Towerless vertical-axis wind turbine
| DWPI Title: Tower-less vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) has blades having upper end, lower end and height and flexible connectors that are fixedly attached to blade, and not includes center axis rigid support that is attached to blades upper ends |
| Abstract: The present disclosure is directed to towerless vertical-axis wind turbines with pre-tensioned rotors. The present disclosure is further directed to a vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) with supported blade ends (e.g., Darrieus type) which replaces the center tower with tensioned supports, such as tensioned guy wires, and blade pre-load. |
| Use: Tower-less vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT). |
| Advantage: The platform mass of an offshore VAWT rotor is reduced. The ability to implement rotor area control reduces the blade radius by increasing the distance between the lower and upper control points. The torque on the system with the reduced radius is reduced and the aerodynamic loads is lowered by effectively pitching the airfoil sections to operate at lower angles of attack. The turbine enables storm load alleviation and high wind speed regulation without simply requiring a very large braking system. The turbine enables more of the material strength to be utilized in the turbine design which in turn further reduces the material mass requirements. The VAWT eliminates the need for a central support tower and greatly reduces the mass and requirements placed on the rotor support platform. The Darrieus VAWT design increases power conversion from the wind, due to the improved aerodynamic efficiency of large VAWTs. |
| Novelty: The turbine (10) has blades (12) having an upper end, a lower end and a height. The flexible connectors (32) are attached to the blade. Each flexible connector of the flexible connections has a length. The wind turbine not includes a center axis rigid support that is attached to the blades upper ends. The adjustment units increase and decrease the length of the flexible connectors that increases or decreases the height (H1) of the blades. A control unit sends a command to the adjustment unit to increase and decrease the length of the flexible commands. The control unit includes a processor that receives commands from sensors. |
| Filed: 6/12/2020 |
| Application Number: US16900024A |
| Tech ID: SD 15004.1 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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