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- Category: Articles
Combination of a CFD Package with Wind Atlas Software
The method discussed in this article shows a low-cost approach to gain an insight into the wind conditions for a small wind turbine in the highly turbulent setting of the rooftop of a large building. Such an insight provides wind resource assessment and also guidance in micro-siting wind turbines.By Amir Bashirzadeh Tabrizi, Murdoch University, Australia
- Category: Articles
Harnessing High Altitude Winds to Deploy Low-Cost Power
The emerging airborne wind sector continues to grow as small companies around the globe edge closer to commercialising innovative technologies. Boston-based Altaeros Energies is a pioneer in this field, securing the first approved and funded commercial demonstration of an airborne wind energy system in the USA. Altaeros is set to deploy its breakthrough 30kW wind turbine in Alaska in 2015. The Altaeros turbine will reach a height of 1,000 feet (300 metres), over 275 feet (83 metres) taller than the current record holder for the highest wind turbine, which is the Vestas V164-8.0-MW at the Danish National Test Centre for Large Wind Turbines.By Ryan Holy, Manager, Business Development, Altaeros Energies, USA
- Category: Articles
Collaborating to Make Designs More Efficient and Less Damage-Prone
A research and development consortium (the ClusterDesign initiative) has now been running for nearly three years and recently completed its first round of activities. The partners in the project, which is partly funded by the European Union, have been trying to produce a series of interlinked models that can be put together to provide future designers of wind farms with a ‘Wind Cluster Controller’ and a 'ToolBox for Integrated Wind Farm Design'. These will help designers optimise the layout of turbines within a wind farm, and also improve the overall design of clusters of wind farms.By Arno Brand, ECN, The Netherlands
- Category: Articles
Blade Maintenance Offshore
The first wind turbines erected offshore were not designed for that environment. Tough lessons were learnt from the early installations in the open sea. Anything that could fail did fail, and that included rotor blades, which were found to require professional refurbishment much sooner than those on onshore turbines. In this article, Morgan Troedsson, of FORCE Technology, discusses the problems that can occur with blades on offshore turbines and how any damage can be assessed and dealt with.By Morgan Troedsson, Product Manager, FORCE Technology, Denmark
- Category: Articles
Can Wind Power Generators be Used to Smooth Out the Power Supply?
Three characteristics of wind energy (variability, uncertainty and asynchronism) can cause problems for maintaining a reliable and secure power system. Demand response, energy storage and improved wind power forecasting techniques have often been described as potential mitigation strategies. The focus of this article is on a mitigation strategy not often discussed and in some ways counterintuitive: the use of wind power to support power system reliability by providing active power control (APC) at fast timescales. APC is the adjustment of a resource’s active power in various response timeframes to assist in balancing the generation and load, thereby improving power system reliability.By Erik Ela, Yingchen Zhang, Paul Fleming and Vahan Gevorgian, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA
- Category: Articles
How to Extend the Life of Motors and Generators
On a wind turbine, or in any application for that matter, motors and generators are designed to fulfil a specific function for an expected time frame. In order to extend the life expectancy beyond the original design behaviours, it is critical to maintain the unit properly and to make improvements where weaknesses are exposed during service. All turbines have different operating requirements and all site locations offer different challenges. This article will introduce some of the actions that can be taken to improve both the reliability and longevity of the motors and the generator found in utility scale wind turbines.By Kevin Alewine, Director of Marketing, Shermco Industries, Texas, USA
- Category: Articles
Irish Engineering Propels a New Kind of Wind Turbine
Ireland-based Airsynergy’s new turbines can double the power output for less than a 20% increase in the capital cost. This revolutionary and award-winning technology changes the wind turbine sector because it produces more energy with less wind. Airsynergy’s turbines are the world’s most powerful (for their size) and perform much better than traditional turbines at lower wind speeds. They can work efficiently even in low-wind countries such as Germany, effectively expanding the market of economically viable sites for wind turbine installation. The doubling of the power output for a modest increase in capital cost also makes wind energy cheaper than fossil fuels. Historically, renewable energy technologies have needed subsidies in order to make them financially viable – at least in the short term. However, new technology such as Airsynergy’s will soon make this a thing of the past. Airsynergy’s turbines are also quieter and smaller than conventional wind turbines.By Adrian Kelly, Co-founder, Airsynergy, Ireland
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| #10 Vestas wind turbine installed in Stadtlohn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (courtesy Lukas Diller and Simon Schwarz) |
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