Wind Cube-Wind Turbine for Wall

10:22 PM 4 Comments

What a creative wind turbine design !! ''Wind cube'' is a modularized wind power system designed for the lifestyle in cities. The concept is to use 3D wind fields to make up the insufficiency of 2D ones. At that point, this new wind cube design differs from the other ones.

Wind cube

The part which is called as nacelle is rotating also to wind direction. The modern turbines has only one certain position for wind(tilt and cones angle), that's why the new design can capture much more power in a sufficient way.

Wind turbine for wall

Through the modularized design, each unit of the '' Wind Cube'' can automatically create a circuit with the power generated by itself. The power can be directly provided to families for the purpose of saving energy and reducing carbon.

Wind Cube

Considerate design for users, ''Wind Cube'' is an All-in-One design which make greenization easy. With only 3 small steps, one can start green energy. Modularized design has honeycomb Structure. The telescopic blades can be activated when there is gentle breeze. In case bad wind conditions, '' Wind Cube '' can retract the blades to avoid possible damage.

Wind cube protection

Wind Cube has 100 Watt generator and each generator has ability to produce 21.6 kWh per month. 15 Wind Cubes can provide the electricity needed by a household(4 person) per month. What's more with more Wind Cubes one can save more energy and sell it to grid companies.

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Vestas V100-1.8 MW

9:35 PM 2 Comments

Vestas V100-1.8 MW have 49 m blades which are designed to extract much more power from the low winds. Thanks to 100m rotor diameter, it maximize the power output. What's more it is starting to produce power just at 3 m/s which is pretty low wind speed. That's why as a summary one can say, for lower wind sites, V100-1.8 MW is a good choice.

Vestas V-100 1.8 MW

Many times Vestas V100-1.8 MW is tested and as consequence it is reliable. Since 1999 6500 Vestas 2 MW turbines are installed whole around the world. And this 2.0 MW Vestas turbine is improved once more to get more energy production at low wind onshore sides. 

Vestas wind turbine

What's more Vestas V100-1.8 MW is designed for high productivity and noise issue is made better without any impact on power production with an excellent grid support. As the other ones Vestas V100-1.8 MW is designed also for serviceability with reliable and robust energy production. Yaw system is also improved. 

Vestas V-100 1.8 MW

The Vestas Control System inside the V100-1.8 MW delivers a constant and consistent output to the grid. The system is able to maintain grid stability by quickly regulating the turbine’s power provision when needed. It swiftly responds to faults and other grid disturbances. The VCS also lessens the load on the gearbox and other key components, reducing wear and tear.

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Ice Effects on Wind Turbines

8:47 PM No Comments

Wind turbines should be able to work really in hard conditions. Sometimes they must withstand  so cold weathers, sometimes so high temperatures which depends on where the turbine locates.  

Wind turbine blade with ice

Especially the blades are effected in an important manner from the cold weather. And sometimes the ices can be problem for wind turbines. That's why during development state, up to climate conditions of desired area which turbine will be located, some extra calculations must be done. One of this extra calculations is ice loads which is defined in guidelines. 

Ice loads

If the turbine continue to produce power in cold weather, ice can be seen on the blade. Due to ice, mass of the blade is changing which makes extra high loads on the some parts of the turbines. What's more if the ice is effecting the pitch motors, the turbine must be shut down by control mechanism. If not due to high rotational speeds, some parts of turbine can be damaged. 

Wind turbine blade with ice

To let the turbine produce power in worse weather conditions wind turbine ice protection system (WTIPS) is invented. It is deicing the blade's leading edge by pulsing power to safely shed ice. WTIPS is a electro-thermal device system using technology originally developed through a NASA Small Business Innovative Research. It is light weight, easy to install, digitally controllable with Plc systems and reliable.

Ice effects on wind turbine blades

To get an idea about ice effects on wind turbines you can watch the following video. The turbine continue working with icy blades. 

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Windspiral Wind Turbines

8:13 PM No Comments

Day by day the number of vertical axis wind turbines growing. Because they are more efficient, easy to install, smaller, and most important one cheaper to build than the common wind turbine designs.

Windspiral Turbine

One of these interesting design is Windspiral turbine which is roughly 10 meters long ant 1 meter width. As the others it is also used for converting wind energy into measurable electrical energy. It has same working principle with vertical axis wind turbines. And it is remote controllable. The owner of that design can track it from computer thanks to wireless modem.

Windspiral wind turbine

Windspiral wind turbines can produce 2 Megawatt hours per year in 5.5 meters per second average wind speed which is approximately half energy used by a regular house. One more advantage of this design is lower rotational speed. It means less noise and less loads on materials. It can be used easily in cities or gardens of houses. With some modifications it can produce more energy which is enough for a home. You can get an impression by watching following short video.

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Why do wind turbines always have three blades?

8:44 PM 1 Comment

If you have seen a wind farm, you have noticed that wind turbines have 3 blades. Why not 1 blade, 2 blades, 4 blades or 5 blades ? Because the aim is when the power is produced not to capture more wind. The aim is capturing wind with greatest efficiency. And as a result it is found that 3 blades is the most efficient and less troublesome way.

 Wind turbine with one blade

It is not common but when you see a wind turbine with one blade, you shouldn't surprise. It looks like a little different from the other common wind turbines even the working principle is same. Due to one blade, it is cheaper from the others. On the other hand the aesthetic of the one bladed turbine is a little worse. Whole wind energy sector compromise about 3 blade wind turbines due to aesthetic. If we look more detail, the efficiency of the one bladed turbine is higher, but the loads are also higher due to unbalance rotor. What's more it tends to spin faster. That's why it is much more noisy.

2 bladed offshore wind turbine

As it seen the previous figure, sometimes two bladed wind turbines can also be seen. The same phenomena about aesthetic is valid for two bladed wind turbine also. But this has higher efficiency than the one bladed and 3 bladed wind turbines. When we compare with 3 bladed wind turbines, the only advantage  is one blade is less, that's why it is cheaper. It is cheaper from the rotor side but on the other hand  because of higher loads the maintenance costs and the life of turbine must be considered also. 

3 bladed wind turbine 

Due to aesthetic, efficient loads 3 bladed wind turbines are much more common. When it is compared with the other types of wind turbines, powerful enough and it is less noisy because of tending to spin slower. Noise issue is also must be considered when a wind turbine constructed. Because of these reasons 3 bladed wind turbines are accepted in wind energy sector.

Wind turbine with 5 blade

When the number of the blades are increasing, normally cost of turbine is also increasing. That's why the turbines which have more than 3 blades seen rarely. If we look from the technical side, when we have more than 3 blades, we must make them lighter. When they are lighter, they will tend to spin faster and they will be broken. That's why generally it is not good idea to use more than 3 blades. 

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Offshore Wind Turbine Installation

11:03 PM 3 Comments

Alstom build floating wind turbine platform in UK waters. The platform will feature a 6MW Alstom Haliade turbine. It has pretty high rated power (6 MW) with 73.5 meters LM blades that creates a swept area of 17.860 square meters. 

Alstom Offshore

Generally this type of offshore designs have a floating foundation which is fixed to the seabed using catenary cables. By positioning this floating platform in any place in water. Tanks to this property the turbine cane be moved to much more deeper waters which means less turbulent more strong wind which means less loads with high power efficiency.

Offshore transportation

On the other hand, it is a little bit hard to transport wind turbine stuffs from manufacturer to offshore area. As it seen in the following picture of nacelle, first land transportation then sea transportation is needed which costs extra money. And as a small note, it can be clearly identified with the dimensions of nacelle, direct drive wind generator technology is used. 

Alstom 6MW Nacelle

Sometimes it can cost serious amount moneys. That's why nowadays some of persons say production of off-shore wind turbines must be decreased. But some of companies which are so assertive are persistent with off-shore wind energy sector. 

Off-shore crane technology

If it is needed to compare with on-shore wind turbines, it is definitely clear that it is much much more easier to install on-shore wind turbines than the off-shore wind turbines. As it seen in the previous picture also, the crane technology must be designed in a clever way to be able to withstand with all forces during installation. 

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