Wind Turbine Design - The Future?

I not put pencil to paper yet, but assumeing a standard height wind turbine, I suspect that your transmission to ground level will not transmit enough power with out being really huge, heavy, and expensive...

The main problem with current wind turbine design is the gear box. Typically a pretty complicated planetary gear hooked to an standard increaser, and then to the generator. There are now direct drive turbines that do away with the gearbox which look to be the wave of the future.

Since you have requested a critical review that is pretty much what you will receive. My apologies.

Getting the works down on the ground is good. A vertical turbine does this quite readily.

Your estimate of 2 blades = almost 2x the torque is in error. Check the actual lift data for the copter you mention or other resources.

That point is pretty much beside "the point". Getting the power out of the wind is not the problem controlling the power out is. Grid supplying windmills have to synchronize their power output with the grid they supply. Variable pitch mast mounted horizontal bladed wind turbines can do this fairly well after about 20 to 30 years of research and development.

Your hydraulic transmission system approach might be able to as well but you will have to prove it. Proving it cost large amounts of money.

The primary problem is one of constant demand mismatched to variable supply. In the case of AC power generation this basic problem which might be solved with a your hydrostatic transmission is coupled with a problem of "good is not good enough". The phase or preferably poly-phase of your output must match the grid very consistently which is really quite difficult no matter what the system design.

Your competition is a self contained unit that generates its full rated power output of well synchronized AC power at about 5 mph wind speed, but also generates that same amount of synchronized power at 20+ mph. You will have to find a way to controllably "waste" the same amount of per unit power, or figure out a way of using it.

Using it well means that effectively your generators capacity must be flexibly and shrink or grow by 3 fold or so while maintaining sync. This can be done. Has been done. No method tried so far has made it to commercial deployment.

Finding big consumers of DC power like aluminum refiners and easing their costs or carbon offset guilt taxes or some such might be a better approach if you want to go for a few commercially viable large scale power generating applications.

Otherwise dig into the electronic side of things, for example - if you had a two, or more, phase high frequency generator you possibly could rectify opposing legs through diodes while varying the strength of the field or rotor coils enough to create a composite two phase 60 cps synchronous generator that presented a variable load to the wind turbine such that the output varied in power with the available wind but the signal was continuously in sync, maybe...

Then your hydraulic accumulators would have something useful to do in absorbing a HUGE 60 cycle hum. This problem would be much reduced if every third turbine produced a two phases which were transformed to supply a different leg for the grid. But, even if this worked (no guarantees) the power produced still might not be smooth enough to qualify as a grid supply. (Yes, this IS a highly regulated market.)

OK, that was very critical. But, the information presented was hard won for me and freely shared with you in the hopes that you, or someone like you, really does solve some of these issues and soon and successfully produces a wind turbine design competitive to the ones currently available.

Been on vacation but on the subject of blade design:

I have not had the to do the math and research but forward swept blades and tip wing-lets (don't remember their name) would reduce drag and increase efficiency. I also came up with a cammed hub that feathered pitch in relation to wind pressure so storms and variable wind speed were accounted for. (packed away)

Your front and rear blades would not produce exact balanced power but extending the rear blades a fraction could balance the difference.

I agree that a generator on the top of the mast is not a optimal solution. My idea was to use ammonia to pump and store power and use phase change to maximize my power generation. (granted NH₃ has its issues)

2bits from

Brad

Your design produces too many additional complexities. Just a few are:

1. 2 contra-rotating blades interfere with eachother; you get double the complexity, but not double the power.

2. As all ship engineers know, big-power gearboxes are unreliable and prone to maintenance. All big modern ships eliminate gearboxes entirely.

3. The 2 blades balance eachother physically. But you need to design the tower to accept out of balance weights, if blades need maintenance. So you need a stronger tower.

4. The mass of the genset at the top also functions as a vibration dampener. Without it, you need an alternative = even stronger tower.

5. The grid network already functions as an energy storage system. You don't need the complexity of a very sophisticated hydraulic system.

6. Hydraulic motors are not reliable.

Ergo: direct drive, single genset, twin-blade, top-mounted towers.

Blade design has many possibilities, contra-rotating being one. I would favor controllable pitch and a simple design, but that's another topic.

I propose an air compressor (direct drive, if possible, variable displacement -- say a multicylinder piston type with some cylinders cut out for light winds) which is cooled with water injected in the intake, the output being a mixture of compressed air and steam. This keeps the heat of compression in the system and avoids wasting it. When the air expands, the steam condenses, reheating the air.

The output of several turbines (compressors) can be piped (insulated pipes) to a central storage container, from which the air/steam is sent to a "conventional" generator. Conceptually, one starts with a dirty old coal-fired power plant and pipes the air/steam into the former boiler. The wind turbines replace the coal, but most of the plant (boiler, turbine, generator, switch gear, etc., paid for) remains the same. Similarly, a diesel-electric generating set could be converted to run on compressed air/steam.

The storage capacity can be economically augmented by using old mines, dry wells, underwater bags (hydrostatic pressure containing the air), etc. to store "fuel" for times of low wind or high demand. The "secret" is large scale, where the volume to surface ratio is high and heat transfer is low.

I left the Royal Navy over 34 years ago, I was the very first OE Mechanician without brackets!!! Greetings. This will tell you exactly who I am if you need to know!!

I think most of the people have given you good reasons why you may want to think again. I personally prefer the Savonius turbine as it can be built to look like a building and appear to have no moving parts at the same time. Do some web research and I think you may be surprised. Also, the design lends itself to a "Home built" project.....

If you need some web addresses let me know, I have a few good ones that I have already bookmarked...

Greetings Fish head!!