A Design for Cheaper Wind Power

A design that draws on jet engine technology could halve

the cost of generating electricity from wind.
By Kevin Bullis
FloDesign Wind Turbine, a spin-off from the aerospace
company FloDesign based in Wilbraham, MA, has
developed a wind turbine that could generate electricity at
half the costof conventional turbines. The company recently
raised $6 million in its first round of venture financing and
has announced partnerships with wind-farm developers.
The company's design, which draws on technology developed for jet engines, circumvents a
fundamental limit to conventional wind turbines. Typically, as wind approaches a turbine, almost
half of the air is forced around the blades rather than through them, and the energy in that
deflected wind is lost. At best, traditional wind turbines capture only 59.3 percent of the energy
in wind, a value called the Betz limit.

FloDesign surrounds its wind-turbine blades with a shroud that directs air through the blades
and speeds it up, which increases power production. The new design generates as much power
as a conventional wind turbine with blades twice as big in diameter. The smaller blade size and
other factors allow the new turbines to be packed closer together than conventional turbines,
increasing the amount of power that can be generated per acre of land.
The idea of enshrouding wind-turbine blades isn't new. But earlier designs were too big to be
practical, or they didn't perform well, in part because the blades had to be very closelyaligned to
the direction of the wind--within three or four degrees, says Stanley Kowalski, FloDesign's CEO.
The new blades are smaller and can work at angles of up to 15 to 20 degrees away from the
direction of the wind.
From the front, the wind turbine looks something like the air intake of a jet engine. As air
approaches, it first encounters a set of fixed blades, called the stator, which redirect it onto a set
of movable blades--the rotor. The air turns the rotor and emerges on the other side, moving
more slowly now than the air flowing outside the turbine. The shroud is shaped so that it guides
this relatively fast-moving outside air into the area just behind the rotors. The fast-moving air
speeds up the slow-moving air, creating an area of low pressure behind the turbine blades that
sucks more air through them.

It's plausible that such a design could double or triple a turbine's power output, says Paul
Sclavounos, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Part of the increase comes simply
from guiding the air to the turbine with the shroud. But Sclavounos notes that it also helps to use
the wind surrounding the turbine to speed up the airflow, because the power produced by a
wind turbine increases with the cube of the wind speed. The key question is whether the new
turbines can be built and maintained at a low-enough cost, Sclavounos says.
FloDesign has already built a small prototype for wind-tunnel tests. Its next step is to build a 12-
foot diameter, 10-kilowatt system for field tests. The prototype will be finished by the end of next
year or early in 2010, with commercial wind turbines to follow. (The company is not yet taking
orders.) Eventually the company plans to make turbines as large as one megawatt.
Laser Sensors for Wind Turbines
A system that detects gusts before they arrive reduces
wear, boosts output.
By Tyler Hamilton
A new fiber-optic laser system can measure wind speed
and direction up to 1000 meters in front of a wind turbine,
giving the massive machines enough precious seconds to
proactively adapt to gusts and sudden changes in wind
direction. The device, developed byCatch the Wind, a
startup based in Manassas, VA, could improve the
efficiency of wind turbines and keep them from breaking
down.
The device could help lower the cost of renewable electricity from wind. Wind turbines lose
roughly 1 percent of their operating efficiency for every degree their blades are out of alignment
with the oncoming wind. Catch the Wind claims that its laser system can boost turbine power
output by 10 percent by improving orientation accuracy. The pitch of the blades can also be
adjusted in advance of the wind to reduce wear and tear on turbine gearbox components and
blades, lowering repair and maintenance costs by up to 10 percent and extending the operating
life of a wind farm, the company says.
John Kourtoff, chief executive officer of offshore wind developer Trillium Power, calls Catch the
Wind's approach "conceptually intriguing" if it can both reduce wind-farm costs and increase
revenues. "On the face of it, it makes sense. It would be advantageous for us," he says. "But I'd
have to see real field data."
Current wind-energy measurement systems--both mechanical anemometers and more
advanced LIDAR (light detecting and ranging) devices--are used primarily to determine if a
location is suitable for a wind farm. The systems are also kept as part of on-site weather
stations used for longer-term wind forecasting. Real-time data can also be gathered by
mounting a small anemometer on the back of a turbine's nacelle, Kourtoff says. The problem
with this setup is that the air is so disturbed after passing by the turbine blades that
measurements are often skewed and unreliable. Also, the turbine can only respond to wind
changes after its blades have been hit, leaving them vulnerable for a few seconds to a range of
punishing forces caused by wind shear, gusts, and turbulence.
Catch the Wind has adapted LIDAR so that it can be mounted on wind turbines and used to
measure wind changes in time to make adjustments to the turbine. It pulses three invisible laser
beams in front of the turbine that can simultaneously measure both vertical and horizontal wind
speeds at different distances, as well as sudden changes in direction. Like conventional LIDAR,
it does this using the Doppler principle: when the laser bounces off small dust particles carried
in the wind, it changes color. The color of the laser is directly proportional to the speed of the
particle. The device uses proprietary algorithms to convert this data into measurements of wind
speed and direction before communicating a course of action to the turbine's control system.
The device provides 20 seconds' advance notice--enough to turn the nacelle and angle the
blades so that the turbine can catch more of the wind energy while reducing strain on its parts.

Conventional LIDAR isn't suited for mounting on wind turbines because these devices rely on
mirrors, which must be precisely positioned, to project a single beam as a three-dimensional
cone, says company president Philip Rogers. Changes in temperature or sudden movement
can knock the mirrors out of alignment. Rogers's company's device replaces mirrors with fiber
optics that project three separate beams. This design makes it rugged, small, and lightweight
enough to be permanently mounted onto a turbine nacelle and integrated into its control system.
"It's very much akin to solid-state electronics," Rogers explains. "It makes for a very compact
and robust system that's not susceptible to shock, temperature change, and other things caused
by movement."

Catch the Wind's system is currently being field-tested at the Wind Energy Institute of
Canada on the windy shoreline of Prince Edward Island. Paul Dockrill, director of technology at
the institute, says that the device performed well under initial ground tests atop a tripod. It will
soon be mounted onto the nacelle of a turbine as part of a more in-depth study.
Rogers envisions the fiber-optic system being integrated directly into new turbines at the point
of manufacture, and also being retrofitted to the thousands of turbines already in operation
today. "We are in discussions with a number of manufacturers, and we've seen significant
interest," he says, adding that beta versions of the device will come next spring, and commercial
production is targeted for late 2010.

Copyright Technology Review 2010.

Testing Cheap Wind Power

Thursday, October 29, 2009
A continuously variable transmission could lead to cheaper
wind power--if it is rugged enough.
By Peter Fairley
Federal stimulus funds awarded to a wind-energy research
consortium led by Illinois Institute of Technology will
accelerate testing of small wind turbines that could point the
way towards more efficient utility-scale machines. The
eight-kilowatt turbines, the product of Cedar Park, TX-
based Viryd Technologies, use a mechanical approach--
continuously variable transmission (CVT) technology--to
convert fluctuating wind speeds into the precise stream of
alternating current required by power grids. If it can replace
the pricey power electronics that regulate power in most turbines today, the same technology
could cut the cost of wind-power generation at any scale.
The question is whether the CVT is tough enough. Viryd parent company Fallbrook
Technologies has already commercialized its technology as a smooth-shifting alternative to
gears and derailleurs in high-end bicycles and is working on larger vehicle applications. Wind
power, however, is a particularly demanding application, according to Jason Cotrell, a senior
engineer at the Department of Energy's National Wind Technology Center in Golden, CO. "Wind
turbines are subject to very high torque for 80,000 hours of operation, so it's a very challenging
environment," Cotrell says. "CVTs tend to be complex, and we haven't yet verified that they're
suitably robust."
Most CVTs vary transmission ratios by sliding metal belts up and down a set of precision curved
parts--a design that is expensive to implement at high torque. Fallbrook's technology relies on
comparatively simple parts, promising lower cost and greater durability, according to CTO Rob
Smithson. "It's basically a big ball bearing, which is a global commodity," Smithson says.

The CVT transfers power between a set of rings--an input ring and an output ring--via a set of
rolling balls sandwiched between them (seven or eight balls, each slightly smaller than a golf
ball, in Viryd's case). Tilting the balls' axis of rotation causes the rings to travel different
distances with each rotation of the balls. A pressurized transmission fluid keeps the balls and
rings from chewing each other up in the process.
Viryd CEO John Langdon says that its turbine control system manages the balls' tilt to spin the
turbine's rotor at the optimum frequency to maximize energy capture for a given wind speed,
and to synchronize the AC power output from the turbine's generator with the power grid. As a
result, they use substantially less power electronics, and less sophisticated generators. He
promises the turbines will be 20 percent less expensive than existing eight-kilowatt turbines,
which currently cost about $40,000 installed.

The $8 million project, led by Illinois Institute of Technology's Wanger Institute for Sustainable
Energy Research, is one of several to test whether the cheaper turbines can endure. If these
prototypes pass muster, Langdon's plan is to install 50 more during the first half of next year for
dealers and then to begin marketing the turbine to homeowners and small businesses in the
second half of the year. The turbine is rated to generate about 10,000 kilowatt-hours of
electricity annually, which is close to the average U.S. homeowner's power budget. Langdon
predicts a ready market, thanks to state and federal incentives.
Viryd's eventual goal is to scale up to utility-scale wind farms. Scaling up the CVT technology to
deliver on that promise is a matter of increasing the size and number of balls to handle the
higher torque coming from the utility-scale machine's larger blades, which can exceed 60
meters in length (15 times longer than the blades on Viryd's eight-kilowatt turbine). A utility-
scale turbine could require 12 half-meter-diameter balls, says Langdon.

At least one other startup is chasing the same opportunity--Israel's IQwind. Last month IQwind
signed up Spanish engine manufacturer Grupo Guascor to produce its variable-speed
transmissions as a retrofit for 750-kilowatt wind turbines.
Copyright Technology Review 2010.

Friday, December 4, 2009

A More Durable Wind Turbine

New design does away with the need for a complex gearbox.
By Tyler Hamilton
A Canadian startup has developed a small prototype wind turbine that uses friction instead of a
gearbox to convert wind energy into electricity. CWind, based in Owen Sound, Ontario, recently
began work on a larger two-megawatt prototype. The company claims that its "friction drive"
system is more efficient and reliable--and less costly to maintain--than conventional wind
turbines, which are prone to expensive gearbox failures.
The blades on most turbines use the wind to turn a drive shaft connected to a gearbox. The
gearbox manages the rotation of a second shaft that connects to a large electrical generator.
The gearbox is the heaviest piece of equipment in a wind
turbine's "nacelle" (the section at the top of the turbine
tower). It's also a piece that's among the most vulnerable to
failure. Sudden wind gusts put the gearbox under
tremendous mechanical stress. Over time this can wear
down or break the teeth off its metal gears.

CWind's design does away with the gearbox completely.

Instead, the drive shaft is connected directly to a large metal
flywheel. Hugging the outside of the flywheel are eight
smaller secondary shafts, each connected to a 250-kilowatt
generator and each lined with several specially designed
tires that grip the surface of the flywheel. As the flywheel
spins, it engages the generators by turning these tire-lined
shafts. "We're using friction. It's not mechanically hard-
coupled," says Na'al Nayef, a CWind engineer and co-
inventor of the system.

Nayef says the system uses software to control the eight secondary shafts. The tires are also
designed to temporarily slip if a wind gust causes the flywheel to suddenly speed up. This
feature eases the impact on the generators. Each secondary shaft can also be disengaged from
the flywheel if the wind slows down, in effect reducing friction and allowing shafts that are still
connected to keep their generators operating at high capacity. Likewise, connecting more
shafts, thus adding more friction when the wind increases, will engage idle generators. "We can
operate the generators at optimal speed all the time," says Nayef, adding that tests on the
smaller, 65-kilowatt prototype show efficiency gains over standard wind turbines of up to 5
percent.

CWind founder Paul Merswolke first pursued the design seven years ago after watching a
documentary on the London Eye, a 135-meter-tall Ferris wheel on the bank of the River
Thames. He saw that simple truck tires were used as "friction rollers" to turn the Ferris wheel
and concluded that the same approach could be adapted for wind turbines. Nayef was brought
aboard to come up with a preliminary design, and in 2004 CWind approached energy
engineering firm MPR Associates in Washington, DC, for help on building a prototype.
"We said, 'No, we're not convinced this makes sense,' " says Larry Cundy, director of
development at MPR. But CWind convinced MPR to do some basic analysis of the design, and
eventually the engineering firm agreed to build the prototype. "It's a very novel application, quite
frankly," Cundy says. "It's really a stroke of genius."

Cundy says the biggest advantage of CWind's design is that it's easier and less costly to
maintain over the lifetime of the equipment. When a gearbox on a conventional turbine fails, the
turbine is knocked completely out of service. Getting a replacement gearbox takes a long time,
and removing the massive device from the wind turbine's nacelle requires a large crane and
many days of work. Every day the turbine isn't generating electricity for the grid amounts to lost
revenue for the operator.
"On a friction-drive system with multiple tires, if you lose a tire, the others are still there," says
Cundy, adding that replacing tires is quick--roughly a day's work--and that future designs will
allow maintenance while the turbine is still operating. The same redundancy applies to the
generators--if one fails, the others can still function. Cundy says that the small, off-the-shelf
generators used in CWind's design can be obtained quickly and are installed fairly easily with
the help of a small crane built into the nacelle.

Nayef says that the tires used are designed to last for three years, and replacing all the tires
used on a two-megawatt wind turbine is expected to cost $30,000--or nearly $200,000 over 20
years. By contrast, gearboxes have an average life of six years and cost about $600,000 to
replace, or nearly $2 million over 20 years. "We're going to be competitively priced with
conventional gearbox wind turbines, yet we have the advantages of high availability, high
efficiency, and all of the advantages that come with serviceability."

Last month CWind signed a manufacturing agreement with global auto parts makerLinamar,
which has committed its McLaren Performance engineering team (of Formula 1 racing fame) to
producing the two-megawatt prototype. As part of the 10-year contract, Linamar will also
manufacture market-ready turbines, likely beginning in 2011. Nayef says work is already under
way on five-megawatt and 7.5-megawatt designs aimed at the offshore wind market as well as
remote onshore sites where easy maintenance becomes a key selling feature.
Copyright Technology Review 2010.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Better Wind Turbines

A more efficient generator could convert more of the wind's
energy into electricity.
By Kevin Bullis
ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has
developed a new kind of generator that's well suited to
harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind
turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent.
The new generator runs efficiently over a wider range of
conditions than conventional generators do. When the shaft
running through an ordinary generator is turning at the
optimal rate, more than 90 percent of its energy can be converted into electricity. But if it speeds
up or slows down, the generator's efficiency drops dramatically. This isn't a problem in
conventional power plants, where the turbines turn at a steady rate, fed by a constant supply of
energy from coal or some other fuel. But wind speed can vary wildly. Turbine blades that
change pitch to catch more or less wind can help, as can transmissions that mediate between
the spinning blades and the generator shaft. But transmissions add both manufacturing and
maintenance costs, and there's a limit to how much changing the blade angle can compensate
for changing winds.
ExRo's new design replaces a mechanical transmission with what amounts to an electronic one.
That increases the range of wind speeds at which it can operate efficiently and makes it more
responsive to sudden gusts and lulls. While at the highest wind speeds the blades will still need
to be pitched to shed wind, the generator will allow the turbine to capture more of the energy in
high-speed winds and gusts. As a result, the turbine could produce 50 percent more power on
average over the course of a year, says Jonathan Ritchey, ExRo's chief technology officer.
Indeed, in some locations, the power output could double, says Ed Nowicki, a professor of
electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, who has consulted to ExRo.
The generator works on the same principles as many ordinary generators: magnets attached to
a rotating shaft create a current as they pass stationary copper coils arrayed around the shaft.
In ordinary generators, all of the coils are wired together. In ExRo's generator, in contrast, the
individual coils can be turned on and off with electronic switches. At low wind speeds, only a few
of the coils will switch on--just enough to efficiently harvest the small amount of energy in low-
speed wind. (If more coils were active, they would provide more resistance to the revolving
magnets.) At higher wind speeds, more coils will turn on to convert more energy into electricity.
The switches can be thrown quickly to adapt to fast-changing wind speeds.

Another part of the design makes the generator more responsive to changing wind speeds.
Harvesting large amounts of energy requires many coils. These could be arranged inside a
very-large-diameter generator, but then the rotor on which the magnets were mounted would
have to be larger, too. That would make it harder to get the rotor moving, or to change its
rotation speed. (The greater distance between the center of the generator and the coils
increases what's known as the moment of inertia.) The ExRo generator instead distributes the
coils among several small-diameter generators--which the researchers call stacks--along the
length of the shaft. Smaller diameters make it easier to change rotational speeds. The multiple-
stack design also makes customizing the generator for a particular wind site easier. For a site
with low-speed winds, few stacks would be needed. For a site with high-speed winds, more
could be added, allowing the generator to convert more energy into electricity.

Other companies have developed designs that incorporate multiple generators, which can be
activated separately, depending on wind speed. But these have to be engaged and disengaged
mechanically, adding weight and complexity to the generator and increasing costs. Reducing
maintenance and weight by eliminating the need for mechanical gears and clutches could allow
ExRo to keep costs down. And that, says Paul Sclavounos, a professor of mechanical
engineering at MIT, is the key consideration in determining whether to try to capture more of the
wind's energy. ExRo may have an advantage, he says, because the key to its technology is
electronic control, which is inexpensive. Indeed, the company claims that a wind-turbine
operator could make 57 percent more money from a turbine over the course of a year by using
the new generator.
ExRo has developed and tested a lab-scale prototype. Its estimates of increased power
production come from models that use data from existing wind-turbine sites. By the end of this
year or early next year, the company will begin field-testing a small, five-kilowatt wind turbine.
Ritchey says that the company won't have firm figures for power production until those tests are
complete. The next step will be to install larger, megawatt-scale generators in existing wind
turbines.

Copyright Technology Review 2010.

 Устройство и принцип работы синхронного
генератора
Синхронными называются электрические машины, частота вращения которых
связана постоянным соотношением с частотой сети переменного тока, в которую
эта машина включена. Синхронные машины служат генераторами переменного тока на
электрических станциях, а синхронные двигатели применяются в тех случаях, когда
нужен двигатель, работающий с постоянной частотой вращения. Синхронные машины
обратимы, т.е., могут работать и как генераторы и как двигатели. Синхронная машина
переходит от режима генератора к режиму двигателя в зависимости от того, действует на
неё вращающая или тормозящая механическая сила. В первом случае она получает на
валу механическую, а отдаёт в сеть электрическую энергию, а во втором случае она
получает из сети электрическую, а отдаёт на валу механическую.
Синхронная машина имеет две основных части: ротор и статор, причём статор не
отличается от статора асинхронной машины. Ротор синхронной машины представляет
собой систему вращающихся электромагнитов, которые питаются постоянным током,
поступающим в ротор через контактные кольца и щётки от внешнего источника. В
обмотках статора под действием вращающегося магнитного поля наводится ЭДС, которая
подаётся на внешнюю цепь генератора. Основной магнитный поток синхронного
генератора, создаваемый вращающимся ротором, возбуждается посторонним источником
– возбудителем, которым обычно является генератор постоянного тока небольшой
мощности, который установлен на общем валу с синхронным генератором. Постоянный
ток от возбудителя подаётся на ротор через щётки и контактные кольца, установленные на
валу ротора. Число пар полюсов ротора обусловлено скоростью его вращения. У
многополюсной синхронной машины ротор имеет p пар полюсов, а токи в обмотке
статора образуют также p пар полюсов вращающегося магнитного поля (как у
асинхронной машины). Ротор должен вращаться с частотой вращения поля,
следовательно, его скорость равна:
n = 60f / p (9.1)
При f = 50Hz и p = 1 n = 3000 об/мин.
С такой частотой вращаются современные турбогенераторы, состоящие из паровой
турбины и синхронного генератора большой мощности с ротором, который имеет одну
пару полюсов.
У гидрогенераторов первичным двигателем служит гидравлическая турбина, скорость
которой от 50 до 750 оборотов в минуту. В этом случае используются синхронные
генераторы с явнополюсным ротором, имеющим от 4 до 60 пар полюсов.
Частота вращения дизельгенераторов, соединённых с первичным двигателем – дизелем,
находится в пределах от 500 до 1500 об/мин.
В маломощных синхронных генераторах обычно используется самовозбуждение: обмотка
возбуждения питается выпрямленным током того же генератора (рис.9.2).
 Рис.9.2.
Цепь возбуждения образуют трансформаторы тока ТТ, включённые в цепь нагрузки
генератора, полупроводниковый выпрямитель, собранный по схеме трёхфазного моста, и
обмотка возбуждения ОВ с регулировочным реостатом R.
Самовозбуждение генератора происходит следующим образом. В момент пуска
генератора, благодаря остаточной индукции в магнитной системе, появляются слабые
ЭДС и токи в рабочей обмотке генератора. Это приводит к появлению ЭДС во вторичных
обмотках трансформаторов ТТ и небольшого тока в цепи возбуждения, усиливающего
индукцию магнитного поля машины. ЭДС генератора возрастает до тех пор, пока
магнитная система машины полностью не возбудится.
Среднее значение ЭДС, наводимое в каждой фазе обмотки статора:
Еср = c∙n∙Φ (9.2)
n – скорость вращения ротора;
Φ – максимальный магнитный поток, возбуждаемый в синхронной машине;
c – постоянный коэффициент, учитывающий конструктивные особенности данной
машины.
Напряжение на зажимах генератора:
U = E - I∙z, где
I – ток в обмотке статора (ток нагрузки);
Z – полное сопротивление обмотки (одной фазы).
Для точной подгонки амплитуды ЭДС величину магнитного потока регулируют путём
изменения тока в обмотке возбуждения. Синусоидальность ЭДС обеспечивают приданием
определённой формы полюсным наконечникам ротора в явнополюсных машинах. В
неявнополюсных машинах нужного распределения магнитной индукции добиваются
путём особого размещения обмоток возбуждения на поверхности ротора.