to stand out from the crowd. And for Melbourne-based Ginlong Australasia, that meant featuring a massive partial wind turbine as the centrepiece of their display, despite the fact that their main business in Australia is wholesaling solar inverters. "Our main product is these inverters," Ginlong Australasia general manager Peter Hamilton told CS on Thursday, indicating one of the company's latest PV grid tie models (featuring dual Maximum Power Point Trackers for optimum system efficiency, and Bluetooth connectivity for remote data monitoring). "But we put this wind turbine here to get people's attention." (Well, it worked on CS.)

Hamilton said that standing out from the crowd, and not just at energy conferences, was one of the more difficult things about business in Australia for solar equipment manufacturers, with so much competition and so many unpredictable government policy changes. He said that while solar was still going ok in Queensland, SA and WA, it was "dead" in New South Wales, since the O'Farrell government so spectacularly adjusted its feed-in tariff policy, first with a retrospective rule and then without; while Victoria was just hanging in there, Hamilton said, although he expected that market to pick up sooner than NSW.

Low-hanging fruit

Another company using flashy wind turbine technology to lure potential customers was SI Clean Energy, the Coffs Harbour-based outfit that was recently awarded the job of designing, supplying, installing and maintaining one the 136.5kW rooftop solar system for Coffs Harbour City Council. (It also supplied and commissioned the solar inverters for the commercial solar farm in Alice Springs.) Despite its main business being designing, installing and maintaining clean power systems, dominating SI Clean Energy's display was a massive prototype for the unique-looking Honeywell Wind Turbine, which it will be distributing in Australia for the massive Fortune 100 US technology development company, Honeywell.

Made by WindTronics, it is a gearless wind turbine that features a Blade Tip Power System (BTPS) that the company describes as "breakthrough technology," allowing the turbine to start producing energy at wind speeds of 2mph (3.2km/h) and to remain operational until 38 mph (62km/h). How it works is that the gearless system eliminates mechanical resistance and drag, while the BTPS, which is based on a system of magnets and stators, captures energy at the tips of the blades, where the speed is the greatest. The turbine's increased operational span means the turbines can be used by companies, industries and communities in areas where the wind resource is less than ideal.

SI Clean Energy sales rep Haydn Fletcher told CS the mining industry was a prime target for the technology, as it is designed for use at the point of energy consumption, and has few moving parts to reduce maintenance requirements. The 6 ft (diameter), 109kg (they're made of polycarbonate, aluminum and steel) turbines can be mounted on a rooftop, a ballast, or a pole, and the power can be connected directly to the building, to the grid, or to batteries. Each turbine can produce up to 1500kWh per year depending on height and location – that's up to 15-20 per cent of the average household’s annual electricity needs, according to the US DOE. It is also quieter than most turbines, producing less than 35 decibels at 10 feet with "negligible vibrations."