By JIM KOZUBEK
Special to the Union Leader

NEWMARKET – October 19, 2009--Dmitri Cherny, founder and CEO of the one-year-old Highest Wind LLC, said he is seeking $5 million at the Speed Venture Summit to take his invention, an electricity-generating glider with a daily power output of 30 kilowatt hours, into early stage production.

Cherny's energy glider would rise 1,200 feet into the sky like a kite on a string, and generate electricity as it rises and falls in the winds, its tether turning a flywheel on the ground.

Although the company has not yet shown that one of its gliders can be launched and produce electricity, the design is for the flywheel to generate up to 30 kilowatts of electricity per day, or up to 130,000 kilowatt hours per year. Highest Wind says its target market is more than 100,000 farms which use more than 150,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

Cherny said proof-in-principle has been shown by Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor David Olinger and his students, who have put such a glider into operation.

Olinger said patents for energy gliders were first filed in the 1970s. His students started a project called Kite Power Wiki that focuses on low-cost kite power systems for developing nations. He said his group has not been able yet to develop a system practical enough to commercialize.

"Dmitri Cherny has our support and is not infringing on our ideas," Olinger said.

Cherny believes he has found a way to make the system stable enough to commercialize. He is developing proprietary software to monitor the glider's in-flight performance through the use of sensors, radio frequencies and computer command.

"The software is critical," Cherny said. "The software makes the glider smart enough to know when it's too windy to fly, when the sky is darkening, when the wind speeds are changing, when a storm is coming and it's a good idea to sit on the ground and wait it out."

EOS Research Ltd. of Rochester, now a partner in the deal, is developing a sensor and software system for the glider, which will monitor weather conditions such as sudden changes in wind speed, and send data back to the ground by radio frequency where a computer system will monitor flight conditions.

"The software will monitor flight stability and maximize energy output, and we're not sure which factors are most important yet," said EOS founder and president Ron Gehl.

Cherny said the 300-pound, 40-foot glider will fly at a maximum altitude of 1,200 feet within the range of 20 to 40 mph winds, and its altitude can be automatically adjusted to stay within the wind range. If winds are too light, too strong or ice storms advance, radio frequencies should signal the glider to come down.

It should stay in the air 85 percent of the time, he said.

Cherny is building the glider in a Newmarket barn while EOS develops the software. Durham-based Goss International Corp. is interested in manufacturing the system once it is developed, according to Goss vice president Toby Clark.

"We've met with Dmitri and are exploring various options," Clark said. Goss, a printing press manufacturer, has expressed interest in other energy and turbine systems manufacture as its press-building operations have slowed.

Highest Wind says it will have a fully functional system complete by May. The first prototype will be tested at the Maplehurst Farm, a dairy operation in Greensboro, Vt. The system should generate 130,000 kWh of electricity per year, or $16,000 of the farm's $34,000-a-year energy bill.

Earlier this year, Cherny said Highest Wind will place test systems at various sites on the Seacoast. He estimates the systems will cost $100,000, and is aiming to go to market in 2011.

Cherny was born in New England. He trained as an electrical engineer at the University of Utah but never worked as one. Instead, he held jobs at IBM Corp. and founded the now-dissolved Appromedia Inc., a video special-effects company, and later, consulting company Second Round Marketing.

The Federal Aviation Administration is looking at rules to govern the use of wind-energy systems at lower altitudes of Class-G uncontrolled airspace, altitudes used by small airplanes.

Cherny said his gliders would not be a good fit for southern New Hampshire with its high-traffic airspace, and instead he is marketing his glider to mid-scale and large farms, and western farmland with little overhead air traffic and a land radius of at least 160 acres.

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Energy+glider+designer+...