NEW EFFICIENT AND COST SAVING WIND TURBINE

Details

Problem statement

Challenges to the large-scale implementation of wind energy include siting requirements such as wind availability, aesthetic and environmental concerns and land availability. Wind farms are most cost-effective in areas with consistent strong winds. A wind farm is a cluster of wind turbines (up to several hundred) erected in areas where there is a nearly steady prevalent wind; such areas generally occur near mountain passes. As seen in the diagrams below each erected wind turbine tower have the following components, Generator, Gear box, Controller, Power cable, Yaw drive, Yaw motor, Brake, Blade, rotor and others. Each of these components has high cost and electric power will not be generated without each ones. So each wind turbine tower cost high to erect and keep in mind that after each towers produce the electric power it needs to be collected, regulated and transmitted in to one system or power station for use or transmission to end users. This also adds big expense to it. When there is electrical and mechanical failures in each towers, maintenance personals have to climb up risking their lives every time to fix the electrical problem and this also adds more cost to the running cost.

Our Solution

This project is about building a new design wind turbine that is very efficient in generating electric power with very low cost in comparison to the existing technology. The main working principle of this new mechanism is instead of each wind turbine towers generate electric power individually, each wind turbine towers (6 wind turbine towers in this design) combine their mechanical energy that is converted from the wind via the turbine blades in to one mechanical rotating shaft energy that is collected with a mechanic al system to be directed in to one generator to produce electric power. This will save cost big time because instead of using 6 generators, 6 gear boxes, 6 controllers, 6 power cables and etc, this system use 1 electric generator, 1 gear box, 1 controller, 1 power cable and 1 other components for every 6 wind turbine towers. It also saves electrical maintenance cost because all the electrical system will be on the ground that the maintenance personals or inspection team will not have to go up in to the tower. Combining the six mechanical in to one also produce same amount of energy because as they combine each towers, the torque will increase in multiplication of the number of the combined system. The other advantage of the mechanism is electric power collection is reduced in 1/5 because there will be one generator for every 6 tower. The transmission of the mechanical system is done by using gear transmission system composed of mainly bevel gear and sun-and-planet gear. The bevel gear is used first on the initial mechanical rotating shaft that is generated by the wind turbines blades from the wind to transfer the horizontal rotation shaft to vertical 90 degree shaft which is found inside the erected tower. Then the bevel gears also used again next to transfer the rotating mechanical shaft back to the horizontal axis. Then combination of bevel gear and sun-and-planet gear will be used at the third step to collect the entire mechanical rotating shafts of each wind turbine towers in to rotating shaft that is perpendicular to each incoming horizontal shaft which comes from the individual tower. Then this shaft will be connected to one gear box which finial be connected to a one generator.

Files

Discussions

phaseform wrote 08/06/2021 at 09:22

Also not to mention that the whole thing will need to move as one, which will create all kinds of competing forces (and conflicts with a core trait of individual towers in a wind farm, that being independent operation). Would be entertaining to see this attempted at any scale though, as an observer

Are you sure? yes | no

nidkid.blackmoon wrote 02/07/2021 at 01:21

This is unlikely to be as efficient as existing wind turbines, due to the mechanical energy lost due to bearing losses, as well as multiple right angle gear boxes. Additionally, the drive shafts down the tower length will not accommodate tower sway due to wind loading well, as rotating assemblies require precise alignment for proper and efficient function.

The rotating mass will also cause efficiency losses, as the inertia function will mean that variable wind speeds will not be efficiently captured, leading to a much narrower start up and operational band. Additionally, high power clutches would be needed to isolate towers for maintenance. Trying to improve renewable power designs is laudable, but this is at best a high-school level of design and engineering prowess.

Are you sure? yes | no

Anteneh Gashaw wrote 02/07/2021 at 06:56

@nidkid.blackmoon thank you for your comments. I appreciate your insights.

I hope your concerns will be answered in time and rest assured that with improved and perfected version of this concept, I will sell the product.

Some major power company I can't mention is helping me with the details of the design.

I will publish the progress in time mean while feel free to comment about the project in anyway you can as it will strengthen the project.

Are you sure? yes | no

NEW EFFICIENT AND COST SAVING WIND TURBINE

Description

Details

Files