| Summary of onshore wind farms | |
|---|---|
| Existing GWs of HAWT wind farms in state | 3.1 |
| GWs of HAWTs over 6.5m/s at 20m agl (projected) | 2.8 |
| % of wind farms over 6.5m/s at 20m agl | 93% |
HAWT: Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine
Copyright: Creative Commons BY-SA
“Worldwide wind capacity reached 456 GWs” and would likely grow at 8-10% in 2016, a slower pace than had been achieve in recent years. A growth of 50,000 MWs per year would be slow, and in 13 years, would result in the 1M+ MWs of installed world wide.
Bob Thomas’ first Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) was a proof of concept model built in 1976. He built it with modest funds and observed it operating in low winds.
The test turbine was mounted on a small trailer and pulled out of a hangar at the Camarillo Airport to see how it responded to the light breezes. We had a small handheld anemometer to measure wind speed. The rotor quickly responded to the light breezes starting in wind sof 5 mph or less. It easily self-started, which was encouraging.
The Windstar 530G was a three turbine array designed to test the coupled vortex effect, a phenomenon first hypothesized by Wind Harvest founder Bob Thomas in the early 1990’s. The array was placed in one of the highly energetic wind farms of San Gorgonio Pass Wind Resource Area in California.
The model 530 was designed for Chinese manufacturing, first starting with a prototype.
Wind Harvest Company’s Windstar 480-4 took the previous iteration, the Windstar 256 model, beefed it up, and increased its size by adding a third module and increased blade length from 8 to 10 feet and thus rotor height from 16 to 30 ft. This model also featured a newly designed drive train/generator/control system and brake.
Wind Harvest Company’s Windstar 480-4 took the previous iteration, the Windstar 256 model, beefed it up, and increased its size by adding a third module and increased blade length from 8 to 10 feet and thus rotor height from 16 to 30 ft. This model also featured a newly designed drive train/generator/control system and brake.
Wind Harvest Company’s Windstar 256 was a larger model than its predecessor with two stacked “modules” of blades attached to a central rotor mast. These changes were based on what was learned from the previous “Camarillo Model,” built in 1976. The prototype was mounted on a cement foundation in Sandberg, CA.
The Model 1066 was designed to be built in Harbin, China. However, the first prototype was made in Los Angeles with an all-Chinese crew from Harbin.
The turbine consisted of the following features:
A single large rotor has fewer blade/blade arm connections and a lower blade arm fairing reference area to blade reference area ratio. A higher overall averaged lift to drag ratio is expected for the 1066, which results in higher energy output.
Generating electricity from renewable energy sources is a major part of the UK Government’s strategy to tackle climate change and to develop business opportunities. It has set ambitious targets of generating 10% of all UK’s energy from renewable sources by 2010 with an aspiration to double this by 2020. Wind energy is expected to be a key contributor to these targets. There are concerns, however, that the construction of wind farms will have a negative effect on both Air Traffic Control (ATC) and Air Defence (AD) radars and many windfarm developments fail due to objections from radar…