Wind turbine

Wind farm in the North Sea off Belgium

Wind turbines near Aalborg, Denmark

A wind turbine is a rotating machine which converts the kinetic energy in wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used directly by machinery, such as a pump or grinding stones, the machine is usually called a windmill. If the mechanical energy is then converted to electricity, the machine is called a wind generator, wind power unit (WPU), or wind energy converter (WEC).

This article discusses electric power generation machinery. The windmill article discusses machines used for grain-grinding, water pumping, etc. The article on wind power describes turbine placement, economics and public concerns. The wind energy section of that article describes the distribution of wind energy over time, and how that affects wind-turbine design.

History

The world's first automatically operated wind turbine was built in Cleveland in 1888 by Charles F. Brush. It was 18 m (60 ft) tall, weighed four tons and had a 12kW turbine.^[1]

Wind machines were used in Persia as early as 200 B.C.^[2] This type of machine was introduced into the Roman Empire by 250 A.D. However, the first practical windmills were built in Sistan, Iran, from the 7th century. These were vertical axle windmills, which had long vertical driveshafts with rectangle shaped blades.^[3] Made of six to twelve sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind corn and draw up water, and were used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries.^[4]

By the 14th century, Dutch windmills were in use to drain areas of the Rhine River delta. In Denmark by 1900 there were about 2,500 windmills for mechanical loads such as pumps and mills, producing an estimated combined peak power of about 30 MW. The first known electricity generating windmill operated was a battery charging machine installed in 1887 by James Blyth in Scotland, UK^[5]. The first windmill for electricity production in the United States was built in Cleveland, Ohio by Charles F Brush in 1888, and in 1908 there were 72 wind-driven electric generators from 5 kW to 25 kW. The largest machines were on 24 m (79 ft) towers with four-bladed 23 m (75 ft) diameter rotors. Around the time of World War I, American windmill makers were producing 100,000 farm windmills each year, most for water-pumping.^[6] By the 1930s windmills for electricity were common on farms, mostly in the United States where distribution systems had not yet been installed. In this period, high-tensile steel was cheap, and windmills were placed atop prefabricated open steel lattice towers.

A forerunner of modern horizontal-axis wind generators was in service at Yalta, USSR in 1931. This was a 100 kW generator on a 30 m (100 ft) tower, connected to the local 6.3 kV distribution system. It was reported to have an annual capacity factor of 32 per cent, not much different from current wind machines.^[7]

The first utility grid-connected wind turbine operated in the UK was built by the John Brown Company in 1954 in the Orkney Islands. It had an 18 meter diameter, three-bladed rotor and a rated output of 100 kW.

Resources

Wind turbines require locations with constantly high wind speeds. With a wind resource assessment it is possible to estimate the amount of energy the wind turbine will produce.

A yardstick frequently used to determine good locations is referred to as Wind Power Density (WPD.) It is a calculation relating to the effective force of the wind at a particular location, frequently expressed in terms of the elevation above ground level over a period of time. It takes into account wind velocity and mass. Color coded maps are prepared for a particular area described, for example, as "Mean Annual Power Density at 50 Meters." The results of the above calculation are included in an index developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab and referred to as "NREL CLASS." The larger the WPD calculation, the higher it is rated by class.^[8]

Types of wind turbines

Wind turbines can be separated into two types based by the axis in which the turbine rotates. Turbines that rotate around a horizontal axis are more common. Vertical-axis turbines are less frequently used.

Horizontal axis

Components of a horizontal axis wind turbine (gearbox, rotor shaft and brake assembly) being lifted into position

Horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWT) have the main rotor shaft and electrical generator at the top of a tower, and must be pointed into the wind. Small turbines are pointed by a simple wind vane, while large turbines generally use a wind sensor coupled with a servo motor. Most have a gearbox, which turns the slow rotation of the blades into a quicker rotation that is more suitable to drive an electrical generator.^[9]

Since a tower produces turbulence behind it, the turbine is usually pointed upwind of the tower. Turbine blades are made stiff to prevent the blades from being pushed into the tower by high winds. Additionally, the blades are placed a considerable distance in front of the tower and are sometimes tilted up a small amount.

Downwind machines have been built, despite the problem of turbulence (mast wake), because they don't need an additional mechanism for keeping them in line with the wind, and because in high winds the blades can be allowed to bend which reduces their swept area and thus their wind resistance. Since cyclic (that is repetitive) turbulence may lead to fatigue failures most HAWTs are upwind machines.

HAWT Subtypes

Doesburger windmill, Ede, The Netherlands.

12th-century windmills

These squat structures, typically (at least) four bladed, usually with wooden shutters or fabric sails, were developed in Europe. These windmills were pointed into the wind manually or via a tail-fan and were typically used to grind grain. In the Netherlands they were also used to pump water from low-lying land, and were instrumental in keeping its polders dry.

In Schiedam, the Netherlands, a traditional style windmill (the Noletmolen) was built in 2005 to generate electricity.^[10] The mill is one of the tallest Tower mills in the world, being some 42.5 metres (139 ft) tall.

19th-century windmills

The Eclipse windmill factory was set up around 1866 in Beloit, Wisconsin and soon became successful building mills for pumping water on farms and for filling railroad tanks. Other firms like Star, Dempster, and Aeromotor also entered the market. Hundreds of thousands of these mills were produced before rural electrification and small numbers continue to be made.^[6] They typically had many blades, operated at tip speed ratios not better than one, and had good starting torque. Some had small direct-current generators used to charge storage batteries, to provide power to lights, or to operate a radio receiver. The American rural electrification connected many farms to centrally-generated power and replaced individual windmills as a primary source of farm power by the 1950s. They were also produced in other countries like South Africa and Australia (where an American design was copied in 1876^[11]). Such devices are still used in locations where it is too costly to bring in commercial power.

Modern wind turbines

The wind turbines on High Knob in the Moosic Mountains of Pennsylvania

Turbines used in wind farms for commercial production of electric power are usually three-bladed and pointed into the wind by computer-controlled motors. These have high tip speeds of up to six times the wind speed, high efficiency, and low torque ripple, which contribute to good reliability. The blades are usually colored light gray to blend in with the clouds and range in length from 20 to 40 metres (65 to 130 ft) or more. The tubular steel towers range from 200 to 300 feet (60 to 90 metres) tall. The blades rotate at 10-22 revolutions per minute.^[12][13] A gear box is commonly used to step up the speed of the generator, although designs may also use direct drive of an annular generator. Some models operate at constant speed, but more energy can be collected by variable-speed turbines which use a solid-state power converter to interface to the transmission system. All turbines are equipped with shut-down features to avoid damage at high wind speeds.

HAWT advantages

Wind turbines in Vienna

• Variable blade pitch, which gives the turbine blades the optimum angle of attack. Allowing the angle of attack to be remotely adjusted gives greater control, so the turbine collects the maximum amount of wind energy for the time of day and season.
• The tall tower base allows access to stronger wind in sites with wind shear. In some wind shear sites, every ten meters up, the wind speed can increase by 20% and the power output by 34%.
• High efficiency, since the blades always move perpendicularly to the wind, receiving power through the whole rotation. In contrast, all vertical axis wind turbines, and most proposed airborne wind turbine designs, involve various types of reciprocating actions, requiring airfoil surfaces to backtrack against the wind for part of the cycle. Backtracking against the wind leads to inherently lower efficiency.

HAWT disadvantages

Turbine blade convoy passing through Edenfield in the UK

• The tall towers and blades up to 90 meters long are difficult to transport. Transportation can reach 20% of equipment costs.
• Tall HAWTs are difficult to install, needing very tall and expensive cranes and skilled operators.
• Massive tower construction is required to support the heavy blades, gearbox, and generator.
• Reflections from tall HAWTs may affect side lobes of radar installations creating signal clutter, although filtering can suppress it.
• Their height makes them obtrusively visible across large areas, disrupting the appearance of the landscape and sometimes creating local opposition.
• Downwind variants suffer from fatigue and structural failure caused by turbulence when a blade passes through the tower's wind shadow (for this reason, the majority of HAWTs use an upwind design, with the rotor facing the wind in front of the tower).
• HAWTs require an additional yaw control mechanism to turn the blades toward the wind.

Cyclic stresses and vibration

Cyclic stresses fatigue the blade, axle and bearing; material failures were a major cause of turbine failure for many years. Because wind velocity often increases at higher altitudes, the backward force and torque on a horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) blade peaks as it turns through the highest point in its circle. The tower hinders the airflow at the lowest point in the circle, which produces a local dip in force and torque. These effects produce a cyclic twist on the main bearings of a HAWT. The combined twist is worse in machines with an even number of blades, where one is straight up when another is straight down. To improve reliability, teetering hubs have been used which allow the main shaft to rock through a few degrees, so that the main bearings do not have to resist the torque peaks.

The rotating blades of a wind turbine act like a gyroscope. As it pivots along its vertical axis to face the wind, gyroscopic precession tries to twist the turbine disc along its horizontal axis. For each blade on a wind generator's turbine, precessive force is at a minimum when the blade is horizontal and at a maximum when the blade is vertical. This cyclic twisting can quickly fatigue and crack the blade roots, hub and axle of the turbines.

Vertical axis

Vertical-axis wind turbines (or VAWTs) have the main rotor shaft arranged vertically. Key advantages of this arrangement are that the turbine does not need to be pointed into the wind to be effective. This is an advantage on sites where the wind direction is highly variable. VAWTs can utilize winds from varying directions.

It is difficult to mount vertical-axis turbines on towers, meaning they are often installed nearer to the base on which they rest, such as the ground or a building rooftop. This can provide the advantage of easy accessibility to mechanical components. However, wind speed is slower at a lower altitude, so less wind energy is available for a given size turbine. Air flow near the ground and other objects can create turbulent flow, which can introduce issues of vibration, including noise and bearing wear which may increase the maintenance or shorten the service life. In designs that do not have helical rotors significant torque variation will occur.

Extensive research on wind turbines carried out in the late 1970s and 1980s by the Department of Energy included some vertical axis designs; none of these designs succeded in the marketplace due to inherent downfalls of this design. "...when it came down to cost of electricity as a result of efficiency, reliability, and economy of materials, verticals could not compete with horizontals" ^[14] In addition, many of the claims of current vertical axis wind turbine manufacturers are unsubstantiated or are incorrect.

VAWT subtypes

30 m Darrieus wind turbine in the Magdalen Islands

Darrieus wind turbine 

"Eggbeater" turbines. They have good efficiency, but produce large torque ripple and cyclic stress on the tower, which contributes to poor reliability. Also, they generally require some external power source, or an additional Savonius rotor, to start turning, because the starting torque is very low. The torque ripple is reduced by using three or more blades which results in a higher solidity for the rotor. Solidity is measured by blade area over the rotor area. Newer Darrieus type turbines are not held up by guy-wires but have an external superstructure connected to the top bearing.

A helical twisted VAWT.

Giromill

A subtype of Darrieus turbine with straight, as opposed to curved, blades. The cycloturbine variety has variable pitch to reduce the torque pulsation and is self-starting.^[15] The advantages of variable pitch are: high starting torque; a wide, relatively flat torque curve; a lower blade speed ratio; a higher coefficient of performance; more efficient operation in turbulent winds; and a lower blade speed ratio which lowers blade bending stresses. Straight, V, or curved blades may be used.

12 m Windmill with rotational sails in Osijek, Croatia

Savonius wind turbine 

These are drag-type devices with two (or more) scoops that are used in anemometers, Flettner vents (commonly seen on bus and van roofs), and in some high-reliability low-efficiency power turbines. They are always self-starting if there are at least three scoops. They sometimes have long helical scoops to give a smooth torque.

VAWT advantages

• A massive tower structure is less frequently used, as they are more frequently mounted with the lower bearing mounted near the ground, making it easier to maintain the moving parts.
• Designs without yaw mechanisms are possible with fixed pitch rotor designs.
• They have lower wind startup speeds than HAWTs. Typically, they start creating electricity at 6 m.p.h. (10 km/h).^[16]
• They may be built at locations where taller structures are prohibited.
• VAWTs situated close to the ground can take advantage of locations where mesas, hilltops, ridgelines, and passes funnel the wind and increase wind velocity.^[17]
• They may have a lower noise signature.

VAWT disadvantages

• Most produce energy at only 50% of the efficiency of HAWTs in large part because of the additional drag that they have as their blades rotate into the wind.
• A VAWT that uses guy-wires to hold it in place puts stress on the bottom bearing as all the weight of the rotor is on the bearing. Guy wires attached to the top bearing increase downward thrust in wind gusts. Solving this problem requires a superstructure to hold a top bearing in place to eliminate the downward thrusts of gust events in guy wired models.
• While the parts are located on the ground, they are also located under the weight of the structure above it, which can make changing out parts nearly impossible without dismantling the structure if not designed properly.
• Having rotors located close to the ground where wind speeds are lower due to wind shear, they may not produce as much energy at a given site as a HAWT with the same footprint or height.
• Because they are not commonly deployed due mainly to the serious disadvantages mentioned above, they appear novel to those not familiar with the wind industry. This has often made them the subject of wild claims and investment scams over the last 50 years.^[18][19]

Other designs

Besides horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines, some unconventional designs have also been created.

Turbine design and construction

Components of a horizontal-axis wind turbine

Wind turbines are designed to exploit the wind energy that exists at a location. Aerodynamic modeling is used to determine the optimum tower height, control systems, number of blades{fact|april 2009} and blade shape.

Wind turbines convert wind energy to electricity for distribution. Conventional horizontal axis turbines can be divided into three components.

• The rotor component, which is approximately 20% of the wind turbine cost, includes the blades for converting wind energy to low speed rotational energy. These blades are usually made of composite fiber materials, and are increasingly being coated with specialized epoxy resins to further protect them and offer higher efficiency.
• The generator component, which is approximately 34% of the wind turbine cost, includes the electrical generator, the control electronics, and most likely a gearbox component for converting the low speed incoming rotation to high speed rotation suitable for generating electricity.
• The structural support component, which is approximately 15% of the wind turbine cost, includes the tower and rotor yaw mechanism.^[20] Most of the structural components for today's turbines are made of steel and specially painted to inhibit corrosion.

Unconventional wind turbines

One E-66 wind turbine at Windpark Holtriem, Germany, carries an observation deck, open for visitors. Another turbine of the same type, with an observation deck, is located in Swaffham, England.

A series of lighter-than-air wind turbines are in development in Canada by Magenn Power. They deliver power to the ground by a tether system.^[21]

Wind turbines may also be used in conjunction with a large vertical solar updraft tower to extract the energy due to air heated by the sun. Or as part of wave powered generators where air displaced by waves drives turbines.^[22]

Small wind turbines

A small wind turbine being used at the Riverina Environmental Education Centre near Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia

Small wind turbines may be as small as a fifty-watt generator for boat or caravan use. Small units often have direct drive generators, direct current output, aeroelastic blades, lifetime bearings and use a vane to point into the wind. Larger, more costly turbines generally have geared power trains, alternating current output and are actively pointed into the wind. Aeroelastic blades for large wind turbines are being researched^{[citation needed]}.

Record-holding turbines

The world's largest turbines are manufactured by the Northern German companies Enercon and REpower. The Enercon E-126 delivers up to 6 MW, has an overall height of 198 m (650 ft) and a diameter of 126 meters (413 ft). The Repower 5M delivers up to 5 MW, has an overall height of 183 m (600 ft) and has a diameter of 112 m (367 ft).

The turbine closest to the North Pole is a Nordex N-80 in Havøygavlen near Hammerfest, Norway. The turbines currently operating closest to the South Pole are two Enercon E-30 in Antarctica, used to power the Australian Research Division's Mawson Station,^[23] although a modified HR3 turbine from Northern Power Systems operated at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in 1997 and 1998.^[24]

Matilda was a wind turbine located on Gotland, Sweden. It produced a total of 61.4 GW·h in the 15 years it was active. That is more renewable energy than any other single wind power turbine had ever produced to that date. It was demolished on June 6, 2008.

The world's highest wind turbine of company DeWind is located in the Andes/Argentina to 4,100 metres (13,000 ft) above sea level. Turbine type D8.2 - 2000 kW / 50 Hz was used for that site. This turbine has a new drive train concept with a special torque converter (WinDrive) of the company Voith and a synchronous generator. The WKA was put into operation in December 2007 and has supplied the local gold mine with electricity since then.^[25][26]

Advantages and disadvantages

Livestock ignore wind turbines,^[27] and continue to graze as they did before wind turbines were installed.

Wind turbine development has both positive and negative environmental impacts.

Wind energy system operations do not generate air or water emissions and do not produce hazardous waste. Nor do they deplete natural resources such as coal, oil, or gas, or cause environmental damage through resource extraction and transportation, or require significant amounts of water during operation. Wind's pollution-free electricity can help reduce the environmental damage caused by power generation in the U.S. and worldwide.^[28]

Wind turbines consume no fuel, and emit no air pollution, unlike fossil fuel power sources. The energy consumed to manufacture and transport the materials used to build a wind power plant is equal to the new energy produced by the plant within a few months of operation.^[29]

Wind power is an intermittent power source. The power production from a wind turbine may increase or decrease dramatically over a short period of time with little or no warning. In the absence of large scale energy storage, or extra geographically dispersed turbines, the balance of the grid must be able to quickly compensate for this change.

The economics of wind turbines can be challenging as well.^[30] With high quality wind resources often located in areas inhospitable to people,^[31] logistics and transmission capacity can introduce significant obstacles to new installations.^[32] However, in the UK, new offshore wind farms are being located adjacent to population centres. The London Array is an example of this. The new Whitelee Wind Farm is located 15 kilometers (9 miles) outside of Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city.

The impact of wind turbines on wildlife has often been cited as a disadvantage of wind installations. Wind turbines can pose a danger to birds and bats, both directly and by displacement. Early installations such as the Altamont Pass installation used short steel towers with high rotor speeds, leading to high numbers of bird deaths. Studies of modern monolithic tower structures have shown lower impacts on bird populations. The Black Law Wind Farm has received praise from the RSPB for benefiting wildlife.

Some individuals living in very close proximity to large turbine installations have voiced complaints about their visual impact.^[33] Complaints about noise have also been made. However, local residents near the Ardrossan Wind Farm have found wind turbines to be "silent workhorses" which are impressive looking, and bring a calming effect to the town.^[34]

Some opponents of wind turbines claim that turbines produce infrasound; however, measurements of wind turbine noise signatures have found that the sound pressure levels produced are too low to have any effect.^[35][36]

See also

Sustainable development portal

References

Further reading

• BBC News,"Wind farms 'must take root in UK", http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4560139.stm, BBC News, Copyright 2007
• Tony Burton, David Sharpe, Nick Jenkins, Ervin Bossanyi: Wind Energy Handbook, John Wiley & Sons, 1st edition (2001), ISBN 0-471-48997-2
• Darrell, Dodge, Early History Through 1875, TeloNet Web Development, http://telosnet.com/wind/early.html, Copyright 1996-2001
• David, Macaulay, New Way Things Work, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Copyright 1994-1999, pg.41-42
• awea.org myths vs. facts sheet

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wind turbine

• Wind Energy and the Environment
• Wind Projects
• Guided tour on wind energy
• Wind Energy Technology World Wind Energy Association
• Wind turbine simulation, National Geographic
• Domestic and Commercial wind turbine directory and information wiki, SustainableX.com
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Wind Energy

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