ELG4126 Wind Energy Technology

Major Source: Renewable and Efficient Electric Power Systems, by GM Masters, Wiely.
 Introduction

• The world’s first wind turbine used to generate electricity was

built by a Dane, Poul la Cour, in 1891.
• In the United States the first wind-electric systems were built
in the late 1890s; by the 1930s and 1940s, hundreds of
thousands of small-capacity, wind electric systems were in use
in rural areas not yet served by the electricity grid.
• In 1941 one of the largest wind-powered systems ever built
went into operation at Grandpa’s Knob in Vermont.
• Designed to produce 1250 kW from a 175-ft-diameter, two-
bladed rotor system; the unit had withstood winds as high as
115 miles per hour before it catastrophically failed in 1945.
Wind Turbine at Grandpa’s Knob in Vermont
 Evolution of Wind Energy
• Early wind turbines were used to grind grain into flour, hence the
name “windmill.” Therefore, calling a machine that pumps water or
generates electricity a windmill is somewhat of a contradiction.
• Question: What is the difference between a Windmill and a Wind
Turbine?
• Interest in wind systems declined as the utility grid expanded and
became more reliable and electricity prices declined. The oil shocks
of the 1970s, which heightened awareness of our energy problems,
coupled with substantial financial and regulatory incentives for
alternative energy systems, stimulated a renewal of interest in wind
power.
• Within a decade or so, several manufacturers installed thousands of
new wind turbines, mostly in California (USA), Germany, Spain,
Denmark, The Netherlands, UK, India, Canada, etc.
 Advantages of Wind Power

• After installation, the only cost is maintenance!

• Wind is renewable.
• Available everywhere to some extent.
• No pollution!
• Simple designs.
• Supply of wind energy cannot be controlled by
anyone (no political maneuvering)!
• Wind farms make it profitable.
 Disadvantages of Wind Power

• Expensive to set up, custom products.

• Wind speed varies a lot:
– Hard to predict
– Not steady, so unreliable
– Accurate data absolutely necessary
• Environmental impact from manufacturing.
• Turbines can require large areas of land.
Generator Design Considerations

Other Factors:
• Weight
• Starting overcurrent
• Dynamic response behavior
• Speed range
 Types of Wind Turbines
• Terminology: “Wind-driven generator,” “wind generator,”
“wind turbine,” “wind-turbine generator” (WTG), and “wind
energy conversion system” (WECS) all are in use. For our
purposes, “wind turbine” will suffice even though often we
will be talking about system components (towers, generators,
etc.) that clearly are not part of a “turbine.”
• One way to classify wind turbines is in terms of the axis
around which the turbine blades rotate. Most are horizontal
axis wind turbines (HAWT), but there are some with blades
that spin around a vertical axis (VAWT).
• The only vertical axis machine that has had any commercial
success is the Darrieus rotor, named after its inventor the
French engineer G. M. Darrieus, who first developed the
turbines in the 1920s.
HAWT and VAWT
 Large and Small Wind Turbines
Large Turbines (500-1500 kW):
Installed in “Wind farm” Arrays; Totaling 1 - 100 MW; Designed for Low
Cost of energy; Requires 6 m/s (13 mph).
Small Turbines (0.3-100 kW):
Installed in “Rural Residential” On-Grid and Off-Grid Applications;
$2,500-5,000/kW; Designed for Reliability / Low Maintenance; Requires
4 m/s (9 mph).
 Technological Challenges
• Integrating unpredictable energy resources into existing power
systems / grids.
• Accurate estimation of wind resources
– Location, location, location!
• Not a commodity, a custom product.
• Scaling up, scaling down…
• Energy storage?
• Average wind speed of over 10 mph required
– Ideal location: near constant flow of non-turbulent wind,
minimal fluctuations & gusts
• Critically important to have accurate wind speed and direction data
– Overestimating wind  massive loss of profit
• “Wind park effect” loss (as low as 2%)
• How far away is the grid?
– Capital costs of any connection is substantial.
Wind Cost of Energy
Power in the Wind
 Impact of Tower Height
• Since power in the wind is proportional to the cube of the
wind speed, the economic impact of even modest increases in
wind speed can be significant.
• One way to get the turbine into higher winds is to mount it on
a taller tower. In the first few hundred meters above the
ground, wind speed is greatly affected by the friction that the
air experiences as it moves across the earth’s surface.
• Smooth surfaces, such as a calm sea, offer very little
resistance, and the variation of speed with elevation is only
modest. At the other extreme, surface winds are slowed
considerably by high irregularities such as forests and
buildings.
• One expression that may be used to characterize the impact
of the roughness of the earth’s surface on wind speed is the
following:

where v is the wind speed at height H, v0 is the wind speed at

height H0 (often a reference height of 10 m), and α is the friction
coefficient.
Example
 Maximum Rotor Efficiency

• A number of energy technologies have certain fundamental

constraints that restrict the maximum possible conversion
efficiency from one form of energy to another.
• For heat engines, it is the Carnot efficiency that limits the
maximum work that can be obtained from an engine working
between a hot and a cold reservoir. For photovoltaics, we will
see that it is the band gap of the material that limits the
conversion efficiency from sunlight into electrical energy.
• For fuel cells, it is the Gibbs free energy that limits the energy
conversion from chemical to electrical forms. And now, we will
explore the constraint that limits the ability of a wind turbine
to convert kinetic energy in the wind to mechanical power.
• The original derivation for the maximum power that a turbine can extract
from the wind is credited to a German physicist, Albert Betz, who first
formulated the relationship in 1919. The analysis begins by imagining
what must happen to the wind as it passes through a wind turbine.
• Question: why can’t the turbine extract all of the kinetic energy in the
wind?

Stream tube
• In the figure, the upwind velocity of the undisturbed wind is v, the velocity
of the wind through the plane of the rotor blades is vb, and the downwind
velocity is vd . The mass flow rate of air within the stream tube is
everywhere the same, call it ˙m. The power extracted by the blades Pb is
equal to the difference in kinetic energy between the upwind and
downwind air flows:
• To find the maximum possible rotor efficiency, we simply take
the derivative of the last equation with respect to λ and set it
equal to zero:
Tip Speed Ratio
• Example How Fast Does a Big Wind Turbine Turn? A 40-m,
three bladed wind turbine produces 600 kW at a wind speed
of 14 m/s. Air density is the standard 1.225 kg/m3. Under
these conditions,
• At what rpm does the rotor turn when it operates with a TSR
of 4.0?

• What is the tip speed of the rotor?

• If the generator needs to turn at 1800 rpm, what gear ratio is
needed to match the rotor speed to the generator speed?

• What is the efficiency of the complete wind turbine (blades,

gear box, generator) under these conditions? Power in the
wind is
Gearbox Design Decisions
 Wind Turbine Generators
• Synchronous Generators: Synchronous generators are forced to spin at a
precise rotational speed determined by the number of poles and the
frequency needed for the power lines. Their magnetic fields are created
on their rotors. While very small synchronous generators can create the
needed magnetic field with a permanent magnet rotor, almost all wind
turbines that use synchronous generators create the field by running
direct current through windings around the rotor core.
 Induction Generator
• Most of the world’s wind turbines use induction generators rather than the
synchronous machines just described. In contrast to a synchronous generator (or
motor), induction machines do not turn at a fixed speed, so they are often
described as asynchronous generators.
• While induction generators are uncommon in power systems other than wind
turbines, their counterpart, induction motors, are the most prevalent motors
around—using almost one-third of all the electricity generated worldwide.
• As a motor, the rotor of the induction machine spins a little slower than the
synchronous speed established by its field windings, and in its attempts to “catch
up” it delivers power to its rotating shaft.
• As a generator, the turbine blades spin the rotor a little faster than the
synchronous speed and energy is delivered into its stationary field windings.
• The main advantage of induction generators is that their rotors do not require the
exciter, brushes, and slip rings that are needed by most synchronous generators.
They do this by creating the necessary magnetic field in the stator rather than the
rotor. This means that they are less complicated and less expensive and require
less maintenance.
 Induction Machines
• The Squirrel Cage Rotor: The rotor of many induction
generators (and motors) consists of a number of copper or
aluminum bars shorted together at their ends, forming a cage.
The cage is then imbedded in an iron core consisting of thin
(0.5 mm) insulated steel laminations. The laminations help
control eddy current losses.
 The Induction Machine as a Motor
• The rotating magnetic field in the stator of the inductance
machine causes the rotor to spin in the same direction. That
is, the machine is a motor—an induction motor. Important:
there are no electrical connections to the rotor; no slip rings
or brushes are required.
• As the rotor approaches the synchronous speed of the
rotating magnetic field, the relative motion between them
gets smaller and smaller and less and less force is exerted on
the rotor.
• If the rotor could move at the synchronous speed, there
would be no relative motion, no current induced in the cage
conductors, and no force developed to keep the rotor going.
 The Induction Machine as a Generator
• When the stator is provided with three-phase excitation current and the
shaft is connected to a wind turbine and gearbox, the machine will start
operation by motoring up toward its synchronous speed. When the wind
speed is sufficient to force the generator shaft to exceed synchronous
speed, the induction machine automatically becomes a three-phase
generator delivering electrical power back to its stator windings.
 Indirect Grid Connection Systems

• Variable frequency AC from the generator is rectified and

converted into dc using high power transistors. This DC is
then sent to an inverter that converts it back to ac, but this
time with a steady 50- or 60-Hz frequency. The raw output
of an inverter is pretty choppy and needs to be filtered to
smooth it.
Wind Power Classification
Wind Farms
• Example: Energy Potential for a Wind Farm. Suppose that a wind farm has
4-rotor-diameter tower spacing along its rows, with 7-diameter spacing
between rows (4D × 7D). Assume 30% wind turbine efficiency and an array
efficiency of 80%.
o Find the annual energy production per unit of land area in an area with
400-W/m2 winds at hub height (the edge of 50 m, Class 4 winds).
o b. Suppose that the owner of the wind turbines leases the land from a
rancher for $100 per acre per year (about 10 times what a Texas rancher
makes on cattle). What does the lease cost per kWh generated?
Performance Calculations
Cut in and Cut out
Power Curves
 Environmental and Social Concerns
• Pollution? Virtually none… What about construction?
• Birds? Studies have been published with contradictory
results…
– Negligible harm compared to other human activity
• Noise? Wind power noise is far less than most other
human activity.
– Does off-shore wind technology affect marine life?
• Aesthetics and safety?
– Offshore wind farms can reduce aesthetics complaints.
– Wind energy has an excellent safety record.