The onslaught of super-dooper new windmill inventions is never ending. Frankly it’s wearing out us old timers. We can’t keep up with the damn things. We try to ignore them but our friends and colleagues keep throwing them in our faces, forcing us to react.
So it was with great relish that I discovered a new voice debunking these hustlers. He sounds young. And he doesn’t sound like anyone I know. That’s all I know about him. He’s just a voice. This new debunker never identifies himself. He goes by the moniker “Fox Says”.
What set off my discovery was a Google alert I have set up for Vertical-axis Wind Turbines. The 6 June 2017 alert sent me to an article titled New look stackable wind turbine that pitches something called IceWind.
So I Googled IceWind. Their home page came up and I clicked on it. Just as I did my eye caught an image capture with the words “IceWind Turbine Busted.”
I glanced quickly at IceWind’s home page and it struck me immediately that I’d seen that thing before, but I went back to Google and tracked down that video debunking IceWind—for entertainment if nothing else.
The video was posted on 6 January 2017 and this was the teaser.
“Bloomberg Reports on a new innovative wind turbine – except it’s an old design, known for poor performance, then effectively neutered by these “innovators” to perform even worse.”
Whoa. This guy is good.
He sets the tone right off the bat in the video by characterizing IceWind and the companies like them as peddling “consumer level bull shit.” Gosh, I wish I’d said that.
Apparently Fox was irked that Bloomberg was pushing this soft news story about wonderful IceWind without doing any homework.
Fox summed up his view pithily by saying IceWind “took a shitty design (Savonius) and made it even shittier.” They then added carbon fiber and stainless steel to spiff it up.
I like this guy’s style.
I can see why he didn’t sign his name. The VAWT trolls went after him in force in the comment section. Anyone who has debunked various world-beating windmill inventions knows that the abuse comes with the territory.
But it was nagging at me that I’d seen that design before—and it wasn’t under the IceWind name.
Sure enough. Our indicted friend Jim Rowan from Mag-Wind had built something just like it for his company called Enviro-Energies.
What “Fox” missed in his take down of IceWind was the similarity between it and Enviro-Energies’ turbine installed by late night TV host and purveyor of crackpot wind inventions Jay Leno on his garage in California.
See this video on youtube.com from 2010 of the Leno installation, or this video, again from 2010 of Enviro-Energies “shop” in Detroit.
The IceWind promoters should be careful. Iceland, where they are located, was the only country to lock up their bankers after the 2008 financial crisis. The promoters could end up like Mag-Wind’s James Rowan, on the run.
Finally there’s new blood taking on these peddlers of panaceas. We can pass on the baton.
