Connect with us

Genel

Wind energy in the new world: Shifting to micro power plants

Published

on

 

Comparisons between renewable energy and fossil sources can be made from a variety of perspectives like carbon emissions, water usage, operation & maintenance and investment costs but prevalence is not commonly considered as a parameter. We are facing an attack or war more often then before now and it makes the “security” is everything of life so; the security of energy supply also stays in the middle of our reality.

 

Coal, like other fossil fuels, is a highly localized source of energy, found underneath less than 5 percent of the world’s land area [1].  Wind, by contrast, is ubiquitous. With the exception of heavily forested areas of the Amazon, Congo, and southeast Asia, wind is available for conversion to useful energy in nearly every corner of the globe. Moreover, these wind resources are enormous, the estimated 250 trillion watts of global wind power is 20 times greater than total global power consumption [2].

Centralized, big power plants getting be a clear target and risky cracks than a solution due to the risks of terrorism, wars and economic crises for modern cities. It can be foreseen that new energy production trends will shifting to the micro power plants which can work as off-grid islands, located in the area of consumers to avoid any losses caused by energy transmission lines. In this utopia, centralized power plants supply energy for only public areas, besides the private areas are powered by small size, micro power plants. So, new-world-scenario includes no security risks and no energy losses by transmissions. Additionally, energy prices are not a considered point any more. It is only needed a renewable energy source which should be diffused on the all points of the world so; wind is the best solution again !

To what can we ascribe this dichotomy between the abundance of wind energy resources and the limited adoption of existing wind energy technologies? Many economic, infrastructural, regulatory, and cultural issues contribute. Regarding to Dabiri et al. a root cause is the extant paradigm of wind energy generation, one that relies on power generation by a few, increasingly large wind conversion machines [4]. This centralized approach to power generation arose following the Industrial Revolution [5]. Projection of these approach to the wind industry can be followed by the improvement of hub heights, blade lengths and more -empty- spaced wind farm sites.  Spacing between turbines are increasing with increment of the turbine capacities for the minimizing aerodynamic interactions. To maintain 90% of the performance of isolated horizontal axis wind turbine, the turbines in a horizontal axis wind turbine farm must be spaced 3–5 turbine diameters apart in the cross-wind direction and 6–10 diameters apart in the downwind direction [6] [7]. The power density of such wind farms, defined as the power extracted per unit land area, is between 2 and 3 W/m2 [8].


Now, the question is: “Is it possible to get more than 2-3 W/m-2 from the wind farms?” To answer YES, it is needed to reconsider traditional ways to generate electricity from wind. Scientist from USA showed that it is possible to generate 3-4 times more energy from same area by using vertical axis wind turbines [5]. Vertical axis wind turbines don’t need any yaw mechanism and their mostly preferred type is straight bladed Darrieus wind turbines which are named by its investor Georges Jean Marie Derrieus who has the first known patent in 1931 [9].

Even if vertical axis wind turbine has more advantages then the horizontal ones, like freedom from the wind direction so no need to yaw mechanism, development works are focused mainly on horizontal axis wind turbines because of complex aerodynamic flows occurred in the vertical axis wind turbines. Limited knowledge of these complex flows inside of the vertical axis wind turbines can be accepted as one of the biggest obstacle for the commercial improvements.

Promising recent studies and all economic & politic issues mention in the beginning are highlight the importance of vertical axis wind turbines and seems that vertical axis wind turbines will be an essential part of both micro size power plants and new generation wind farms in the near future. As Assoc. Prof. Z. Haktan Karadeniz mentioned on his study, vertical axis wind turbine technology will be developed more rapidly as a result of the acceptance the concept of footprint power density. These improvements will might be a milestone for the paradigm shift in wind energy [11]. It is quite possible to see more micro power plants in the urban sites and use empty ares in wind farms in short / medium term by the improvement of vertical axis wind turbines.

 

 

REFERENCES 

[1] World Energy Council, Survey of Energy Resource 2010 and Energy Information Administration

[2] Jacobson, M. Z., and Cristina L. A. “Saturation wind power potential and its implications for wind energy.” Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences 109.39 (2012): 15679-15684.

[3] http://www.vaisala.com/Vaisala%20Documents/Scientific%20papers/Vaisala_global_wind_map.pdf

[4] Dabiri, J. O., Greer, J. R., Koseff, J. R., Moin, P., & Peng, J. (2015). A new approach to wind energy: Opportunities and challenges.

In AIP Conference Proceedings (pp. 51–57). http://doi.org/10.1063/1.4916168

[5] Sulzberger, Carl. “Thomas Edison’s 1882 Pearl Street Generating Station”, IEEE)

[6] Hau E 2006 Wind Turbines 2nd ed (New York: Springer)

[7] Sørensen B 2004 Renewable Energy: Its Physics, Engineering, Use, Environmental Impacts, Economy, and Planning Aspects

(New York: Academic)

[8] D. J. C. MacKay, Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air (UIT Cambridge Ltd., Cambridge, UK, 2009).

[9] Darrieus, G. J. M. (1931). Patent-Turbine having its rotating shaft transverse to the flow of the current. USA.

[10] Howell, R., Qin, N., Edwards, J., & Durrani, N. (2010). Wind tunnel and numerical study of a small vertical axis wind turbine.

Renewable Energy, 35(2), 412–422. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2009.07.025

[11] Karadeniz Z.H., Düşey eksenli rüzgar türbini araştırmalarında son gelişmeler, 8. Yenilenebilir Enerji Kaynakları Sempozyumu,

151-155, Adana, 2015

Prepared: İskender KÖKEY

Kintech Engineering

Trending

Copyright © 2011-2018 Moneta Tanıtım Organizasyon Reklamcılık Yayıncılık Tic. Ltd. Şti. - Canan Business Küçükbakkalköy Mah. Kocasinan Cad. Selvili Sokak No:4 Kat:12 Daire:78 Ataşehir İstanbul - T:0850 885 05 01 - info@monetatanitim.com