Carter Wind Energy is a manufacturer of next generation wind turbine technology  that is self-erecting and designed for utility, distributed, and micro-grid power generation applications in the most remote, extreme environment locations which may not be viable with conventional wind turbine technologies.

Wind energy is more commercially available than ever, but accounts for less than 5% of global energy production.The Challenge - In order for clean energy sources like wind to gain mass adoption, it must become as cheap and available as traditional fossil fuels.

Over time, wind turbine size and project scale have steadily grown. This approach for reducing cost of energy has limits, with rapidly decreasing benefits. The continued affordability of wind power is limited by existing wind turbine technologies with incremental improvements not being enough to make clean energy globally significant. It is time to rethink the traditional 3 blade wind turbine architecture.

Carter Wind Energy has a solution. The wind turbine technology Carter has developed is most significant in that it produces 4 times the energy per pound of equipment weight versus conventional wind turbine designs. The capital investment required to manufacture, transport, install, and maintain wind turbines, is a function of equipment weight. More energy with less equipment weight means a lower cost of energy.

The dramatic reduction in cost of energy afforded by the Carter wind turbine technology will create vast new market opportunities for wind energy and most importantly, allow for the economical global mass adaption of clean renewable energy.

Carter Wind Energy is selecting early adopting partners and customers, who are industry leaders, not satisfied with the status quo, who are interested in advancing the state of the art in the wind industry through support in the commercialization of a proven, significantly lower cost wind energy technology.

Investment in new promising technologies/products brings with it the hope of a future where wind power is cost competitive with conventional power generation without subsidy. After 25+ years, the wind industry must begin to demonstrate there is a future where the cost of energy from wind is competitive without subsidy.

Carter Wind Energy has 35 years of wind energy experience and is an industry leader and pioneer of the light-weight, two-blade wind turbine design. Carter built its first turbine in 1976 and then sold its first in 1979 to the US Department of Agriculture in Bushland, TX. This led to several hundred turbines being installed throughout the Great Plains and throughout the world. Our turbines were installed in the first commercial wind farm in San Gorgonio, Ca. (1982) and in Texas (1992). Having installed more than 800 turbines around the world, accumulating millions of operating hours, this technology has the proven potential to be a real game changer.

Carter Wind Energy, LLC (CWE) is a privately held company reorganized in 2001 by Jay Carter Jr. and Matt Carter.

Matt Carter is President and Chief Executive Officer of Carter Wind Energy and also an owner and actively involved in Carter Aviation Technologies, an innovative fourth generation rotorcraft technology, combining the best attributes of helicopters with fixed wing aircraft. Matt is an engineer, holding a BS in Mechanical Engineering with 18 years of business experience in the wind energy and aerospace industry. Matt’s entrepreneurial leadership experience is in areas of business development, wind project development, and technology licensing. Additional experience in wind turbine design, manufacturing, and wind project O&M.

Jay Carter, Jr. is Chief Technology Officer of Carter Wind Energy and Chairman of Carter Aviation Technologies. Jay is an engineer, holding a BS in Mechanical Engineering and is a proven and experienced engineer, manager, and entrepreneur with 44 years in the aviation and wind energy industries. Jay has received numerous industry awards including the American Wind Energy Associations “Wind Energy Person of the Year” and the American Helicopter Societies "Paul E. Haueter Award".

Our Values - With integrity and a passion for excellence, utilize our individual talents as part of a team to create impactful value for the greater good of humanity.

Our Vision - Establish Carter Wind Energy as the recognized technology leader for low cost wind energy and become the premier supplier of wind turbine technology to the global electric power generation market.

Our Mission - Carter Wind Energy will concept, design, engineer, develop, manufacture, market and sell wind energy products which allow Carter, its partners and customers to grow profitably.

Technology

The wind turbine technology Carter has developed is most significant in that produces 4 times the energy per pound of equipment weight versus conventional wind turbine designs. The capital investment required to manufacture, transport, install, and maintain wind turbines, is a function of equipment weight. More energy with less equipment weight means a lower cost of energy.

GE, Vestas, Siemens, Enercon, and others all understand the critical importance reducing weight has in lowering the cost of energy.

The Carter wind turbine design operates on the same principles as a conventional wind turbine, but achieves its superior energy to weight advantage by successfully integrating the enabling technologies of the helicopter industry into our wind turbine design.

Carter’s competitive advantage lies in its proprietary:

Two bladed, downwind, teetering, bearing less rotor hub design, which eliminate and reduce many of the loads encountered by three blade turbines;
Self-erecting guyed tower concept which eliminates the need for large expensive cranes for installation and maintenance.
By minimizing loads and utilizing a structurally efficient guyed tower, Carter turbines weigh a fraction of three bladed designs. The lighter weight and self-erecting tower, results in a lower manufacturing, installation, and maintenance costs, and as a result, allows our turbine designs to achieve a dramatic reduction in the cost of wind generated renewable energy.

As a result of the lower weight fraction, this technology’s optimal size for use in multi-MW onshore and offshore turbines will be larger than conventional 3-blade design, allowing for further reductions in cost. The result is a wind turbine architecture that can produce electricity at a cost that is competitive with the lowest cost fossil fueled power plant without the need for subsidy.

Carter turbines can better access winds offshore than conventional 3 blade wind turbine designs.

Wind flows at higher speeds offshore, often over waters too deep for conventional turbines to access economically. For example, in the US, the offshore wind resource is estimated to be more than 4 terawatts (three times existing capacity), with over 75% located above water over 30 meters deep. Carter’s floating, guyed tower can be cost-effectively based in waters hundreds of meters deep. Conventional turbine designs have fatigue challenges with floating structures because of the sea state induced nacelle motion. And just as with our onshore turbines, our offshore turbines can be installed and maintained without tall cranes. The floating, guyed, two-bladed turbine can be easily raised and lowered by submerging the tower structure (with the 2 blades horizontal) until the nacelle is at sea level.

 Solution

It is estimated that more than 2.0 billion people on the planet live in communities that are isolated and lack the infrastructure required for low cost electricity. But many of those people live in areas with abundant renewable resources such as wind energy.

A Wind Water Integrated Diesel Electricity (W2IDE) solution combines a proven low cost wind turbine technology with advanced water and diesel power generation to create a hybrid energy storage system that is well-suited for operation on mini-grids in remote locations with limited infrastructure.

Access to affordable and reliable electricity provides societies with the opportunity for clean water, healthcare, irrigation, educational opportunities, communications infrastructure, and other social and economic benefits.

W2IDE, enabled by Carter’s low-cost, portable, self-erecting wind turbine, will significantly lower the cost of electricity, reduce emissions, and most importantly increase access to distributed power generation and clean water, which is desperately needed to enrich life and improve social productivity in developing regions of the world.

These opportunities typically cannot utilize multi-MW turbines either because logistical and/or infrastructure constraints impede construction. Turbine and project size within the industry has steadily grown. The result is a void in the market between very large wind plants and small residentially operated wind turbines.

The identified void in the market for projects less than 40 MW in size provides Carter with a niche for utilizing our existing advanced technology Model 300/500 kW turbines. In this way the time/risk associated with bringing the lower cost of energy advantages of the Carter technology to market is significantly reduced.