Windstrument Wind Turbine Provides Renewable Energy With its Orchid-like Design

Asahi Kasei Plastics N.A. is working with Unified Energies International to develop the Windstrument, a wind turbine that aims to bring affordable renewable energy to the world.

The Windstrument is developed for both residential use and utility-scale projects, including entire communities, industrial centers, and agricultural groups. The rooftop or pole-mounted system is affordable, quiet, powerful, bird-safe, and scalable. The device was extensively tested in Jacobs/Ford Detroit wind tunnel and field tested for over 3 years in one of the harshest climates on earth. Thanks to its beautiful orchid-like design (which can be adapted to local environments), the Windstrument is anything but an eyesore.



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“No Evidence” that Wind Turbine Syndrome Actually Exists

If we want wind to continue growing, more turbines will need to be placed in our communities and close to our backyards. And that will inevitably cause more social friction.

Wind supporters cannot discount concerns from local residents about noise and visual impact. With proper communication between developers and communities, many of the potential conflicts can be mitigated or avoided.

But there’s a huge difference between concerns of neighbors to wind projects and the faux medical conditions pushed by advocates who claim turbines are a serious threat to human health.

Although no conclusive research has shown that wind farms cause health problems, many anti-wind groups have pushed the idea that “Wind Turbine Syndrome” is a widespread problem – elevating legitimate siting concerns to scare tactics.

A new study released this week by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection finds that “there is no evidence for a set of health effects…that could be characterized as ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome.’” The supposed health impacts pushed by wind opponents include mental health problems, heart disease and vertigo.

The Department’s Panel was comprised of independent experts in a range of fields associated with the possible health impact of exposure to wind turbines. They explored scientific literature, reports, popular media and public comments and concluded that there was no scientific basis for claims about Wind Turbine Syndrome:

While the panel recommended more research on the impact of “very loud turbines” that could disrupt sleep patterns of some individuals (even though they write that a “‘very quiet wind turbine’ would not likely disrupt even ‘the lightest of sleepers’ at that same distance”), the researchers debunk the broad-based claims about Wind Turbine Syndrome:

There is insufficient evidence that the noise from wind turbines is directly… causing health problems or disease.  Claims that infrasound from wind turbines directly impacts the vestibular system have not been demonstrated scientifically. Available evidence shows that the infrasound levels near wind turbines cannot impact the vestibular system.

The study failed to produce any concrete evidence that “flicker” caused by the shadows of rotating blades causes epileptic seizure, or that turbines cause “pain and stiffness, diabetes, high blood pressure, tinnitus, hearing impairment, cardiovascular disease, [or] headache/migraine.”

The researchers concluded that the most dangerous problem in Massachusetts was from ice falling off turbines.



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Prototype to Achieve Vertical Turbine Wind Energy in Cities

 Its design, which has been the result of three years of engineering work and research, allowing you to become a giant screen advertising. What has made ​​it an "invention" that has captured the interest of entrepreneurs and investors from Saudi Arabia to Germany.

One of the creators of these wind turbines, Jacob Jimenez, explained that a new space covers renewable energy wind because it is "among the large wind farms and small machines from one to ten kilowatts used to small self-consumption", the two current options.

Their system is capable of generating 100 kilowatts, enough power to light a great avenue of the city with LED lights or to supply a development of twenty houses.

The cost of each turbine is about 600,000 euros, with easy installation, as Jacob has said Jimenez.


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Zero-Blade -NewType of Wind Turbine Blades!

 When it comes to the future of wind energy, a company thinks of cost savings and efficiency. Thus, Tunisia has established a new technology called Zero-Blade. New type of wind turbine blades can not be twice as efficient without being a danger to birds

But what's that Zero-Blade technology? The knives are replaced by a candle-shaped body while hub and gearbox are eliminated, thereby increasing the efficiency of the devices existing wind power conversion.

According to the company an average wind turbine captures only a 30 or 40%, while the turbine is said to Saphon 2.3 times more efficient. Additionally, it is expected to reduce the cost of 45% less than a conventional turbine, mainly due to the fact that no sheets, cube, and with no gears in the units.

The most important of the Zero-Blade is the storage of energy. Most of the kinetic energy can be stored (via a hydraulic accumulator) or can be converted into electricity by a hydraulic motor and a generator. "We have developed several prototypes.  

We are in our second-generation prototype. We did the test and the second is twice as efficient as a three-bladed turbine in terms of production is at least 50% cheaper. "Commented Labaied Hassine, one of its creators.

The company is now looking for manufacturing partners for the turbine to market.




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Wind Turbine in Scotland Bursts Into Flames During Hurricane Force Winds

Powerful winds have been howling through the UK for the past couple days, and one $3 million wind turbine was an unexpected casualty of the storm. A 328-foot tall turbine in Ardrossan, North Ayrshire, Scotland burst into flames after high winds caused the blades to start turning too fast. Most turbines are built with mechanisms that shut their generators off if winds become too strong but it looks like this Ardrossan turbine lost control and blew through any such safety precautions.

“This was a small fire which lasted a short time,” a spokesman for RenewableUK, which represents the UK wind industry, told ReChargeNews. The wind turbine was part of a 30MW 15-turbine farm that was sold in 2010 to Infinis for $77.4 million. Infinis is the largest producer of landfill gas in the UK and it decided to break into the wind industry with the Ardrossan project, which bumped the company’s total wind capacity to 75MW. The Ardrossan wind farm supplies green energy to over 20,000 homes in Scotland.

The wind farm was built in 2005 and expanded in 2008 – there’s no word yet on whether the fiery turbine was part of the 2005 or 2008 construction. Though the fire didn’t cause major destruction and it seems to have been put out quite quickly, it does raise questions about the safety mechanisms built into turbines. Most turbines have mechanisms that turn off their generators in winds that reach upwards of 45 miles per hour and feather the blades inward so that the surface area facing the wind decreases.

Turbines are generally sold with the promise that they’ll withstand category 5 hurricanes but it looks like they can’t all walk the high wind walk. The silent, collapsable, Eco Whisper wind turbines from Renewable Energy Solutions Australia — they are built on hinges and can be lowered horizontally toward the ground to escape high winds — are looking more attractive after this recent blaze.

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Increasing the Efficiency of Wind Turbine Blades

To ensure wind turbines that are big in size work in a better manner, a new kind of air-flow technology may soon be introduced. Apart from other aspects, it will focus on efficiency of blades used in the wind turbines. The technology will help in increasing the efficiency of these turbines under various wind conditions. This is a significant development in the area of renewable energy after new wind-turbine power generation capacity got added to new coal-fired power generation in 2008.

Testing new systems to optimize the efficiency of wind turbines and their blades
Syracuse University researchers Guannan Wang, Basman El Hadidi, Jakub Walczak, Mark Glauser and Hiroshi Higuchi are testing new intelligent-system based active control methods with the support from the U S Department of Energy through the University of Minnesota Wind Energy Consortium. They record data in an intelligent controller after getting a rough idea of the flow conditions over the blade surfaces from surface measurement. This helps them implement real-time actuation on the blades. In this way, not only the efficiency of wind turbine system is increased but the airflow can also be managed.

Advantages of new systems to optimize the efficiency of wind turbines and their blades

They reduce noise.They reduce vibration.

New developments that are being worked out to make wind turbines and blades more efficient

The overall working scope of the wind turbine can be enlarged by using the flow control on the outboard side of the blade beyond the half radius. Attempts are being made to increase the rated output power without increasing the level of operating range.An anechoic chamber is being set-up to measure and define the effects of flow control on the noise spectrum of the wind turbine.To know the airfoil lift and drag characteristics with suitable flow control while exposed to large-scale flow unsteadiness, efforts are being made to characterize airfoil in an anechoic wind tunnel facility at Syracuse University.Scientists are also trying to attain a greater efficiency by placing blades at various angles through wind tunnel tests of 2.5 megawatt turbine airfoil surfaces and computer simulations.

Drawbacks of wind energy turbines and their blades
The blades face a lot of challenge while beating the air. Scientists at the University of Minnesota are looking forward to erect this process called drag by placing these small grooves or triangular riblets scored into a coating on the surface of the turbine blade. The small groves of the size between 40 to 225 microns make the blade look smooth. When used in an aero plane, the riblets were very successful. With their basic structure being the same as the wings of the plane, they were able to reduce the drag by 6 percent in aircrafts. But since the turbine blades have a thick cross section close to the hub and there is a lot of chaos at the ground, this technology failed in wind turbines.

Anything working on wind energy including wind turbines needs a steady wind flow to function properly. The wind turbine blades, when confronted with extreme conditions, wear out very fast.

The design of wind turbines is not considered appropriate, despite the fact that the cost of making power through them has reduced.

Though wind energy turbines, their blades and the riblets may have some drawbacks, they can still be considered as a very efficient and reliable source of energy. Keeping this in mind, a meeting has been arranged in Long Beach, CA by American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics to assess the ways to enable the best use of wind turbines. Also, a project to use riblets to increase wind turbine efficiency by 3 percent is being worked upon by Roger Arndt, Leonardo P. Chamorro and Fotis Sotiropoulos from University of Minnesota.

What do you think?

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