Page 21 - North American Clean Energy January/February 2019 Issue

big cities, or areas with height restrictions due to municipal ordinances or nearby airports. Vertical turbines are silent. Bats and birds see them, and avoid them. Vertical turbines can grow with need (as opposed to need attracting use). And new, innovative power storage techniques, such as graphene based ultra-capacitors or compressed air, can store energy until it’s needed.
Vertical axis wind turbines are omni-directional. is means that, regardless of the direction the wind is coming from, a vertical axis system will capture that wind and turn it into energy. Large, horizontal axis units can pivot at the head, but responding quickly and repeatedly is
tricky for these designs.
A common criticism faced by vertical
axis wind turbines is that, regardless of how e cient the design may be, they will never be able to produce the same power as a taller, traditional unit of equal capacity. At a given height, wind power is related to the friction coe cient associated with the terrain characteristics around the location being measured. Flat prairie or bodies of water have very low friction coe cients (around 0.1). Under such circumstances, power generated will be similar. For high friction coe cient areas (around 0.4) in big cities, for example, its advantageous to be above the turbulent wind.
If a horizontal axis design is inherently better at capturing the greater wind power contained in the more laminar air ow at altitude, why have this discussion? Because vertical axis units do a very e ective job of lling the void that micro, or large-scale horizontal axis units can’t address.
e cut in speed for new vertical axis design units is lower, and optimal power can be generated at much lower wind speeds. ROI is in the range of 7 – 8 years; with a design life of greater than 60 years, vertical axis units o er tremendous
value. Power per acre is still greater than 1.5 MW. ere are many places around the world that are hesitant to embrace wind power for fear of having infrastructure destroyed during hurricanes and typhoons. Vertical axis units are robust and heavy, and have been tested in winds to 130 mph. Vertical axis units can e ectively power micro grids and buildings. ey work well on manned and unmanned o shore oil and gas platforms.
rough innovative engineering, vertical axis wind turbines have come into their own, and provide a viable and cost-e ective solution to the 10kW – 2.5MW market. With new and highly e cient scalable designs, and the ability to be placed in unconventional locations, vertical axis turbines can extract power where nothing else is suitable. Windy but environmentally sensitive locations - near migratory bird routes or bat roosts - can now be safely addressed. Areas where discreteness is desirable can now be serviced, while still maintaining the visual appeal. Reliable, scalable, and long lived, vertical axis wind turbines have earned their place in the burgeoning renewable energy and wind power marketplace.
Douglas Hirsh is Operations Manager and Vice President of Sales and Marketing for PROSTO Wind Power. Doug has spent a career working with leading edge electronics and control systems. Since 2014, Doug has focused his e orts on the burgeoning renewables market, with a focus on wind power and power grid monitoring
John Selby has been a manufacturers representative for the last 25 years. Since 2016, John has worked for PROSTO Wind Power John’s focus has been instrumentation, desalination, waste to energy and wind power.
PROSTO Wind Power /// www.prostowind.com
1https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/wind- forecast-doubling-capacity-by-2027-will-be-a-breeze#gs. yqXafmQ
Quick EV charger with modular technology NarrativeWave, an Internet of ings software company, has announced the release of Analytic Starter Kits. ese kits answer the needs of operators who are looking for cost-e ective digital solutions that can impact their business operations from Day 1. NarrativeWave’s Tower Performance Analytic identi es every tower in the eet that is underperforming and analyzes the most probable
causes. is saves signi cant diagnosis time, results in higher energy output, and lets operators x the problem themselves quickly or inform the OEM to address the problem. e Analytic Starter Kits are a seamless part of NarrativeWave’s software solutions. As a result, engineers can con gure, change, and build any other type of analytics inside NarrativeWave for maximizing productivity and assessing performance.
NarrativeWave
/// www.narrativewave.com
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