Going to Greece: one vertical wind turbine, ordered from Ilioupoli in Attica — a suburb six kilometres south-east of central Athens, at the western foot of Mount Hymettus. Rather than write the usual paragraph about how pleased we are, we would rather tell you what is in the crate, what it costs on this store, and why we think a vertical machine is the right one for an address like that. Some of what follows argues against a sale, which is the only way any of it is worth reading.
Crates on the line in our own factory, each packed to the same list.
Where it is going, for anyone picturing the Aegean
Ilioupoli takes its name from Heliopolis — the sun city. It was settled from 1924 by Greek refugees from Asia Minor, and it is now a dense suburb of about 12.7 km², its built-up area continuous with the suburbs around it, with the forested ridge of Hymettus covering its eastern half. That is a very different place from the postcard. It is not a headland, it is not an island, and it is not the open Aegean.
This matters because the wind that reaches a roof in a continuous built-up area has already been through several kilometres of buildings. It arrives slower, more turbulent, and constantly changing direction — and with a forested mountain immediately to the east, the direction it arrives from depends on the day. The etesians, the meltemia, are real: strong dry north winds that blow across the Aegean from roughly mid-May to mid-September. But they are a sea wind, and a suburban rooftop under a ridge sees a considerably rougher, more broken version of whatever is happening offshore.
A suburb is a harder wind site than a cliff. That is not a reason to skip the turbine — it is a reason to pick the right kind.
One thing that does not matter much here: altitude. Ilioupoli climbs the foot of Hymettus, but at a couple of hundred metres the air is only about 2% thinner than at sea level, and power scales directly with air density. It is a rounding error. We mention it only because we made a great deal of the same correction when we wrote about a customer at 1,600 m in South Africa, where it costs about 15%. Here it does not, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise.
Why a vertical machine for a site like this
A horizontal turbine has to point into the wind to work. In clean, steady air that is an advantage — it is why every large wind farm is horizontal. On a suburban roof, where the wind changes direction every few seconds, the machine spends a meaningful part of its life turning to face air that has already moved on.
A vertical machine has no direction to find. It takes wind from any bearing, which is exactly the property you want where the flow is broken and shifting. It starts turning at 2 m/s with the low-wind blade set — about a third of the cut-in of a typical horizontal machine — which matters on a site whose average is modest and whose good hours are scattered. And it runs at 35–40 dB, quieter than the conversation you are having beneath it. In a neighbourhood where the houses are continuous with each other, noise is not a specification, it is a relationship with the people next door.
Athens at dusk. Ilioupoli sits six kilometres south-east of the centre, under Hymettus.
There are three blade sets, each laser-cut from 1.2 mm high-strength aluminium and matched to a wind profile rather than to a marketing tier. Low-wind blades run from 2 to 20 m/s for a 2 kW peak. Moderate-wind blades run from 4 to 25 m/s for 3.8 kW. High-wind blades run from 5 to 35 m/s for 4.5 kW, in a six-blade configuration built for exposed coastal sites. Choosing the wrong one is the most common way to be disappointed by a small turbine, and for a sheltered suburban roof the answer is usually the low-wind set — the one with the smallest headline number.
What is actually in the crate
The machine going to Athens is an Atlas, and its body is one sealed aluminium housing containing the generator, the built-in IoT charge controller, the display and every connector. There is no second box to find a wall for and no separate enclosure to weatherproof. Weighed on our own workshop scale it read 22.30 kg — a Teknika TCS-K2+R, 300 kg capacity, 50 gram divisions, which is a workshop instrument and not a certified trade one. That is the body alone, without blades or mast, and it is the number your roof structure has to start from.
Mounting flange, cabling, fixings, tools and the manual, packed around the body.
Inside the housing is the same 15 kW continuous-rated motor we put in the Magnum, which at a typical 1 kW output is running at under 7% of its rating — cold, unstressed, and a long way from the limit. The stator is a 12-pole, 36-slot three-phase distributed winding in Class 200 °C enamelled copper to IEC 60317-13, the insulation grade used in industrial servomotors and EV drivetrains. None of that photographs well. All of it is why the machine is still there in ten years.
What it costs on this store, and what it does not cover
It is ZAR 21,999 on this store as this is published, and that price includes the built-in IoT charge controller — there is no separate controller to buy, which is the main reason this bill is shorter than the Magnum one. The blade set is chosen to match your site rather than picked off a shelf, so please talk to us before you order rather than guessing from this page: the right set for a sheltered suburban roof is not the one with the largest number on it.
What the price does not buy: a mast or roof mount, the foundation or fixings into your structure, the cable run down to wherever the power is going, batteries and an inverter if you are storing it, and any electrical work, connection agreement or planning permission that applies where you live. None of that is hidden — it is simply site-specific, and anyone quoting you a single all-in figure for a Greek rooftop has not seen your roof.
Before any of it: measure your wind
Every figure above is worthless without one we cannot supply: the wind at your address. Our own published range is 180 to 3,500 kWh a year, and that span is not vagueness — it is the honest width of the answer once you account for site and blade set. Power goes with the cube of wind speed, so two roofs on the same street can differ by a factor of two in speed and eight in energy. In a dense suburb under a ridge, that variation is the rule rather than the exception.
So measure first. An anemometer costs a fraction of a turbine and settles the question inside a season. Then put your own measurements into the calculator on the product page — your wind, your tariff, your roof. For some of you it will say the numbers work comfortably. For others it will say a turbine is the wrong purchase at your address, and we would far rather it told you that before you bought one than after.
Our thanks to the customer in Ilioupoli for the order. Prices are those on this store on the day of publication and are checkable on the product page at any time. The weight came off our own scale and the wind facts are the ones we would want if we were the ones buying. Measure your site — then hold us to every figure above.