New Generator Boosts Wind Turbine Efficiency 50% 315
MagnetDroid writes "A startup company based in Vancouver has developed a new kind of generator that could harvest much more energy from the wind. The design could not only lower the cost of wind turbines but increase their power output by 50 percent to as much as 100 percent, in some locations. Normally, when wind speeds drop, a turbine's engine becomes less efficient. The new engine, from ExRo Technologies, runs efficiently over a wider range of conditions. The design replaces a mechanical transmission with what amounts to an electronic one. Magnets attached to a rotating shaft create a current, but individual coils can be turned on and off electronically at different wind speeds." The company will begin field-testing a small, 5KW wind turbine by early next year.
Same ole, same ole... (Score:5, Funny)
Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Insightful)
But, we are all going to have to get over seeing them as ugly or migratory-bird killers for this program to work. I truly want a future where we use very little foreign energy, and we harness renewable energy sources. I say we get those new turbines into the wild as quickly as possible. T. Boone Pickens, get to work!
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Will it reduce foreign dependency as well? Let's hope so.
It won't. We depend on foreign oil and cheap labor. Windmills provide neither. The US has coal. Lots of coal. Lots and lots and lots of coal. In another couple of decades, it wouldn't be surprising to hear about the US being a fuel provider exporting coal to the world market. If we didn't invest in wind energy, we would just burn more coal.
T. Boone Pickens, get to work!
T Boone Pickens is a salesman. What do salesmen do? They sell things. Why do they sell things? To make a profit. Remember that. His willingness to invest in wind power is
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T Boone Pickens is a salesman. What do salesmen do? They sell things. Why do they sell things? To make a profit. Remember that. His willingness to invest in wind power is admirable, but the natural gas plans he is pushing through along with wind will largely pad his wallet.
Do you see an alternative in the heavy fright industry to natural gas? Mr. Picken's whole point is that you can't drive an 18 wheeler with electric (battery) technology. If you accept that then what do you purpose as a replacement for oil in this sector? And why assume that he is doing this just to 'pad his wallet'? He's already made his billions -- that and the fact that he's 80 years old (so I'm guessing he won't be running out of money before he dies) makes me think that he isn't purposing this just
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Insightful)
There's tons of oil still untapped in the world.
How is that going to work out when we use one quarter of the oil on this rock? Do we have one quarter of the oil reserves?
If we could just cut out the politics and the environmentalist bullshit, we'd be a lot better off.
Cut out the "environmentalist bullshit" and you are still left with the cold reality that we are sending $700,000,000,000 out of this country every year to pay for our oil addiction. Much of that money goes to countries that don't particularly like us very much. What do you suppose would happen if we invested that money into domestic energy sources like wind and natural gas? Job creation and economic growth perhaps? This is a national security issue in addition to being an environmental one.
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You're an idiot. Reducing our oil consumption means reducing our trade deficit, which would pretty much immediately improve our economy. Furthermore, infrastructure improvements need people to build them. Job growth will ensue.
Besides, the second something looks like it might get practical the usual suspects align against it. Hyrdo? NO! Geothermal? Already got protesters firing up over that. Wind? NIMBY! Kills birds, and so on.
Guess what? The usual suspects are you and people like you! You simultaneously blame environmentalists for hindering progress while doing the exact same thing.
Step one: We aren't about to run out of oil just yet. Putting our money into drilling will just put off the day when we have t
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I don't have a real problem with wind power, but it takes a lot of them to replace a coal plant. Depending on who's doing the figuring, the number of wind turbines changes. 1395 1.65MW wind turbines to replace the largest coal plant in Wisconsin for name plate production. Newer wind turbines to replace older coal plants isn't that bad of deal though.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Informative)
But, we are all going to have to get over seeing them as ugly or migratory-bird killers for this program to work.
And to do my part, I'll point out as I do in most wind turbine threads that windmills are not significant bird killers any more. In fact the very worst wind farm ever, Altamont Pass, killed fewer birds per year than a typical 3-story office building. And that was combining multiple worst-case factors, like an outdated scaffold design that encouraged raptors to nest on them, smaller fast-moving blades that are proven to be more difficult for birds to see and avoid, and a highly disadvantageous location in a choke point for bird migrations.
Modern wind mills have monolithic poles with rounded tops that birds can't nest or sit on, and have much larger, slower moving blades* that birds can see and avoid. I believe now they also do some cursory environmental studies to make sure they aren't putting the windmills directly in bird migratory paths, but with the other two improvements this probably isn't even that big a deal.
I'm a bird nerd. I love birds. If you can accept the bird deaths caused by glass windows in cities, windmills are not an issue.
Oh, and I think they're rather beautiful. :)
*Largely for efficiency reasons, the bigger the blade the more efficient. IIRC, the way they choose the sizes for windmill blades these days is by what will fit on the largest legally allowed trailer. I've seen convoys of trucks, each with very long trailers, each carrying *one* blade.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Funny)
"In fact the very worst wind farm ever, Altamont Pass, killed fewer birds per year than a typical 3-story office building."
Wow, just think of the bird killing machine we could make if we mounted these windmills on 3-story buildings. I for one welcome less poop on my Humvee. ~
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Informative)
Spot on. The 'windmills kill birds' argument is just another way for the 'we're against everything' crowd to try to stop any kind of change, for better or worse.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Funny)
he 'windmills kill birds' argument is just another way for the 'we're against everything' crowd to try to stop any kind of change
Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything
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Gary Busey? Is that you?
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Insightful)
. . . a highly disadvantageous location in a choke point for bird migrations.
One thing that just clicked in my head: birds likely choose their migration path based on the predominant wind patters. We want to put windmills there for the same reason.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Funny)
We need to explore the effects/affects of what we do.
I agree. It's/its important not/knot to/two/too lose/loose sight/site of our/hour responsibility.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Insightful)
If the alternative is coal plants, then windmills are far less deadly to birds than the added carcinogens. A few extra dead birds hitting turbines can be easily replaced in the biosphere. Coal smoke is a more widespread problem.
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>have much larger, slower moving blades
I question this. Not because I'm against windmills: I'm not, and not because I know: I don't. A very large windmill moves at a much lower RPM than a small one, but that does not necessarily mean that the blade tip speed on the big one is lower than on the small one. On aircraft, 28" long props on KR1's, and the monster 4 meter long prop on the Corsair, both have the tip moving at about the same speed.
For efficiency, you want to have your prop moving as slowly as
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Interesting)
A very large windmill moves at a much lower RPM than a small one, but that does not necessarily mean that the blade tip speed on the big one is lower than on the small one.
It's rotational velocity that I'm talking about, and which has been shown to reduce bird deaths.
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They kill more bats than birds, as an fyi. And the birds they do get are mostly local low flying species- most (not all) migrants tend to fly high. The interesting thing is that most of the animals aren't killed by impacts, but by massive internal bleeding from decompression as they get caught in the low pressure zone behind the blade.
Actually, I think I might have read that in a link off /. Or possibly BiologyNews.net
I like windmills, but I think there has to be some way to mitigate the danger they pose t
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It wouldn't be effective at all. Modern wind turbines have a diameter of 40-90 metres. A wire cage, sturdy enough to block bird and bat entry, survive hail and storm, would block off a significant portion of the wind. You would probably get
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then go and find the 'bullshit' [wikipedia.org] why your common airplane can fly. hint: it's not flapping its wings.
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I agree, mass internal bleeding? That is some f#cking intense low pressure...kind of like outer space
WOOOOO!
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http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/aug2008/batdeaths [ucalgary.ca]
Apparently bat lungs are sensitive to sudden pressure changes.
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Will it reduce foreign dependency as well? Let's hope so.
No, because our main issue is with transportation fuels of which there is no substitute for the lighter grades of crude oil.
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No, because our main issue is with transportation fuels of which there is no substitute for the lighter grades of crude oil.
Yeah, no substitute [wikipedia.org] exists at all......
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Better yet, lets work on some turbine designs that don't involve large blades sweeping through the air. With this "transmission" design, it should be possible to build some wind generators that can work efficiently without requiring the amount of torque that is needed to make the current desig
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Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Funny)
Do any actual humans seriously give a shit about migratory birds flying into windmills? That sounds like the sort of BS an internet troll might bring up. If someone told me that in face-to-face conversation, I would probably just stare at him as if he had said his goldfish commands him to sing it lullabies in falsetto every night, lest it destroy the universe.
Nice work! (Score:4, Insightful)
So let me get this straight -- it's more efficient, has fewer moving parts, has a higher power output, and is cheaper to mass produce? Buy that engineer a beer! This is a real leap forward in a machine class that hasn't made more than incremental improvements for awhile now. The spirit of Nikoli Tesla approves. Next question: Can this technology be adapted for use in the hydroelectric industry? I think it may be possible, and it would reduce maintenance costs somewhat -- maybe we could throw out the sluce gates and make water flow through the dam with fewer electromechanical parts?
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WOOT! Assuming it isn't just BS to get VC funding. The theory sounds reasonable, though.
Other applications (Score:4, Informative)
According to the company's website [exro.com], which does have pictures of the design for anyone who is interested, this could be used with other energy sources than wind:
While this overview focuses primarily on the wind applications, VIEG Technology is expected to have a material impact on the economic viability of a wide range of renewable energy applications.
There you go. I predict this could be more applicable in tidal energy than traditional big-dam hydro, although it might be useful in small, run-of-the-river projects to make them more efficient. They might even be useful in big run-of-the-river projects [plutonic.ca], which will create over 1,000 megawatts of new electricity in the next few years in British Columbia alone.
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I think it's an adaptation of certain kinds of motor drives that have already been in use for some time, where changing the "gear" means changing which taps are powered on the motor.
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Can this technology be adapted for use in the hydroelectric industry?
It would depend on whether the water flow was constant or not. If the water flow in a hydro generator is constant, than no. If not, then yes.
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Hydroelectric turbines are already extremely efficient (over 80% if not 90%), there cannot be much improvements any more. Besides they are completely different.
For the wind turbines ... I suspect this is apples to oranges comparision. Getting 100% power increase on low wind is not going to make big difference on a site when yearly output is calculated - unless the place is not very good for windmills in the first place.
After all the energy of the wind is proportional to the cube of the speed.
You should stil
Re:Nice work! (Score:5, Insightful)
unless the place is not very good for windmills in the first place.
substitute 'sub-optimal' for 'not very good' and you're looking at the difference between economical and uneconomical for millions of acres of land.
As is, from the maps I've seen, less than 1% of the area of the USA could be considered 'optimal' areas for turbines. Not really scattered either, mostly in a few spots. Right now you need very steady winds, within ~10mph to be really efficient. If the wind is too fast you have to shut down the turbine, same with too slow.
US wind map [windpoweringamerica.gov]. Going by this, you can see that there's a very limited amount of area, mostly offshore, rated 'Superb'. If this turbine makes the red outstanding areas equivalent to superb, that more than triples the area. If it makes 'good' viable, that enables large chunks of the midwest.
Perhaps most importantly, it'll help reduce the low production periods.
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So let me get this straight -- it's more efficient, has fewer moving parts, has a higher power output, and is cheaper to mass produce? Buy that engineer a beer!
Yeah...right after you have a full scale working prototype.
Can this technology be adapted for use in the hydroelectric industry?
No point in that. This thing (if it works) makes the generator work more efficiently over a wider range of excitation by varying resistance. Hydro generators run optimally at a single point and they can already control that with water flow. The only benefit this thing has is for sources where your input energy varies.
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Indeed, I think we've had this sort of thing for a while in Record players, they call it Direct Drive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_SL-1200 [wikipedia.org]
Actually, it is perfect for many dams (Score:2)
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
...how something like a CVT would work for a wind turbine.
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Individual coils on the generator can be activated as needed. It doesnt need a transmission, that's the whole point.
What you should be asking is: Would this design work in electric car motors? The Tesla currently uses a 2 speed transmission. How much extra would they pay for a motor that doesn't need any transmission(or only needed a simple gear reduction)? Would it improve engine efficiency or regenerative braking efficiency so that they wouldn't need such a costly battery pack?
Future electric car dealers
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been there, done that, as have *countless* others. Really, I don't know how this even begins to classify as 'new'.
Automatic star-delta switches have been done, same with electronic versions that do voltage conversion so that the maximum amount of power flows to the grid (or the batteries for off-grid systems).
Wind power is *full* of snake oil companies and investor scams. As well as people that try to pass off old stuff as new.
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The biggest problem with CVT technology is that currently it's pretty weak. CVTs in cars can only handle about 300HP (~230KW); a 5KW+ turbine would snap that like a matchstick. And one big enough to handle that turbine would sap quite a bit of efficiency.
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5kW is 6.7HP, so why would a CVT sized for 300HP "snap that like a matchstick"?
Did you mean 5MW?
Decent Summary, Thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
The first thing I wondered was "what makes this design different?"
This is a nice, simple explanation of why this design can be kept efficient in a wider range of wind speeds.
Since we love to bash some of the lamer summaries, I think this one deserves a bump on the plus side.
!generator? (Score:2)
Whoever added the tag has no clue. This IS a generator.
Generator/magneto distinction. (Score:3, Informative)
Whoever added the tag has no clue. This IS a generator.
It generates. So loosely speaking it's a generator.
But there is a terminology distinction when you get into TYPES of things that generate. They all have coils and a field in relative motion to create the output voltage. But a "generator" creates the field with electromagnets (generally using more coils driven by an external electrical source, a side-effect of the current in the output coils, or otherwise by pulling power from the input shaft) as oppo
ridiculous, do the math (Score:2, Interesting)
somebody is telling a stretcher here. Power goes as the cube of the wind speed. There's no point in trying to squeeze a few more percent at the low end of the range. There's just no power down there to squeeze out.
for example, at 1/2 top speed, you're getting 1/8 or 12.5% of full power at best. If it's actually 8% due to slow generator speed, no big deal. Another 4% is not worth spending much on.
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What if the wind blows at X 80% of the time, and gusts above X 20% of the time?
You're assuming that they're trying to squeeze more energy from the low end of the range, I think they're actually trying to catch the period gusts that are above the normal range. Increasing the resistance will make the windmill safer (and more effective) to operate at higher speeds, until a certain limit is reached where it just has to be shut down for safety.
-t.
Not ridiculous. Just another way of matching. (Score:3, Interesting)
With magnetos the voltage goes up with the RPM. In a simple direct drive mill with no pitch adjustment the RPM (for a given efficiency) goes with the wind speed. Operating above the ideal RPM cuts your torque, too far below it also looses you torque by causing the blades to go into aerodynamic stall.
In a battery charging application there is no current, and no load torque, on the blades until the RPM is high enough that the voltage from the genny is above "cutin", the sum of the battery voltage and the di
Good concept... (Score:4, Interesting)
So what of the things that rarely fails me is a "common sense" check on new designs, particularly when it comes to renewable energy concepts (as there are a lot of impossible inventions around).
So let's break down this design:
- Works like a normal electric motor so thus we know it works *CHECK*
- Have electronic switches to open and close a circuit, which we know works *CHECK*
- We know longer circuits have more resistance than shorter ones *CHECK*
- We know changing the number of coils in an electric generator is optimal for different levels of generation *CHECK*
So it seems to be a very good design that should work very well. Their claims of 100% more efficiency are a little over the top but may work in some locations. I think it is safe to say that most locations should see an increase in efficiency with the new design over the old one.
The way they've built their motor is also a little novel but only really amounts to a way to customize the motor for different situations and thus really isn't all too interesting in the grand scheme of things.
Climate change effect of Wind Turbines? (Score:2)
If the wind is turning these turbines, it's obviously taking some energy out of the wind. If wind farms become massively deployed, couldn't that change weather patterns as we alter wind energies? Or, is the difference so negligible that the amount of turbines constructed for our energy needs would only be a fraction of what is necessary to cause such a disruption?
Not that I'm against wind energy, mind you. However,
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Re:Climate change effect of Wind Turbines? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it does have an effect. There is data showing that in wind farms the average temperature is slightly higher, and of course the wind speed is lower.
Very large wind farms will probably cause local temperature increases of 1-2 degrees centigrade. This could, of course, be mitigated by planting lots of trees all around them...
what a drag. (Score:3, Funny)
am i the only one worried that with a boom in windfarms, the drag on the earth's rotation will increase, slowing it and lengthening the day, making me stay at work *that* much longer?
Engine? (Score:3)
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when is an increase of efficiency by 100% impossible?
For arguments sake, let's say that current wind turbines are 10% efficient. This new turbine is therefore 15% to 20% efficient.
But will this make home wind turbines effective purchases? I doubt it.
I hope the design can be retrofitted into existing turbines, since there are so many deployed now.
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Get real; you won't see home wind turbines, at least not en masse. They have too much vibration and transmitted noise to hook up to your house plus I'm sure the neighbors might object to the aesthetics.
I'm sure most of these 223 small wind turbines [allsmallwindturbines.com] are quite suitable for home use.
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
The generator is more efficient in changing wind conditions. When the wind is faster, it turns on more coils to provide greater mechanical resistance and takes more energy out of the wind. When the wind is slower, the turbine can still run because the generator can be switched to take less energy out of the wind.
This isn't a consideration for regular power plants because the amount of energy sent to the turbine is well-controlled and doesn't vary with time like wind speed does.
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Regardless of the rpm, the car's engine is always producing enough power to turn the alternator against its resistance. The same is not true for standard wind generators; if the wind speed drops, there is no longer enough power to overcome the resistance of the generator. It sounds like this new design can reduce the resistance, therefore generating a reduced amount of power under conditions which would cause a standard design to generate no power.
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
"The design could not only lower the cost of wind turbines but increase their power output by 50 percent to as much as 100 percent, in some locations."
100%? Why stop there?!
Because, due to this having not a damn fucking thing to do with perpetual motion or snide remarks regarding such, there's only so much energy that can be extracted from the wind. Getting a 1.5x to 2x boost -- over the course of a year, meaning combining periods where the windmill was operating efficiently, and those times where it was not -- is great. I don't know why you phrased your question the way you did.
Oh, and, uh.. why is this whole article about windmills? Couldn't these improvements in generator efficiency be used across the board?
Not really. The majority of turbine generators are designed to operate at a single, optimal frequency. Wind however is by its nature variable, so to get peak efficiency across various RPMs requires some extra ingenuity. Maybe this could be applied to your car's alternator, I don't know.
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According to TFA, this new generator uses permanent magnets on a shaft passing by coils of wire, so the magnets are always spinning, even in the slightest breeze. This isn't anything new, it's just that they're probably using IGBTs to turn the individual stator coils on or off, changing the load on the shaft.
An automotive alternator uses an electromagnet on a shaft (rotor) passing
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There would still be a range of wind speeds for which this would work, i.e., too little wind and the propeller will stall before reaching the optimal RPM as you keep increasing the blade pitch, but it seems like it would work better across a wider variety
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
Just out of curiousity, and I haven't RTFA yet so maybe the answer is there, but couldn't you vary the pitch of the vanes on the turbine to maintain a constant RPM in varying wind conditions, much the way a constant speed propeller on an airplane works?
They do that too, even on existing windmills. The problem is that when the wind speed is low, there's nothing you can do to make it go fast, so if you wanted to maintain constant RPM in the generator, you'd have to pitch the blades to give very low speed in high winds, which is rather counter-productive. Adjusting the resistance of the generator so it works across a wider band of RPMs, combined with adjusting blade pitch, provides much better results.
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Maybe not your car's generator but definitely being used by bikers on their bicycle generators for powering LED lights.
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=172636 [candlepowerforums.com]
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Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Informative)
TFA doesn't mention specific percentage improvements in efficiency. That was kdawson's contribution, and then only in the poorly-worded headline. TFA is claiming that the overall output of a given wind turbine could be boosted by 50% or more by altering the dynamics of the generator to make it more efficient over a wider range of wind speeds.
Basically, turbines are most efficient at a given speed, and efficiency drops off for anything outside of that, whether faster or slower. This new design attempts to address that by decreasing the amount by which the efficiency drops off at different speeds. The improvement in the efficiency curve boosts overall power output, as the turbine isn't as strictly limited to a given wind speed for peak efficiency as it was before.
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That's called maximum power point tracking and is pretty old in concept and in actual use today in many thousands of wind and / or solar installations.
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Most power generation is able to work with reasonably constant RPM's
How about brakes in an electric vehicle?
(BTW, that apostrophe is superflous)
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Drat!
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Handled by a CVT [wikipedia.org], and they have to apply normal brakes for the last few mph anyway. Plus, regenerative braking is limited by how much charge the batteries can handle taking, not the output of the motor-generator.
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That's one of the things about these new windmill generators, they do it without transmissions.
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Informative)
Windmills don't have that luxury, so often are working at RPM's that are not optimum. This method (if it works) widens the optimum range.
Close but not quite what they're getting at. What they're doing is increasing/decreasing the resistance to keep the windmill in the optimum RPM range over a larger range of wind speeds. So at 5 mph, the blades might spin at 20 rpm and generate 2 MW. At 15 mph, with the new system the blades still spin at 20 rpm, but now generate 5 MW. As oposed to traditional generators, where it would be spinning at 30 rpm and only generating 3 MW.
It's just another MPPT. (Score:3)
This is just another maximum power point controller.
Some work by using a switching regulator to change the voltage/current ratio.
Some work by switching coil arrangements on the magneto to "shift gears" for efficient operation in more than one range of wind speeds. (Delat/Y switching is an example of this, giving two "gears".)
This appears to be the second approach with a large number of "gears" in the "transmission".
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:2, Insightful)
power output != efficiency
FAIL
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
That's 100% of the maximum possible output of the generator. Not 100% of the energy that comes into it being converted into electricity.
The words, they MEAN things.
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Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Informative)
It's kind of like a transmission. It's actually also kind of like the reverse of the adjustable displacement engines in some vehicles.
In some cars, you have an 8-cylinder engine but can use 4, 6, or 8 cylinders at various times based on the amount of power you need to generate. It doesn't take 8 5 liters of displacement to maintain highway speeds, but getting up to them quickly may. Turning off cylinders not in use saves fuel by not burning it when it's not needed. Each cylinder only draws chemical energy to make kinetic energy as needed.
If you left all the coils engaged, you might have too much resistance to generate any electricity in light winds and too much to generate it efficiently in more moderate winds. Yet if you build a turbine specifically for only light or moderate winds, you don't get any additional power once it is maxed out.
This solution uses wind, but you can't just press down on a pedal and ask for more wind (well, you could ask, but you'd be disappointed most of the time). So what it does instead is it has a magnet-in-coil generator with separately activated coils. Each coil only draws mechanical energy to make electricity as the mechanical energy is available. The rest of the coils are left as open circuits. If there's enough wind to turn the blades with half the coils on but not all of them (or too slowly to make sense with all of them), then you just open the circuits on half the coils and the other half keep generating. Only the coils in a closed circuit generate current and present meaningful resistance to the turbine. As you have more wind, you generate more power up to the maximum. The maximum number of coils doesn't impede this turbine from generating less current when some wind is still available though, because it just disconnects the spare coils until they are needed.
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Yep, but since the most efficient turbines are already at more than half Betz' limit this is simply not going to work.
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If 1 wind turbine can output 1MW. Increasing that to 2MW would be 100% more output. It can still only be 10% efficient, but the output has doubled. 50% more efficient would be 1.5MW. Heck it could be possible to get up to 1000% more efficient (10MW), and still be at under 50% efficiency.
Maths, don't leave home with out it.
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100%? Why stop there?!
Doubling of efficiency is not impossible!
What they are doing is known as "regenerative braking" in the automotive industry. It's hardly new. It's established technology. Likely this is the first application to wind turbines.
Wind turbines typically have mechanical transmissions and/or braking systems to maintain their peak efficiency. The problem is, mechanical transmissions have friction and equate to lower efficiencies due to frictional losses. Furthermore, this means it's likely the
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Lets say you run your generator for 24 hours per week. That is its normal power output. Now, run it for 2 days. You have just doubled its weekly power output. That's a 100% increase.
Run it for 3 days. 200%
That doesn't violate any laws of physics. This design simply makes the generator capable of being operated at times that it normally would not be able to operate at w/o excessive loss.
You are confusing efficiency with power output.
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You're confusing Power with Work.
Twain sez... (Score:3, Interesting)
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Just like most of the energy contained in a gallon of gasoline is not converted into forward motion, most of the energy passing by a wind turbine is not converted into electricity. It's the "low hanging fruit" in energy research. It sounds like their idea is to use more but smaller and more efficient generators that are adapted to input from variable wind speeds rather than constant input from a
Re:PICS OR GTFO (Score:4, Informative)
Right, because pictures are proof. Just like the phantom console, which had pictures (http://gamedeveloper.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=19801) and is totally real right now. In fact, I'm playing the invisible version as I'm typing this!
Re: (Score:2)
It is real.
It never went to market.
The keyboard did, and is a pretty good keyboard from what I hear.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the keyboard was real, but of course that was not what the phantom console was supposed to be and was not what the pictures were of. That the company managed to take all that startup money and produce a keyboard with a stand is... well better than nothing I suppose, but the phantom console remains firmly in the land of vaporware. Or maybe just plain fraud.
Re:PICS OR GTFO (Score:5, Interesting)
He has a point, even if 'pics' won't make much difference the vapourware will stick. There is this thing called Betz' law and it is pretty specific about how much energy you can extract from any moving medium.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
as far as i can tell, this technology has nothing to do with Betz' law [wikipedia.org] or the theoretical efficiency of a wind turbine. in fact it has nothing to do with the design of the fan blades or rotor efficiency.
instead, the innovation here is replacing a mechanical transmission with an electric one. this allows the turbine to perform optimally under a wide range of wind speeds. this could just as easily be applied to gasoline engine power generator or other non-turbine/fluid-mechanics-related power generators.
it's
Where was this? (Score:3, Informative)
The gears are the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Read somewhere that hydraulic-pumps up in the air on the turbine with hoses all leading to a central electric generation plant nearby brings down the maintenance cost considerably. Efficient generators are more expensive and require more skilled maintenance than hydraulic-pumps factoring in the loss of efficiency with the hydro delivery system.
Great, now we'll have to rely on foreign hydraulic fluid!
</sarcasm>
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand that a hydraulic pump and hydraulic motor coupled with two lines would be modestly simple, but the repairman going out to fix the system will probably have the same hourly/salaried rate as the repairman going out to fix the generator. Windmills have been modestly simple for hundreds of years, though. Today, the power chain looks like this:
Wind --> Blades --> Shaft --> Gearing --> Generator --> Grid
With this new system, they're hoping to
Re:Think of the salmon! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. There was recently an article in the local Portland, OR news about how the windfarms that have been installed in the Columbia River Basin may actually have a detrimental impact on salmon. Apparently, some parts of the electrical grid in this part of the country are operating near peak capacity. When the wind really kicks in and pushes the grid to its limits, other parts have to lower production. In our case, this means letting a lot more water spill over the dams. This, in turn, tends to introduce way too much nitrogen into the water, which harms the fishies. Or so goes the theory.