Flower Turbines Looking for More Investors

Other than common sense, there is nothing that prohibits investors from pumping cash into companies like Flower Turbines, that one day, owners claim, will build and sell devices that capture small amounts of wind energy.

In fact, until about a decade ago, there were completely legitimate attempts to commercialize what was called “small wind.” At that point, however, it was realized that the costs of building, installing, and maintaining systems like this would literally never be recouped by the owner, and that the entire enterprise was doomed, or, to put it more accurately, limited to a customer base that didn’t care about the economics.

People like these do exist, btw.  There are luxury wristwatches that sell for six figures, that tell time no better than something you can buy in a drug store.

At right is a solar energy device that automatically folds up at night. Does that do anything of practical value? Of course not; in fact, it only adds moving parts that eventually fail. The price of electricity per kWh will be astronomical.  Apparently, some people simply do not care.

Investors, however, want profits, and profits derived from high-volume sales of products with decent operating margins.  In the case of the Flower Turbine, this is an improbable as the Earth’s getting hit by an asteroid the size of Utah.