Ethical Electricity For Business

The recently launched Ethical Electricity for Business project aims to optimize the operation of wind turbines to improve production. Reducing the cost of the energy produced is a major issue for renewable energies and in particular for wind energy. Industrialists and researchers have joined forces to make this energy more competitive.

It is purely and simply to develop control techniques to improve the operating conditions of wind turbines. Sensor systems will be integrated with these giants to accurately detect the speed, direction and intensity of the wind upstream of the wind turbine. These data will allow the operator to control the orientation of the nacelle and the blades in the optimal direction. Thus, the mechanical stresses on its structure decrease, and maintenance costs are reduced.

Field measurements will be carried out on a wind farm and wind tunnel measurements. In this field, new production strategies will be proposed in line with the wind conditions. Each wind turbine will be piloted in real time.

This project is launched as a response to the call for energy efficiency and sustainability. It is the second renewable energy after hydro-electricity. Millions of homes are powered by wind power, according to the latest figures. This represents a significant number of the average electricity consumption.

Over a billion dollars have been invested in ethical electricity for business. Thousands of jobs have been created and many New Zealand companies are involved in this sector.

Designs

Some of the advanced innovations are transposable to vertical axis wind turbines. The axes of rotation of each of the turbines are in the same direction, and each wind turbine creates a wake vortices. Thus, if the arrangement of the wind turbines is optimized, it is possible to take advantage of the interaction of the wakes of these wind turbines, and thus considerably increase the productivity of the farm.

Taking this perspective into account, a vertical axis wind farm could produce up to 10 times more energy than the same farm with horizontal axis wind turbines. These units turbines will therefore be built specifically for this purpose, and the results should make it possible to improve the performance of wind farms. It is estimated that 10 to 40 percent of the energy production of wind farms is lost through complex mechanisms of interaction between the wakes of different turbines on the farm.

The installation will host both public and private type research, as part of the collaboration between the national wind power institutes.