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- Category: Articles
Braking Concepts for a Long Gear Lifetime
Wind energy is environmentally friendly, yet it is not without competition. Preferences can quickly change to other sources of energy if wind turbines turn out to be too expensive or technically insecure. Despite the competitive struggle the wind energy business has with other sources of energy, there is also competition among the turbine manufacturers. The last few years have provided a little time to relax from the disaster of gear damage that shook almost the entire business. Mostly it was constantly hard applied fail-safe brakes that caused the damage to stall regulated machines. Fortunately, things have changed, but there are emerging Asian countries where manufacturers should learn from mistakes and experience in Europe so that they do not repeat the mistakes.
By Andreas Gerken, Svendborg Brakes, Germany
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Wind energy is environmentally friendly, yet it is not without competition. Preferences can quickly change to other sources of energy if wind turbines turn out to be too expensive or technically insecure. Despite the competitive struggle the wind energy business has with other sources of energy, there is also competition among the turbine manufacturers. The last few years have provided a little time to relax from the disaster of gear damage that shook almost the entire business. Mostly it was constantly hard applied fail-safe brakes that caused the damage to stall regulated machines. Fortunately, things have changed, but there are emerging Asian countries where manufacturers should learn from mistakes and experience in Europe so that they do not repeat the mistakes.By Andreas Gerken, Svendborg Brakes, Germany
- Category: Articles
A New Generation of Oils for High Loaded Gears in Wind Power Stations
The performance of today’s wind turbines ranges from a few megawatts up to 10MW for prototypes already under development. With this increase in performance, the lubricant assumes an ever-greater importance, and it is a major element in the tribological system to be taken into account in the design of wind power stations. Only special lubricants are able to cope with the operating conditions of highly loaded components such as gears and enhance their reliability.By Dipl. Ing. Hermann Siebert, Klüber Lubrication München KG, Munich
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- Category: Articles
Wind Power Large-Scale Interconnection, Avoiding Gearbox Failures, and Cost Reduction
The potential advantages of GyroTorque for wind power generation were acknowledged by Garrad Hassan & Partners Ltd, UK, in their report titled Evaluation of GVT System for Wind Turbines dated 9 June 2004 and presentations at the Global Wind Power conferences held in Chicago (March 2004) and London (November 2004) and recommended further design study. This article briefly looks at how GTCVT works and how these potential benefits can be realised using GTCVT.By Muthuvetpillai Jegatheeson, Director, Gyro Energy Limited, New Zealand
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- Category: Articles
Failures Provide Valuable Information to Enhance Turbine Availability
A wind turbine is expected to run day and night for 20 years at an availability of 95–98% and only require maintenance every 6 months. As turbines get bigger they also tend to be more complex as a result of optimisations. The cost of having a turbine that is not producing when it is windy is increasing with turbine size. For that reason there is a strong need to identify and implement solutions that will make the turbines run close to 100% during windy periods.
A wind turbine is expected to run day and night for 20 years at an availability of 95–98% and only require maintenance every 6 months. As turbines get bigger they also tend to be more complex as a result of optimisations. The cost of having a turbine that is not producing when it is windy is increasing with turbine size. For that reason there is a strong need to identify and implement solutions that will make the turbines run close to 100% during windy periods.
By Agner Hansen, Product-Quality, Denmark
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- Category: Articles
Atmospheric Stability Significant for Wind Turbine Energy and Sound Production
Atmospheric stability has a significant influence on the wind profile, or the degree of increase of wind velocity with height. For tall wind turbines atmospheric stability is not a ‘small perturbation’ but a major factor determining the energy yield as well as the noise impact in the environment. Noise complaints and recent research show that noise from modern, tall, variable speed wind turbines is not a relatively featureless sound increasing steadily with near-ground wind speed, but – in a stable atmosphere – a thumping sound relatively independent of near-ground wind speed.
By Frits van den Berg, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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Atmospheric stability has a significant influence on the wind profile, or the degree of increase of wind velocity with height. For tall wind turbines atmospheric stability is not a ‘small perturbation’ but a major factor determining the energy yield as well as the noise impact in the environment. Noise complaints and recent research show that noise from modern, tall, variable speed wind turbines is not a relatively featureless sound increasing steadily with near-ground wind speed, but – in a stable atmosphere – a thumping sound relatively independent of near-ground wind speed. By Frits van den Berg, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
- Category: Articles
A Wind System using the Bernoulli Principle
Green Energy Technologies (GET), a company based in Akron, Ohio, USA, is introducing a unique wind system (with 1MW, 500kW, 100kw and custom rooftop models) called the SmartEnergy Spire, which creates a ‘wind tunnel’ effect forcing the wind around the Spire. Using the Bernoulli principle, the Spire design creates an efficiency of 1.676 two times the throughput over a traditional wind turbine using ambient wind.By Dr Majid Rashidi and Mark Cironi, Green Energy Technologies, USA
- A Motion Compensated Platform for Wind Turbine Maintenance
- Zephyr’s ‘Airdolphin’
- Increased Performance by Condition Monitoring of Rotor Blades
- Offshore Winds Observed from Space
- Improving Wind Energy’s Market Penetration
- Measurement at 80 Metres with a New Design Wind Mast
- Turbine Shortages and Rising Costs Stall Development
- Aerodynamic Damping
- Sharing the Sea
- Offshore Wind Farm Layout Optimisation
- New BAUER Flydrill system
- Investigation of Stability Effects of an Offshore Wind Turbine
- AeroBlade
- Geotechnical Analysis Requirements
- Electric Vehicles with V2G
- The Benefits of Cooperation
- The Atmospheric Vortex Engine
- Acoustical Behaviour of a Wind Turbine
- Railwind Turbine
- Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Damage to wind turbines from typhoons
- Deep Offshore Wind Farms
- Economics of Intermittent Wind Generation
- The Aeolus Project
- A New Control Concept for Offshore Wind Farms
- Offshore Potential in Japan
- The Concrete Gravity Concept
- Trends in Rotor Blade Design
- Renewable Connections on the Web
- Small Wind Turbines for Rural Areas
