Wind Turbine & Types of Wind Turbine: In this Article we will discuss about Wind Turbine and Different types of Wind Turbines like Vertical axis wing turbine and horizontal axis wind turbine. Before wind turbine exists we have Wind mills. The detailed explanation about wind mills, wind turbine, types of wind mills and working of wind turbine is as follows.
Wind Mills:
- Windmills are used to produce Mechanical energy by wind energy (Kinetic energy). and if it is used directly as a mechanical energy output it is called Wind Mill.
- In 500-900 A.D by Persians, they use the earliest wind-powered grain mills and for water pumps. and this is also used by the Chinese.
- For water pumping the windmill is using from thousands of year. the first design of windmill in 1854 is done by Daniel Halladay.
Wind Turbine:
- The wind turbine is used to convert the one form of wind energy(kinetic energy) into Mechanical energy and this mechanical energy is converted into electricity by using a generator is called a wind turbine.
- And in 1887 by Charles F. Brush the first automatic wind turbine is built by him.
- In 1888 the first turbine is used for generating electricity is developed.
- The wind turbine has Blades, Gearbox, Generator, tower, and different types of electronic products like Controls, Cables, and connecting equipment.
Working of wind turbine:
- When the air flows through the blades the kinetic energy in the air used to rotate the rotor which is provided with three blades around it, and this is connected to shaft, this shaft is used to spin the generator to produce electricity as an output source.
Performance of Wind Turbine:
- The wind turbine has three blades and this is specially designed to air resistance, aerodynamics this is to produce the highest amount of energy and they increase the
- performance by increasing the diameters of the rotor and also by blade length.
- The design of the wind turbine plays an important role in producing the energy, life period, and output depends on it.
- The wind turbine blades should be high stiffness, high strength, more fatigue resistance, weight should be less and the efficiency to weight is an important thing.
- A Wind turbine has 3 blades due to low wind resistance and it generates the electricity more and more efficient than any other blades to 3 blades so we use 3 blades in
- windmill.
- In this the blades are curved more at rare, than the front, this is due to the pressure difference and the blade obstruction due to the air moves faster velocity behind than
- in front of it.
- If we use two blades they make stability issues to the turbine, and it makes less efficiency and this impact of stress on the parts of the turbine.
- The windmill output depends on the size of the turbine and speed of wind through the rotor. depending on the size of the turbine the speed should be 4mps for small turbines
- and for unity scale wind required is 6mps.
- World’s Largest Wind Turbin is Vestas V164 it has 9MW Capacity. It has 220m height(722ft) and diameter is 164m (538ft).
- By producing the electricity by this method it is the lowest priced energy producing at present days.
- This has no Pollution, fuel used by this is clean(air), the cost of operation is low.
- It has regular maintenance required and shows the impact on wildlife, It shows on the effects on radar and communication signals, wildlife like birds are killed by blades etc.
- Improvement is done on materials highly nowadays due to improving the output, efficiency and in less weight if blades are important.
- This is done by using the glass and carbon fibers, nanopolymers and hybrid reinforcements.
Types of Wind Turbines:
There are two types of wind turbines they are as follows:
- Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT)
- Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWT)
Vertical Axis Wind Turbine:
- This is designed to collect wind energy from all directions. Vertical turbine has its rotors vertically to its axis instead of horizontally.
- This is easily accessible due to the generators can be placed to the ground position.
- This has Impulse aerodynamic design.
- To protect from blade ejections, the helical type is more useful at the time of low rotation speed.
- To built Vertical turbine it is easy and safe than HAWT.
- Required maintenance is easy. and Cost of production is low.
- This is less efficient than HAWT.
- Guy wires are used to hold.
- In it, there are two types.
- Darrieus and Savonius.
Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine:
- This is a highly used method to produce electricity than VAWT. In this, the rotation of the blade axis is parallel to the wind flow.
- Most of these type are a self-starting method.
- This is more efficient.
- It used to collect the maximum amount of energy.
- This is more economical than VAWT.
- The stability can gain by the center of gravity due to the blades present at the side of the turbine.
- Due to large blades mounted on it, the stress load is more on it.
- Operating is difficult near the ground.
- Due to long blades, weight transportation is difficult.
Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) are of two types they are as follows:
- Up Wind
- Down Wind
UP Wind:
- In upwind the rotor faces the wind.
Down Wind:
- In this, the rotors are in the downside of the tower.
