Wesley Turbines is building a new turbine that converts low-grade heat into electrical power, for example, geothermal energy, industrial waste heat and concentrated solar power. The turbine also functions as a decompressor.
Our turbine has the potential to make a material contribution to reducing and eliminating carbon dioxide in the UK and elsewhere. Throughout the world vast amounts of energy are being wasted: all power stations and most industrial processes lose energy through wasted heat. In the natural world an abundance of geothermal energy is left untapped. Most of this heat is low grade: it can only be used to generate low-temperature ‘wet’ steam, which with current technology is expensive or impractical to convert to usable electric power – our disruptive turbine overcomes these challenges, being cheap and simple to manufacture.
Geothermal energy is virtually limitless throughout the world, but current systems require perfect ground conditions with high temperatures to operate commercially. Our simple low-cost turbine could unlock the door to the mass deployment of zero-carbon geothermal energy, by offering widespread commercialisation from coupling it to low-cost, shallow, enhanced geothermal drilling, which yields low-temperature wet steam at much lower capital cost than current systems.
We are British-based and owned; we have UK-based manufacturers lined up to build every element of the turbine.
The turbine
The patented Wesley turbine offers marked efficiency improvements at low steam temperatures and pressures compared with existing systems. This makes it suitable for geothermal and other sustainable applications.
We are working on a prototype with Durham University’s world-class engineering department. Having previously commissioned and tested a full-scale experimental model, we have demonstrated that the technology works and have lodged patents around the world.
Durham University is recognised as one of the leading centres of research in engineering and geoscience in the world. The academic staff are all actively engaged in research at the frontiers of modern engineering analysis, design and practice. Their passion and knowledge are brought into the cutting-edge research that goes on within the departments.
People
Wesley Turbines’ team have built 42 power stations in the UK in the past ten years. Our development companies all carry ISO accreditation for health and safety, environmental, and process-and-project systems. Each of our large and often complex construction projects have been certified by our lending banks’ technical advisors.
The company is owned by energy entrepreneurs Mark Jones and Jeremy Taylor, who have built more than 550MW of fast-starting generation plant, backed with investment of £250million.
We have a very good understanding of the opportunities for power-generating plant in the UK and beyond and have identified immediate markets for the Wesley turbine. We are optimising the turbine and will next test it in working conditions.
