BREAKTHROUGH IN WIND

Tilting At Wind Farms
January 7, 2009 (Science Daily)

“A way to make wind power smoother and more efficient that exploits the inertia of a wind turbine rotor could help solve the problem of wind speed variation…

“...Despites its deficiencies, a report from the US Department of Energy suggests that installed wind energy capacity could reach 300 gigawatts by 2030 to meet a fifth of the US electricity demand.

“…Asghar Abedini, Goran Mandic and Adel Nasiri at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Power Electronics and Motor Drives Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, have devised a solution to the electricity grid susceptibility to changes in wind speed.

click to enlarge

“…Simply put, they have created a braking control algorithm that adjusts the rotor speed so that when incoming wind power is greater than the average power, the rotor is allowed to speed up so that it can store the excess energy as kinetic energy rather than generating electricity. This energy is then released when the wind power falls below average.

"This approach, the team explains, precludes the need for external energy storage facilities such as capacitors and the additional infrastructure and engineering they entail. Their method also captures wind energy more effectively and so improves the overall efficiency of wind farming potentially reducing the number of turbines required at any given site…”

(Wind Power smoothing using rotor inertia aimed at reducing grid susceptibility)