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

[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.