Wind Energy Solution To Foreign Oil Addiction-
A research team in London has made an exciting breakthrough in the Development of a new ultra efficient wind turbine design.
Stormblade Turbine will help reduce Anglo-American dependency on foreign sources of energy. Increased power output of clean green energy was the driver behind the research and development.
Stormblade Turbine has the potential to convert up to 70% of wind power into electricity, double the current average. Operational wind speed is expected to be 7mph to >120mph, double the current average range.
The new design is less noisy and wildlife friendly. The propeller blades and all the moving parts are housed within the nacelle and therefore pose no danger to migrating birds or bats.
Problems typically encountered by existing wind turbines are:
o Limited Operational Wind Speed
o Wind Speed into Electrical Power conversion
o Instability caused by Precession
o Cost of Maintenance
o Downtime due to Maintenance
o Noise Pollution
o Return on Investment
o Impact on wildlife
High-efficiency wind turbines will win out over traditional windmill designs in all new installations. Existing wind generators are impractical in many areas because the available power grows as the cube of the average wind speed. A site with prevailing winds of 30 km/h is eight times as valuable as a site with only 15 km/h. Unfortunately existing wind generators have to be switched off at very high wind speeds.
When an existing turbine is spun by the wind, it adds a rotation to the wind, increasing the apparent wind on the blade. Since blades are really designed to work like an airplane wing, this increases the torque produced by the turbine. But this also increases the force in the wind direction on the blade and therefore on the tower. The mechanical stress is significantly higher when the turbine rotates. That's why wind turbines are stopped during high wind.
When it turns to face the wind, the turbine acts like a gyroscope. When the turbine pivots to face the wind, precession tries to twist the turbine into a forward or backward somersault. For each blade on a wind generator's turbine, precessive force is at a minimum when the blade is horizontal and at a maximum when the blade is vertical. This cyclic twisting can quickly fatigue and crack the blade roots, hub and axle of the turbine. This major historic design defect is equivalent to for example having to switch off Solar Panels when the sun is shining at it’s brightest, so as not to damage them. The new Stormblade wind turbine will overcome this efficiency bottleneck.
Primary and secondary research into the Wind Energy Industry as well as the Renewable Energy Market has identified a significantly underserved segment within it. The Stormblade Turbine is uniquely positioned to serve this segment of the market because of its improved efficiency and its reduced cost of maintenance.
A greener business world.
Innovation and new technology are pervasive in the modern economy. This is creating unprecedented opportunities to meet society's needs and aspirations with greatly reduced environmental impact.
This is not only about using cleaner and leaner technologies - although this is important. It is also about new ideas and improving the way things are designed, made, delivered, used and disposed. Providing greater value, performance and choice as well as reducing environmental impacts.
Society
The overall Impact of research breakthroughs within the area of wind energy is to contribute to establishing the necessary platform for making, in particular, the British energy system more sustainable. The necessary changes will have a positive impact on:
o the creation of high-tech jobs.
o competitiveness within energy technology.
o the global environment – including reduced CO2 emissions.
o security of supply – Britain can and should be self-sufficient in energy.
o the possibility of having more clean energy sources in synergy – wind energy, solar energy and bio fuels.
Greenhouse Gasses
The fundamental science of climate change.
The fundamentals of climate change have long been well understood because they involve the same basic physics that keeps the earth habitable. Heat trapping ‘greenhouse gases’ in the atmosphere (of which the two most important are water vapour and carbon dioxide, CO2) let through short-wave radiation from the sun but absorb the long-wave heat radiation coming back from the Earth’s surface and re-radiate it. These gases act like a blanket and keep the surface and the lower atmosphere about 33 degrees C warmer than it would be without them. The Earth’s greenhouse blanket is a good balance between the extremes of our neighbours: Mars, exposed without any greenhouse gases, is a frozen wasteland, whilst Venus remains trapped in a dense blanket of hot CO2.
Primarily through the burning of fossil fuels, and long-term deforestation, humans have been increasing the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, thickening the greenhouse blanket.
Perhaps the most clear, prominent and consistent indicator is the retreat of mountain glaciers, which has been a worldwide phenomenon. Impacts on ice are also clear around the poles. The Arctic ice cap is shrinking, whilst in Antarctica, massive calving of the Larsen Ice Shelf combined with rapid rise in local temperatures around the Antarctic peninsula has led scientists to predict its complete disappearance within decades. Another widely observed impact is the ‘bleaching’ of coral reefs caused by rising sea-surface temperatures.
Changes in extreme weather events potentially have the greatest impacts on humans. Warming increases evaporation and precipitation, and both aggregate rainfall and occurrences of ‘heavy precipitation events’ in northern mid-latitudes (e.g. Europe and the US) the principal cause of flooding, have increased in recent decades. In tropical regions, the potential for more intense hurricanes and typhoons increases in a warmer world.
What are the options?
Action should aim to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations ‘at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner’; and that action should be based on ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ between countries, with industrialised countries taking the lead in tackling the problem by aiming to ‘return their emissions to former levels’.
Longer term, the UK should develop technology and market options to achieve 2020 and 2050 aspirations and generate UK benefit. Wind power technologies will be required to meet the 2050 aspiration.
Renewable energy is a major source of clean energy required to achieve the Government’s 2050 carbon reduction aspiration (others include energy efficiency and reducing emissions from transport). Wind can make a major input to give the estimated contribution required from renewable energy needed to meet the UK 2050 carbon reduction aspiration. This technology could either be developed in the UK, or technology commercialised abroad could be deployed here.
There are a range of markets and applications for renewable energy technologies such as large-scale generation of power and/or heat, as well as building integrated systems and transport.
Onshore and Offshore Wind energy technologies have the potential to make a material contribution to emissions reductions targets and to be competitive under the current legislative framework by 2020.
Vision of Global Adoption
Sustainable development recognises the need to work with and protect the natural systems on which life on Earth depends and to encourage economic development that is socially equitable – for people at home and overseas.
The time has come to pursue a truly sustainable development path in both the developed and developing world, based on efficient use of sustainable, clean renewable energy, building new industries and creating millions of new jobs.
Wind energy can meet the challenge of climate change, and provide clean, affordable energy to the world’s emerging economies.
About Stormblade Turbines.
We are a leading and well-respected team of technical solution providers. Joseph JesuLoba has a long and distinguished career in supporting business as an independent consultant and business adviser with Business Growth Technologies Ltd.
Stormblade Turbines was founded in 2001 by Viktor Jovanovic PGCE, Computer Graphics from University of London and a BSc Hons in Computing London Guildhall University. The son of an Engineer and Inventor specialising in hydrodynamics and aerodynamics, he spent many years by his father’s side learning about engineering design. The wind turbine idea remained dormant until years later when the topic of renewable clean energy related to global warming became a burning issue.
Company: Stormblade Turbines
Tel: 07976 315 748
Email: vixhomebox@yahoo.com
Website:
News author name: Viktor Jovanovic
News author email: vixhomebox@yahoo.com
Submitted: 11 May 2006
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