Johann Steinlechner is the exact antithesis of what you’d expect a green-tech entrepreneur with a game-changing concept in wind power to look like.
With his wide-brimmed cowboy hat, Western-style shirts and thick Austrian accent, the Palm Springs “wind cowboy†is the odd man out among the suits and tech-nerds at the wind industry conferences and local green business meetings he attends.
But it’s a calculated gambit, he said.
“I like to use it so people can remember me. This is my logo, and it works,†Steinlechner said, sitting in his cubicle at the Coachella Valley iHub, where he could be the green business incubator’s greatest challenge to date.
Steinlechner’s concept for a horizontal turbine looks like a huge, flat cylinder spinning on compressed air and, he said, could produce eight times the power of a traditional turbine.
The idea has yet to go beyond early prototypes, but he has already filed patent applications for it in the U.S. and dozens of other countries across Europe and Asia.