Increasing the Efficiency of the Wind Turbine

10:37 PM 1 Comment

Blades are important components that need to be matched with the wind speed environment in order to maximize the efficiency of a turbine. At low wind speed, more blades will be better and the blades should be long and wide. The blade pitch should be large. At high wind speed, the blades should be short and thin. The blade pitch should be small then. The number of blades is also an important parameter of a wind turbine. You may install 1 to 6 blades on the WindLab to see the effects, even if the blades are not balanced symmetrically.

However, it is difficult to test these parameters on a real wind turbine. Even if you can change the blade parameters on a real wind turbine, you cannot command the speed of the natural wind for you to test the result.

WindLab allows you to evaluate these parameters easily. It comes with a set of 3 blades and 1 vane, which are cut from flexible plastic (Polypropylene) sheets, for you to start with. The design concept is to let you design your own blades and vanes with easily available plastic or paper card sheets. Scissors and Punch are the standard stationery needed to work with your knowledge and imagination to create your own blades and vanes. You can modify the number, size and shape of the blades to see how the output is affected at different wind speed. You may also modify the size, shape and color of the vanes to make fun with it.

WindPitch allows the evaluation of Blade pitch and profiled blades. Mechanism for installing sheet blades is also included so that blade sizes and shapes can also be evaluated. However, WindPitch does not have an internal Gold Capacitor to store the generated electricity internally.

WindCharge can be used as a basic turbine for generating electricity for some applications. The blade pitch on the WindCharge Plus is optimized to an angle that maximizes the output of the turbine.