The Aerogenesis Story

Aerogenesis Australia was formed by Harry Snaith and David Wood in 2004 to commercialise a range of small and medium sized wind turbines based on advanced design methods and maximizing the use of mass-produced components.

Harry Snaith

Harry Snaith has a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manchester. He has twenty years experience in applied engineering and specialises in mechanical design and component manufacture. He uses Materials Technology to combine materials design with machine and component design for optimisation of performance, weight reduction and cost minimisation. He is practiced in Manufacturing Techniques suited to volume production of high performance components. His knowledge of Materials and Energy Conversion is applicable to the challenges of Renewable Energy and Sustainability, including resource utilisation, weight saving, energy efficiency, through-life optimisation and recycling.

David Wood

David has a Ph.D. from Imperial College, London in Aeronautics and has been a Senior Research Associate at NASA Ames Research Centre in California. For many years he was an academic in the Faculty of Engineering at Newcastle University where he was instrumental in developing a world-renowned research group in small wind turbine technology. He was the Australian representative on the international committee that recently revised the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) safety standard for small wind turbines.

Angus Oliver

Angus Oliver has worked in the electronics industry for 9 years, primarily on embedded firmware. With a focus on efficient design, high performance, cost effectiveness and straight-forward user interfaces, Angus has developed web-based data logging solutions for the remote monitoring of Aerogenesis wind turbines.

In addition to these skills, Aerogenesis engages high level consultants in the areas of computer modeling of our complex three-dimensional blade shapes for computer controlled milling of blade moulds, finite element analysis to assist in designing the blade layup, and control system design and development.

Aerogenesis brings two unique capabilities to the world of small turbines. The first is the ability to design blades for optimal starting and low wind speed performance as well as efficient power extraction and low noise. The blade for our 5 kW turbine, the first we are commercialising, has been patented. The second innovation is our use of a motor speed controller as the basis of our wind turbine controllers. These inexpensive, mass-produced controllers are ideal for wind turbine applications as they have an embedded inverter. This means that our cheap, patented controllers are also inverters and this avoids a major additional cost.

Further details of the Aerogenesis story and our specific projects are given in the other sections of this site.