Brownsville man's wind turbine concept to appear in ‘Inventors Digest'

Lots of people have ideas for inventions, though few act upon them. For those who do, commercial success is rare.

But you can’t know until you try, can you?

Michael Max is trying. The Brownsville native has an idea for what he believes is a big improvement over conventional electricity-generating wind turbines. Max envisions a design that is a fraction of the size — and cost — of the enormous windmills commonly used in wind energy production.

The design calls for multiple horizontal rotors connected to multiple motors, rather than a single, gigantic vertical rotor connected to one motor. Unlike conventional turbines, his would be small and quiet enough to install in neighborhoods, but could also be built to commercial scale, he says.

Max secured a “provisional patent” for the idea from the U.S. Patent Office. A provisional patent gives some measure of protection for a year, after which time it’s necessary to apply for a full patent — considerably more difficult and more expensive to get.

“It gives me a year to do something with it,” Max says.

“Doing something” means building a prototype and then testing it, but first Max needs backing. He’s hoping a mention of his wind turbine concept in the April issue of Inventors Digest magazine will help get the word out. Mike Drummond, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, says Max’s idea will be part of April’s “Under the Radar” section, which “spotlights nascent and/or unproven new ideas or products.”

Drummond points out that, even if unproven, the ideas featured must possess some degree of plausibility.

“It can’t be a time machine or something like that,” he says. “There has to be some sort of scientific or engineering rationale.”

Inventors Digest is celebrating its 25th anniversary in part by seeking out ideas and inventions that carry some weight — especially those having to do with green energy, Drummond says.

“We’re looking for game-changing technology,” he says. “(Max’s idea) dovetailed with our master narrative celebrating alternative energy, so we said why not.”

Also, Max was very persistent — not unusual for an inventor, Drummond says.

While Max’s idea looks good on paper, he adds, its ability to pass the engineering test remains to be seen, Drummond says.

“Who knows? Maybe he’ll be on the ground floor of some sort of revolutionary windmill technology,” Drummond adds.

“He doesn’t have a prototype or issued patent and — I’m no expert — there may be other like wind technologies already out there,” he says. “That said, he has schematics, a plausible theory supported with some data and, if nothing else, passion.”

Max says he conducted an exhaustive search of patent archives and found that no one else had submitted a similar wind turbine idea.

“Nobody’s put one together like this yet, with the shafts going inside of each other,” he said. “It’s so simple it’s ridiculous. You can run three midsized motors that run all the time, even in very light winds, as opposed to these huge ones that take a considerable amount more wind to operate. The whole key is the multiple shafts, one inside the other.”

To get money for his wind turbine prototype, Max is hoping to commercialize another idea, a theft-deterrent device he’s trademarked as “Border – X,” basically a tiny transceiver hidden in one’s vehicle that sends a signal to receivers at international bridges when the vehicle crosses the border.

“This is a pretty neat device,” Max said. “I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on it.”

His hope is that both the Border-X and his wind turbines ultimately could be manufactured in Brownsville, which would mean jobs. Meanwhile, the search for investors for both projects continues.

“We’re actively pursuing investors to help with this,” Max says. “We’re not talking about a huge amount of money. To do a windmill like this you’re probably looking at around $50,000 to $75,000 tops to do several prototypes, and to pay for the (output) monitoring after they’re up and running. You have to monitor them for a month or two. You can’t just build them and look at them.”

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Steve Clark is a reporter for The Brownsville Herald.