New Generator Boosts Wind Turbine Efficiency 50% 315
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.
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
The generator is more efficient in changing wind conditions. When the wind is faster, it turns on more coils to provide greater mechanical resistance and takes more energy out of the wind. When the wind is slower, the turbine can still run because the generator can be switched to take less energy out of the wind.
This isn't a consideration for regular power plants because the amount of energy sent to the turbine is well-controlled and doesn't vary with time like wind speed does.
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
"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."
100%? Why stop there?!
Because, due to this having not a damn fucking thing to do with perpetual motion or snide remarks regarding such, there's only so much energy that can be extracted from the wind. Getting a 1.5x to 2x boost -- over the course of a year, meaning combining periods where the windmill was operating efficiently, and those times where it was not -- is great. I don't know why you phrased your question the way you did.
Oh, and, uh.. why is this whole article about windmills? Couldn't these improvements in generator efficiency be used across the board?
Not really. The majority of turbine generators are designed to operate at a single, optimal frequency. Wind however is by its nature variable, so to get peak efficiency across various RPMs requires some extra ingenuity. Maybe this could be applied to your car's alternator, I don't know.
Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Insightful)
But, we are all going to have to get over seeing them as ugly or migratory-bird killers for this program to work. I truly want a future where we use very little foreign energy, and we harness renewable energy sources. I say we get those new turbines into the wild as quickly as possible. T. Boone Pickens, get to work!
Nice work! (Score:4, Insightful)
So let me get this straight -- it's more efficient, has fewer moving parts, has a higher power output, and is cheaper to mass produce? Buy that engineer a beer! This is a real leap forward in a machine class that hasn't made more than incremental improvements for awhile now. The spirit of Nikoli Tesla approves. Next question: Can this technology be adapted for use in the hydroelectric industry? I think it may be possible, and it would reduce maintenance costs somewhat -- maybe we could throw out the sluce gates and make water flow through the dam with fewer electromechanical parts?
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:2, Insightful)
power output != efficiency
FAIL
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:3, Insightful)
Will it reduce foreign dependency as well? Let's hope so.
It won't. We depend on foreign oil and cheap labor. Windmills provide neither. The US has coal. Lots of coal. Lots and lots and lots of coal. In another couple of decades, it wouldn't be surprising to hear about the US being a fuel provider exporting coal to the world market. If we didn't invest in wind energy, we would just burn more coal.
T. Boone Pickens, get to work!
T Boone Pickens is a salesman. What do salesmen do? They sell things. Why do they sell things? To make a profit. Remember that. His willingness to invest in wind power is admirable, but the natural gas plans he is pushing through along with wind will largely pad his wallet. So if we go the Pickens route, we have to keep an eye on the ball and make sure that we're not winding up on the short side of the stick with little to show for it. Maybe in the long term it'll be a good decision, but for now we need to approach it as pragmatists and look beyond the tri-fold full color brochure.
-Rick
Re:Nice work! (Score:3, Insightful)
Can this technology be adapted for use in the hydroelectric industry?
It would depend on whether the water flow was constant or not. If the water flow in a hydro generator is constant, than no. If not, then yes.
Re:I wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
The biggest problem with CVT technology is that currently it's pretty weak. CVTs in cars can only handle about 300HP (~230KW); a 5KW+ turbine would snap that like a matchstick. And one big enough to handle that turbine would sap quite a bit of efficiency.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Insightful)
. . . a highly disadvantageous location in a choke point for bird migrations.
One thing that just clicked in my head: birds likely choose their migration path based on the predominant wind patters. We want to put windmills there for the same reason.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:3, Insightful)
T Boone Pickens is a salesman. What do salesmen do? They sell things. Why do they sell things? To make a profit. Remember that. His willingness to invest in wind power is admirable, but the natural gas plans he is pushing through along with wind will largely pad his wallet.
Do you see an alternative in the heavy fright industry to natural gas? Mr. Picken's whole point is that you can't drive an 18 wheeler with electric (battery) technology. If you accept that then what do you purpose as a replacement for oil in this sector? And why assume that he is doing this just to 'pad his wallet'? He's already made his billions -- that and the fact that he's 80 years old (so I'm guessing he won't be running out of money before he dies) makes me think that he isn't purposing this just to make a buck.
Re:Climate change effect of Wind Turbines? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:2, Insightful)
then go and find the 'bullshit' [wikipedia.org] why your common airplane can fly. hint: it's not flapping its wings.
Re:ridiculous, do the math (Score:2, Insightful)
What if the wind blows at X 80% of the time, and gusts above X 20% of the time?
You're assuming that they're trying to squeeze more energy from the low end of the range, I think they're actually trying to catch the period gusts that are above the normal range. Increasing the resistance will make the windmill safer (and more effective) to operate at higher speeds, until a certain limit is reached where it just has to be shut down for safety.
-t.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:1, Insightful)
I see an alternative - gasoline and diesel.
If we could just cut out the politics and the environmentalist bullshit, we'd be a lot better off.
There's tons of oil still untapped in the world.
We need to drill (and be nice to the environment if you want) in Alaska, Russia, wherever, and build new refineries (they can be the more expensive, cleaner ones if you want). If we do that, OPEC will be forced to play ball.
In the meantime, we should be building nuclear power plants and getting rid of coal refineries and mines.
It's not rocket science. Nuclear and oil are the best we have. Use hydroelectric where we can (sorry fish, too bad). Sure, go ahead and continue diversifying, but stop the political bullshit. Ethanol is a travesty. Natural gas is another finite resource that requires new infrastructure. Solar has a dozen "breakthroughs" a year and is still expensive and inefficient, still destroys the environment when you make them, and still only works in direct sunlight. Wind power needs wind and a ton of space. Etc. etc.
Until we stop the profiteering and political bullshit, we'll never get a real solution.
Re:This perpetual motion machine just keeps gettin (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Insightful)
There's tons of oil still untapped in the world.
How is that going to work out when we use one quarter of the oil on this rock? Do we have one quarter of the oil reserves?
If we could just cut out the politics and the environmentalist bullshit, we'd be a lot better off.
Cut out the "environmentalist bullshit" and you are still left with the cold reality that we are sending $700,000,000,000 out of this country every year to pay for our oil addiction. Much of that money goes to countries that don't particularly like us very much. What do you suppose would happen if we invested that money into domestic energy sources like wind and natural gas? Job creation and economic growth perhaps? This is a national security issue in addition to being an environmental one.
Re:Nice work! (Score:5, Insightful)
unless the place is not very good for windmills in the first place.
substitute 'sub-optimal' for 'not very good' and you're looking at the difference between economical and uneconomical for millions of acres of land.
As is, from the maps I've seen, less than 1% of the area of the USA could be considered 'optimal' areas for turbines. Not really scattered either, mostly in a few spots. Right now you need very steady winds, within ~10mph to be really efficient. If the wind is too fast you have to shut down the turbine, same with too slow.
US wind map [windpoweringamerica.gov]. Going by this, you can see that there's a very limited amount of area, mostly offshore, rated 'Superb'. If this turbine makes the red outstanding areas equivalent to superb, that more than triples the area. If it makes 'good' viable, that enables large chunks of the midwest.
Perhaps most importantly, it'll help reduce the low production periods.
There are still critical flaws with wind power (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:5, Insightful)
If the alternative is coal plants, then windmills are far less deadly to birds than the added carcinogens. A few extra dead birds hitting turbines can be easily replaced in the biosphere. Coal smoke is a more widespread problem.
Re:Even less dependency on foreign oil (Score:4, Insightful)
The gears are the problem (Score:3, Insightful)