New Generator Boosts Wind Turbine Efficiency 50%

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.

Comments

Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin

[Stile 65]

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.

Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin

[Chris Burke]

"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.

Even less dependency on foreign oil

[cavis]

About a month ago, I was travelling on I-68/I-70 in Maryland, over the Cumberland Gap, when I saw a several wind turbines in the distance. After I got over the neat factor (even though we have them here in WV), I quickly realized that with each revolution of those turbines, we could/would be cleaning up the environment that much more. That alone makes me back this program 100%. Will it reduce foreign dependency as well? Let's hope so.

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!

Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil

[hardburn]

. . . 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

[Shakrai]

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.

Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil

[hardburn]

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.

Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil

[jpmorgan]

Birds migrate north/south, prevailing winds go east/west.

Nice work!

[girlintraining]

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?

Re:Nice work!

[Firethorn]

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. 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.

Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin

[Kintanon]

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.

Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin

[Chris Burke]

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.