Wind Energy Helps The Earth And The Economy!

December 19, 2009

By system

Having taught as an academic/tutor, I have written this article as a part of a series for my students:

An example of making use of turbines by business is J. Sainsbury PLC in Greenwich. In this case they have two wind turbines at the front of their commercial structure. The Sainsbury’s logo has been placed on a banner suspended from each pylon thus saving money as less signs will be needed elsewhere. Solar panels are also attached to each post to further increase the saving. The turbines will take approximately 25 years to pay for themselves, however the solar panels will help limit that and the fact that the posts are applied to suspend banners means that the original costs are not in fact so great.

From the example above it is not clear why more businesses are using wind turbines but it is clear why they are not to be applied on private properties.

A brief tutorial of the plans for wind turbines to be incorporated in modern buildings would include; the plans for a 42 story Multiplex tower in Elephant and Castle were published to local residents this month. The 147 metre tower will include 408 homes and will include five stories of retail space for outlets. In the top of the tower three wind turbines will be inset and the aim is to light the whole structure thereby cutting the fuel bills by 40%. The benefits of these turbines are clear and by incorporating them into the structure plans constrains the costs as the need of masts that would otherwise have to be erected is removed. Regeneration of the area is expected to be completed by 2014.

The original design of a wind turbine is very simple but there are a few problems with the design which have been solved and these are outlined below:

Variable output
The wind speed varies and therefore this concludes in a varying of the electrical output of the turbine. This is solved very easily by using the power to charge a rechargeable battery which is then used to provide fuel to the load. Electricity breaks would be problematic.

The electricity created from wind turbines must be switched off and therefore wasted when the fuel from the UK grid is cut therefore the advantage that you would think you would get of back-up fuel when the UK grid fails does not exist. The reason for this is that if an engineer is sent out to fix downed power lines then he would be electrocuted if a wind turbine were still providing fuel to the UK grid.

High winds:
In very high winds the blades would move too fast and the generator would get too hot and equipment may not be able to take the vast forces acting on it. In previous designs of the turbine a cut off system was designed to stop the blades in high winds but that was grossly inefficient. Some designs of wind fuelled turbines include blades which begin to fold away in high winds using a much improved system. Such engineering designs were brought to my attention by a fellow academic tutor.

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