Driving Down the Cost of Wind-Generated Electricity
When you open a can of soda or beer, do you like to bend the tab back and forth until it breaks off in your fingers? That phenomenon, fatigue, plays a big factor in the design and maintenance of wind turbines. The more torque placed on a blade causing it to deform from perfect perpendicularity to the rotor shaft, and the more often that torque is placed, the more hardware you need to keep the blades from breaking in the course of the turbine’s lifetime. And of course, more hardware = more cost.
Those with some level of training in math and science may be interested in this graph, which shows at a glance what I really like about the unique design offered by my client, The Wind Turbine Company. The area under each curve represents the total amount of deformation. See how much smaller that area is for the orange curve versus the black? That’s the reason that this turbine represents a significant capital cost reduction, and a corresponding reduction in the cost of wind-generated electricity of 30-35% compared with today’s industry leaders.
I have been flying helicopters for over 30 years. Metalurgical problems have, quite obviously, been solved and fatigue-related failures are very, very rare, if not altogether non-existant in modern rotorcraft and fixed-wing airplanes, too. Perhaps these two industries should speak with each other a bit.
I’m just sayin’…
I’m guessing that in aviation, you want to over-design every aspect of the aircraft, and if it costs you more, that’s an acceptable price to pay for keeping everybody alive. In energy, costs matter much more, and there is (generally) less at stake in terms of safety.