ATTLEBORO

At the General Compression Co. Inc. on Water Street, there are no tall windmills with blades spinning against the restless wind.

But the startup company may just have the key to unlock a new generation of high-efficiency wind farms that could provide electrical power well into the new century.

General Compression recently announced raising $5 million in private equity capital to commercialize its concept: fields of compressed air wind turbines capable of producing up to four times as much power as current models. As a bonus, the new generation "dispatchable" wind turbines would be able to store wind energy in the form of compressed air for later use.

The new company is a spinoff of Attleboro-based Mechanology Inc., whose high efficiency compressor and expander devices are at the heart of General Compression's stored power process. "We're delighted," said company president Michael Marcus who said the infusion will enable his company to commercialize its technology. General Compression plans to build its first test turbines this year and enter regular production in 2010. A company news release did not specify the source of the start-up funds.

Currently, commercially-available wind turbines generate power through the use of generators and gearboxes. Power is fed directly into to a power grid. Without a way to store the energy, turbines can not be counted upon to deliver a continuous supply of electricity.

General Compression's system would replace the generators and gearboxes normally found inside a wind turbine with an air pump that would force air through a system of pipes.

The air in turn could be used later to run generators or be stored in subterranean pipes or within geologic formations such as depleted gas fields or caverns. The stored capacity could be released over a period of several hours, allowing the owner to generate and sell energy at peak rates even if wind power is temporarily unavailable.

"This round of funding is a tremendous vote of confidence by the investment community in General Compression's patented compression technology and the disruptive economics of dispatchable wind power," said David Marcus, brother of Michael Marcus and chief executive officer of General Compression. "With these resources, we will continue to build out our team and execute on our development plan."

Don Hodel, Chairman of wind developer Summit Power and a founding shareholder of General Compression, said the company's strategy could have major implications on the marketability of wind-generated energy.

"By enabling wind farms to store and sell power at peak hours, General Compression will dramatically improve the profitability and market potential of wind power," he said.

Large-scale storage of compressed gasses for power storage is already "well proven" said Michael Marcus. Two projects, one in Germany and another in Alabama, already use off-peak electricity to compress air that is stored below ground to later be turned back into electrical power.

Marcus said to take advantage of the new technology, an ideal wind farm would have a series of turbines capable of generating up to 200 megawatts of electricity. A single, large commercial wind turbine is capable of generating anywhere from 1 to 1.8 megawatts.

Pairing wind power with storage technology, Marcus said, would remove several obstacles to utilizing wind efficiently for power generation and could convert wind farms from a limited to a major source of future electricity. General Compression's wind storage concept is related to advanced air compression and expansion components developed by Mechanology specifically for wind power applications. Mechanology founder Steve Chomysyk said wind turbine requirements dictated developing a specialized compressor that could operate at low speeds and still generate volume and pressure requirements required to meet storage needs.

Comysyk's company received $2.7 million in funding form the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a revolutionary form of air pump called a toroidal intersecting vane machine originally to address problems in commercializing hydrogen-powered vehicles. Technology derived from the original TIVM is also thought to fill a wide variety of needs as air compressors, automotive superchargers and other devices.