In Texas, mini-wind turbines to recover the wind of the aircraft for takeoff

In the United States, a Dallas airport decided to recycle the wind produced by the turbines of the planes that take off. An original initiative.

It may seem incongruous, but the initial idea was born 25 years ago, when an orthopedic surgeon, Doctor Souryal, looked by the porthole by taking off from Burbank airport in Los Angeles. He saw the powerful breath produced by the aircraft reactors and this doctor, originally from Dallas, wondered if it would be possible to capture this wind to produce energy. Years later, here he is at the head of a start-up, called Jetwind Power, who produced amazing results.

Prototypes are therefore installed, in this spring 2025, at Dallas Love Field airport in the north of the city. These devices look like mini-wind turbines, in what looks like a wire container, to let air pass. These boxes, “pods” in English, are placed on the airport tarmac, not necessarily at the end of the take -off track, but rather near boarding doors, because when the planes start, they already produce winds of around 70 km/h for 5 minutes.

After a first test launched in 2021, the airport today has five installations of this type which produce each day which would supply a complete house with electricity. Today, this energy is directed to two loading terminals for mobile phones, located inside the terminal.

We are therefore not yet at the production level of a power station or a dam, but in a state like Texas, where the electricity network is put to the heat by the heat in summer, and the snowstorms in winter, each kilowatt counts. And then it is renewable energy: we actually recycle the energy lost by the turbines.

Dallas Airport will therefore be equipped with eight additional containers in the next two years. And then the boss of Jetwind Power, who is still a surgeon, believes that this technology could easily be deployed worldwide. He is already in contact with airports in Canada, Europe, Brazil and Australia. He also recalls a striking figure: every day, more than 100,000 planes run through the sky of the globe, so much energy lost to takeoff and landing.