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		.News STATUS UPDATE Head Office, June 2 2010 Rather than respond to every one of the hundreds of enquiries that we receive individually, we thought that it might be better to send a short newsletter, that will, hopefully, answer most of the questions that you may have. So, what’s been happening? Well, since the exciting events of last September, we have been getting on with the slightly more boring matter of bringing the RidgeBlade to market. There have been a number of improvements to the design, and we have put a lot of work into ensuring that our patents are as strong as possible. All fairly dull stuff, but essential if we are going to build a serious business that can ensure that the RidgeBlade is sold around the world as quickly as possible. We are now happy with the final design of the RidgeBlade, and the plans are ready for us to begin a small scale production run of around 200 units for testing and evaluation. The testing programmes will be a very thorough process, for a number of reasons: In the past there has been a lack of confidence in small wind turbines, because some of the systems sold simply did not deliver the sort of output that was promised – we want to be absolutely sure that the RidgeBlade performs well, and we will be working closely with a well known UK university to provide external verification of all our figures. Secondly, in the UK, we have a new requirement for all small wind turbines to be accredited under the MicroGeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) before they can be eligible for the generous feed-in tariffs, and this certification takes at least 12 months (and an awful lot of money). For this reason, it is likely that RidgeBlades will be on sale outside of the UK before we are allowed to sell them at home! For those of you that have asked about cost and performance, you can see why we are not able to give these figures at the moment. The cost of a RidgeBlade will be dependent on the manufacturing process, and where this takes place – so we simply cannot say what the cost will be, but we can say that the RidgeBlade was designed to be much cheaper than conventional systems, so watch this space – we will try to give an indication of the final cost as soon as possible. As for performance – when we have externally verified figures, well let the world know! What about where I live? At the moment, we do not plan to manufacture and distribute around the world, as the plan is to work with companies in their home countries who wish to licence and manufacture locally, managing the business of distribution and supply themselves. This way, we can be sure that whoever is selling the RidgeBlade is aware of all the needs of the local market – planning requirements, laws, etc. In addition, local manufacture is kinder to the environment, and creates local jobs. Because of this plan, we are not currently looking for distributors or resellers, but we would be interested in talking to organisations who feel that they could help us to make RidgeBlades in their own country. Overall then, we are still making good progress (although not as fast as we might like!) and although there have been some small delays we are looking forward to the first RidgeBlades rolling off the production line soon! As for the future, we have a number of other products in the planning phase, but we will be concentrating on getting the RidgeBlade right before we start on anything new! WIND TURBINE WINS GREEN CHALLENGE '09 Amsterdam, September 25 2009 A nearly invisible rooftop wind turbine has won the €500,000 Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2009. "It's beyond a dream,” said English entrepreneur Dean Gregory when Skype founder Niklas Zennström, a contest juror, announced his name. "This means we can focus solely on bringing this to market." Gregory entered the Challenge on behalf of the English company The Power Collective Limited – after finding out about it two days before the deadline. Each year, the Dutch Postcode Lottery gives away €500,000 to the inventor of the best climate-friendly invention.