Slashdot Mirror
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.
...how something like a CVT would work for a wind turbine.
bork bork bork!
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.
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.
MP3 Search Engine
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.
Let me preface this with I do believe we need to invest in all renewable energy technologies, such as wind, tidal, solar, etc. That being said, we should not throw caution to the wind. We need to explore the effects/affects of what we do. Wind generators do in fact kill birds and bats. Wind mills decrease the number of species in a given environment and can lessen biodiversity. We need to be careful and do what we can to lessen the harmful things we do to nature. It is all about trade-offs and tipping points. We must establish what the tipping point for the number of wind generators we can safely use without being detrimental to the environment.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
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...
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.
The enemies of Democracy are