Micro Wind Turbines: How Aeroleaf® Is Changing Renewable Energy

Discover how New World Wind is revolutionizing the renewable energy sector with their innovative Aeroleaf technology. In this insightful interview, CEO Luc Eric Krief explains how their micro wind turbines are designed for urban environments, bringing clean energy generation into cities without the drawbacks of traditional wind farms.

Learn about New World Wind's range of products from WindBush to WindTree, and how these scalable solutions are being deployed in over 40 countries. Krief shares how their technology combines aesthetics with functionality, offering silent operation and bird-friendly design while producing energy 24/7 when paired with solar options.

Resources from this Episode:

• More about New World Wind: https://www.newworldwind.com/
• Connect with Luc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luc-eric-krief-80741710/

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Transcript

James: Hi, everyone, this is the Ctrl+Listen Podcast, brought to you by Octopart. Today we have a special guest for you: Luc Eric Krief, owner, chairman, and CEO of New World Wind. Thanks for joining us, great to have you. Did you want to start by telling us a little bit about the company, its vision, and its history?

Luc Eric: New World Wind was created in 2017 with my son. The story actually starts with the previous company, called New Wind. That company went bankrupt in 2016, and I was one of its suppliers.

New Wind developed an original system based on micro-turbine windmills and sold about five prototypes in France. When the company went bankrupt, I decided to buy the assets from the commercial court in France.

From 2017, with my son, we improved the capacity to generate energy with the micro-turbines and brought a complete range of products to market, from the WindBush to the WindTree, from 12 Aeroleafs to 36 Aeroleafs. We increased capacity with 300-watt, 500-watt, and 1,000-watt generators.

With that, we now have a full range of products, and we can install our trees in brackets inside cities: near factories, headquarters, municipalities, city halls. The relief can be deployed on rooftops to generate energy, completely silent, no vibration, no pollution, easy to deploy, and so on.

Since 2017 our systems have been deployed in about 42 different countries on five continents.

James: Wow. And part of your vision, you could say, is scalability in the clean energy sector. What led you to that vision? What pushed you down that path?

Luc Eric: The vision is to make access to renewable energy from windmills easier. If you look at large wind farms with big turbines, a lot of people are not happy; some are very disappointed by how they look.

I wanted to develop a new generation of micro-turbines that are easy to deploy inside cities, with minimal civil works. In three days we can install a WindTree, for example, with no pollution, no sound, and with protection for birds so we’re not killing them.

It’s fully customizable. We can choose different colors for the Aeroleafs and make the system fully scalable. If you have a rooftop, you can start with 12 Aeroleafs, increase to 30 a year later, and even go up to 1,000 if the roof allows it.

The system adapts to different budgets and different requests from customers.

James: Great. I imagine people like the look of them as well. They’re not as much of an eyesore as giant traditional windmills, because from a distance they kind of look like trees.

Luc Eric: Yes. A tree’s maximum size is around 10 meters high and about 7 meters in diameter. You can install the trees in whatever available space you have.

If you have a big roundabout and want two WindTrees, that’s possible. But for energy production, we usually advise installing Aeroleafs on rooftops. You must understand the steel structure of the tree itself doesn’t produce energy; it’s more of a showcase.

We have something aesthetic and biomorphic, like nature, but the only element generating energy is the Aeroleaf. The tree enhances the look of a place or city and shows that you’re focused on renewable energy and reducing your carbon footprint.

As soon as you have enough space, you can even install a forest of trees if you want. There’s no drawback to that.

James: Great. And I know you have a hybrid Aeroleaf that combines wind and solar, correct?

Luc Eric: Exactly. We wanted something that integrates solar and wind. The best idea we found was a solar petal under the leaf, so we have both energy sources.

When the sun is shining, the solar panel generates energy. When the wind is blowing at night, of course the sun is not shining, so we produce energy with the wind. Our interest is to produce energy 24/7. As long as the wind is blowing, we generate energy. And if we add solar petals, when the sun is shining we generate energy from both wind and solar.

James: Wow, I love that. This might be a basic question from a non-technical person, but how much energy does a micro-turbine produce?

Luc Eric: It depends on the wind. The maximum we can produce with one Aeroleaf is 1,000 watts with the new model. We started with 300 and 500 watts—different generator types—and now we have a new generator on the market from January 2025: 1,000 watts with a double Aeroleaf, one above, one below, and the generator in the middle.

James: Wow, okay. And I saw you had three main products: the WindPalm, the WindBush, and the WindTree. What’s the major difference between those?

Luc Eric: In fact, we have more.

We have the WindBush, the smallest one: 5.5 meters high, 4.5 meters in diameter, equipped with 12 Aeroleafs plus 16 solar petals.

We have the WindPalm with three, four, or five trunks—18, 24, or 30 Aeroleafs. We also have the hybrid WindPalm with the same number of trunks and Aeroleafs, plus solar petals.

And we have the WindTree. Altogether, we have eight different products from the WindBush to the WindTree.

The choice depends mainly on three things: first, the customer’s budget. Second, how strong and consistent the wind is on site—the more wind you have, the more Aeroleafs you want to generate more energy. Third, the available space for installing a tree.

James: Sure. And do you have any use cases with customers who bought a large number and where it’s working very well for them?

Luc Eric: It depends. For example, we work with Aramco, the Saudi oil company. In a new area in Neom, they want something easy to deploy to power streetlights. Their goal is to install renewable energy over large company areas to generate energy from wind and sun and use that energy for lighting.

Another example is ADNOC in Abu Dhabi and Dubai—Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Their goal is to install WindBush units to power EV chargers.

And in the south of France, a municipality wants to deploy Aeroleafs inside a stadium to power the stadium lighting with renewable energy.

James: Yeah, I love that because you can plug it in wherever you need it depending on the use case. It’s very scalable.

Luc Eric: Exactly. It’s fully scalable, and the goals can be completely different. Some clients never connect the WindTree to their grid at all. It’s only a showcase.

They put a bench at the base of the tree, like in Doha or in the border region between Spain and France. People can sit, look at it, and the target there is not to produce electricity but to have something aesthetic and beautiful.

James: That makes sense. It serves a lot of purposes, which is great. Why do you think more companies haven’t focused on this kind of technology? Why do they always go big instead of small and customizable?

Luc Eric: For different reasons.

First, the wind market historically is based on big turbines because they generate a lot of energy, calculated in gigawatt-hours. Our technology is based on micro-turbines, and the annual energy we produce is in megawatt-hours. The ratio is about 1 to 1,000. So there is a factor of 1,000 between large turbines and our systems.

Of course, the cost is very different. A large wind turbine might cost between 250,000 and 300,000 euros. Our systems range from about 20,000 to 50,000 euros.

People often assume that the disadvantages of large wind turbines—noise, visual impact, bird deaths—are the same for micro-turbines. Our technology is completely different. That’s the first point.

Second, on solar: Chinese companies have driven solar panel prices very low, so many people focus only on price, not on the capacity to generate energy. When customers compare performance between solar and our technology, they see it’s almost the same, and we can even have an advantage if the wind is blowing more than five meters per second at home.

James: Interesting. And as you said, there’s also the difference in maintenance costs. I imagine you save a lot compared to large wind farms and solar farms.

Luc Eric: Exactly. With solar farms, if you travel in many countries, you see big fields covered with panels. That’s the usual picture. Our target is different. We want to install Aeroleafs inside cities, not create huge farms.

We need smart grids, and with our technology we can contribute to smart grids without the drawbacks: no sound, no dead birds, no pollution, and fully customizable. That’s very interesting.

James: Yes. I imagine it can almost look like an art piece compared to a standard wind or solar farm. Yours are visually engaging.

Luc Eric: Large wind farms can be offshore. Many projects are offshore so people don’t see them, but the cost is very high. I’m not sure you can call that a “smart grid.”

In “smart grid,” the key word is “smart.” Our technology is smart because we can place it inside cities, unlike traditional turbines.

Your energy needs are not necessarily the same as mine. The amount of energy you want might differ from what I want. With our scalable technology, we can adapt to both of our needs. That’s very important.

James: Yes. Are there any other trends in the wind turbine or solar space that you think people should be paying attention to?

Luc Eric: I think today many people are against nuclear. Many don’t want nuclear activity.

We’re also trying to develop energy from the earth—geothermal—using temperature differences to generate electricity. That can be very interesting.

Hydropower is also very clean in terms of carbon, but water is becoming a major issue worldwide. In the next years, water access will be a big problem.

I think wind and solar are the best capacities for generating energy because the sun is free and always rising, and the wind is free and always blowing somewhere.

I was very surprised when we traveled in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, into the desert. I thought the wind wouldn’t blow there, but in the desert, because of atmospheric pressure differences, the wind is very strong.

So everywhere in the world we can have wind, and at night we can generate energy with it. I believe we need to keep developing micro-turbine technology to offer the best products for every use.

James: Definitely. And something I just thought of while talking to you: how useful is battery technology with something like your product, to store energy as it’s generated?

Luc Eric: For the moment we mainly use gel lead batteries, but we can also use lithium. We offer a battery pack as part of our package so we can store unused energy and use it later in the day.

We can connect different types of batteries—Tesla, Varta, and others. If you generate more energy than you consume, we store the surplus in the batteries and use it later.

Our technology is very flexible because we can put whatever storage system the customer wants behind it.

James: That’s great. I guess my last big question is: why is clean energy so important right now? Why does it matter to do things like this?

Luc Eric: First, air pollution causes a lot of illness and health problems.

Second, we know the cost of energy will keep increasing year after year. Oil is very expensive now—around 80 euros per barrel. Nuclear energy will also become more expensive in the next years.

The only things that are free are the sun and the wind. I’m sure renewable energy will be very important in the next five years because of rising energy costs. We need something cheaper than conventional sources and still high-performing.

The efficiency of solar can still improve a bit. Our technology is currently a niche market, but it follows something like Moore’s Law: every six months we reach a new level of energy. Every six months we expected to offer a new product, a new design, and a new capacity to generate energy.

I truly believe in our system. We started with 150 watts, and now we are at 1,000 watts per Aeroleaf. I’m sure in the next two years we’ll keep offering the best products and the best energy capacity.

James: Fantastic. Very exciting. If people want to follow along with the company and stay up to date, what’s the best way to do that?

Luc Eric: Social networks. We communicate every week, every Wednesday, on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We also have our website, where we share information about our technology, progress, and installations. Whenever we can communicate, we do.

For example, in America we’ve had seven cover pages and eight awards.

James: Oh, wow.

Luc Eric: Yes, seven magazine covers and eight awards for our technology. We’re very proud of that, because in America they are very focused on renewable energy for different reasons.

James: Congratulations, that’s fantastic.

Luc Eric: Thank you. I’m proud of it.

James: Thank you so much for taking the time. It’s been really fascinating speaking with you, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Luc Eric: Wonderful. Don’t hesitate to come back if you have more questions. It will be a pleasure for me to answer.