SEP 09

I was talking to a representative of the offshore wind farm at Scoby Sands, Gt Yarmouth and I said at least you didn't get lots objections, as it is at sea.
He laughed and listed all the various groups that had objections. So it seems you get still get Nimby objectors, even at sea!!

That Grimshaw generator is one massive bit of kit, although the output seems low for the size. But apparently vertical generators are inherently less efficient, with vibration and bearing problems.

It depends on how far out at sea the things are. They're discussing putting these generators so far out that they would hardly be specs on the horizon. That, I think, would put the nimbers to rest

I really think that we have yet to see the final, best design of a wind generator. I think most of the criticism of the various designs is unreasonable though, given the alternative is smog-creating power plants.

This Grimshaw giant is enormous. Even so enormous that it will be VERY expensive to manufacture and to build. And a capacity of 9 MW is compaired with the size of this thing very little. In contrary of what this artikel states, there are already several wind turbine generators with a capacity of 5 - 6 MW (Enercon, Repower, Vestas) and it is believed and very likely that in 2010 there will be wind turbines of 10 MW. This wind turbines are way smaller than this Grimshaw, 125m tower and 125m rotor diameter. So these are very much more economical than this Grimshaw fantasy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon

perhaps if wind gens were a less visable colour? like green for land,blue for ocean or even camoflaged instead of stark white,a colour more suited to arctic backgrounds.

Why Micro? Because it a large fraction of the cost of electricity is delivering it to the point of consumption. If you can use local turbines to eliminate some of this load then the grid and other infrastructure related investment can drop. The other is the micro approach when effectively designed allows use by a larger group of people who would be unwilling to tackle larger projects.

The Mega scale units are ideal to provide municipal scale power but there is still going to be an issue of matching loads for consumption to peak production. Readily adoptable micro designs will help especially if used for direct cooling which allows for easy storage.

We have been building micro level turbines originally modeled on high pressure blowers. They use many of the same physics as Savonius type turbines but also have specially shaped wings to take advantage of the air foil lift of the of the Darrieus type machine.

We choose a horizontal mounting mechanism so we could keep the turbine blade close to the roof (only 2 foot tall) what we have seen is a dramatic increase in wind speed caused by the funneling of air over pitched roofs being squeezed between the roof and the horizontal wind being accelerated via the Venturi effect. This design is more difficult to aim but in most mountain canyon and coastal environments the wind tends to blow in two predictable directions which reverse once per day.

Our use was is predominantly to operate a mechanical compressive chiller intended to be installed in areas where there is no electricity available. As a result we where looking to maximize torque over speed which this design seems to do quite well. We use a centrifuge force model that allows the system to turn with zero loads at low speeds and starts transferring ever larger amounts of force into the compressive chiller as speed ramps up which also provides automatic speed management. On a larger scale it looks like it could chill sufficient water to cool most 2 and 3 story buildings at least in areas with at least 4 to 5 hours of 9MPH wind per day.

Our first product target is a 5 cubic foot freezer that is entirely wind powered and can be installed in under 4 hours by the average handyman and which will easily withstand 100MPH winds. This is an example of the micro versus the macro. I think there is a need for both but wide spread adoption of the micro may help acceptance of the macro scale units. Its main market will be providing a limited amount of chilling to keep perishable foods safe during the 96 hours of power loss caused by common hurricanes as a result it has to withstand the hurricane and keep on working.

I like this idea, but I found a blog that advocates large machines that don't necessarily have large components like this one does. I think maybe the Aerogenerator idea can be combined with the ideas in this blog post:

http://salientwhiteelephant.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/100-megawatt-direct-drive-darrieus/