As an avid proponent of decentralized energy I must admit to a little schadenfreude when I read articles about big wind turbines and their many inherent problems. Now a company has developed a device to anticipate the direction and velocity of wind to allow big turbines to feather their props and orient more directly into the wind.
Wind turbines lose roughly 1 percent of their operating efficiency for every degree their blades are out of alignment with the oncoming wind.
The inability of these massive turbines to handle fluctuating air currents, manage turbulence or even rotate in anything but a narrow band of wind speeds has led to any number of ‘work-arounds’ and adaptations… anything but scrap the whole concept and go with something new. So a new laser device has been developed to work around the problem.
Catch the Wind claims that its laser system can boost turbine power output by 10 percent by improving orientation accuracy. The pitch of the blades can also be adjusted in advance of the wind to reduce wear and tear on turbine gearbox components and blades, lowering repair and maintenance costs by up to 10 percent and extending the operating life of a wind farm, the company says.
Of course, the biggest hurdle to wind energy, the kind produced by the 7MW behemoth in this photo is lack of transmission lines to deliver the power. T Boone Pickens is calling on Congress to approve a massive build out of 19,000 miles of 765KV lines crossing the country in 1/3 mile wide swaths to produce 20% of our energy from wind by 2030.
Placing small wind turbines like the V-LIM and the Marquiss Wind Power ducted fan which can handle turbulent air and operate and any windspeed can produce power at the point of consumption without any transmission lines or other environmental footprint. 1000 small 25kw turbines atop commercial rooftops in Coos County are the equivalent of a 250MW wind farm… all tied in at the distribution level. And they don’t even whack birds.
