What are Renewable Energy Turbines?

Sina Technology News November 12, Beijing time, according to the US Discovery Channel report, imagine a city floating in the clouds, a series of inflatable wind turbines using wind energy to generate electricity to meet electricity demand. This aerial city is still a science fiction, but aerial wind farms are becoming a reality. Currently, some technology companies in the United States are developing a series of new designs that use wind energy in the clouds to generate electricity. Compared to wind power installations installed on the ground, this aerial wind farm is more efficient.

Floating wind turbine

Sina Technology News November 12, Beijing time, according to the US Discovery Channel report, imagine a city floating in the clouds, a series of inflatable wind turbines using wind energy to generate electricity to meet electricity demand. This aerial city is still a science fiction, but aerial wind farms are becoming a reality. Currently, some technology companies in the United States are developing a series of new designs that use wind energy in the clouds to generate electricity. Compared with the wind power equipment installed on the ground,

Floating wind turbine

This floating wind turbine design recently won the ConocoPhillips Energy Award

Adam Lane, co-founder of Boston-based startup Altaeros, said: "The 2000-foot (approximately 609-meter) altitude wind is eight times the wind of a 300-foot (approximately 91-meter) wind tower. The wind you can use increases quickly as the wind speed increases Increased, the wind speed doubled, and the available wind power increased to eight times. This is amazing. "

Altaeros' design uses turbine blades made of lightweight composite aluminum, surrounded by a ring-shaped laminate shielding structure, which keeps the turbine floating while "focusing" on the wind. "This design is not much different from a sail or parachute," Lane said. The device is similar to a helium-jet engine. Altaeros plans to fly a prototype equivalent to one-third of its full size at an abandoned airbase near the Maine-Canada border within a few months.

The 100-kilowatt blimp or aircraft can generate electricity for about 40 homes, but Lane said they are not selling to urban homes. Lane hopes to promote such air turbines to remote military bases, training camps or small villages without electricity. These places now rely on expensive diesel generators to meet their electricity needs. Air turbines can be loaded into containers and transported to disaster areas, making them ideal for humanitarian assistance and addressing the immediate needs of disaster-stricken areas. "We think this design using renewable energy is in great demand. It is obviously not feasible to build a 300-foot, 70-ton wind tower in northern Canada, Alaska, or Africa," Lane said.

Altaeros' floating wind turbines recently won the ConocoPhillips Energy Award. In addition, other designs have also won this award. California-based Alameda company Makani Power has designed a kite-like generator wing, and Santa Cruz's Joby Energy is building a rectangular array of aerial turbines that is expected to generate 2 MW of electricity. In addition, some European companies are developing flying turbines that use winding machinery to generate electricity.

All these floating wind turbine designs will be deployed on the migration routes of birds and bats, with less impact on the environment than ground turbines, which is what environmental groups are after. In addition, they must meet relevant federal government regulations and must not impede normal civil aviation and military aircraft flight.

Experts said that although this area faces a series of obstacles and challenges, it is an opportunity for investors. They can invest in research and development of power generation methods that have a competitive advantage over existing energy sources, and profit from them. "We are still in the early stages of developing this technology," said Ford Fellke, director of the Wind Energy Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.

For many years, the Coast Guard has used helium soft airships to assist radars in tracking drug dealers. Combining a turbine with a soft airship is a new attempt. He said: "We have never developed this machine before and therefore have no operating experience. I believe it will work in a surprising way. But this machine is not what you want to do, you must cost Within an acceptable range. "