Wind has been a good source of renewable energy for more than a decade now. The growth however has been slow in this sector, owing to the scarcity of high wind areas. Wind turbines till now have been manufactured to harness the higher speed winds on land and sea. As the regions with favorable conditions have already been developed into wind farms, wind turbine manufacturers have now been pushed to turn their attention towards low wind areas. A recent EU legislation and the general trend in government policies in many countries favoring renewable energy has also led to new turbine designs to bring more land into scope.
Wind energy is directly proportional to wind speed and radius of turbine. This means that any decrease in wind speeds should be compensated with an increase in the turbine radius by the same amount in order to produce the same amount of energy.
This makes the 'slow' wind turbines 'huge', with almost the span of a football field! Several manufacturers have already started to produce these new low-speed turbines. Siemens, Vestas, and Nordex all recently released new, large wind turbines directed at utilizing slow winds. Last year, General Electric released its largest slow wind turbine.
Advances in materials and construction engineering has made these huge turbines a possibility. Different proprietary manufacturing processes are being used by the manufacturers to improve the aerodynamics of the blades which in turn increases efficiency of power generation. Also reducing the weight of these blades is a key priority. Problems of transportation of blades for land based installations are yet to be overcome by manufacturing them in parts and later assembling them on site. For offshore wind farms, such as on seas and coastal areas, turbine size is not an issue.
Now that the technology has advanced, making more land viable, the environmental effects of these large turbines have to be given due consideration. Wind turbines are already known to be a source of noise pollution and bird killers.
Wind Energy originally published at Technology Zone.
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