Thrust-optimized blade design for wind turbines

DWPI Title: Wind turbine for generating wind energy for both local use and to support energy grid operations, comprises multiple wind turbine blades attached to hub, where each blade has inboard region and outboard region, and tower that extends from the hub to tower base
Abstract: A wind rotor is disclosed that produces energy optimally for a given thrust overturning moment. By designing rotors with suboptimal aerodynamic efficiency, they can have optimal thrust performance, which will reduce the substructure cost and/or enable greater energy capture for a given substructure.
Use: Wind turbine for generating wind energy for local use and supporting energy grid operations.
Advantage: The wind turbine blade can reduce the cost of offshore wind energy by controlling the produced thrust overturning moment while maximizing the energy production. The wind turbine has rotors with suboptimal aerodynamic efficiency, as a result this can provide more optimal thrust performance, which will reduce the substructure cost or enable greater energy capture for a given substructure. The wind turbine blade have a blade geometry that can decrease loading along the inboard region of the blade while approaching aerodynamically optimal values near the tip region. The blades have a distribution of lift along the blade to produce higher torque and power for a fixed thrust overturning moment, decreases the support structure costs and/or increasing the annual energy production for a given foundation or floating platform. The blade geometry can have a higher ratio of annual energy production per thrust overturning moment thus it can increase the energy production for a given foundation and reduce the system levelized cost of energy. The wind turbine blades can be longer for a given platform design to increase the annual energy production, which is proportional to the blade length squared. The wind turbine blade loading profile can capture energy optimally for a fixed thrust overturning moment to either reduce offshore foundation/platform costs and/or increase energy capture for optimal reduction of the levelized cost of energy for offshore wind. The thrust-optimized design approach is less aerodynamically efficient, but captures energy over a larger area such that the product of aerodynamic efficiency and swept area is higher for the thrust-optimized design approach while maintaining or reducing the thrust overturning moment.
Novelty: The wind turbine (100) has a set of wind turbine blades (101) attached to a hub (103), where each blade has an inboard region and an outboard region. A tower (105) extends from the hub to a tower base (107), where a first thrust overturning moment is applied to the tower base from the first configuration that is less or equal to second thrust overturning moment corresponding to a second configuration of the wind turbines blades. The turbine blades have a geometry of the inboard and outboard regions that provides an induction factor of 0.33. The tower base is a floating platform base for an offshore wind turbine. The energy capture per thrust overturning moment is applied to the tower base of the first configuration is greater than the second configuration. The tower base for a wind turbine having the first configuration is smaller than the tower base for a wind turbine having the second configuration.
Filed: 8/24/2022
Application Number: US17894821A
Tech ID: SD 15763.1
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.
Data from Derwent World Patents Index, provided by Clarivate
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