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Mark

Joined: 13 Dec 2007 Posts: 891 Location: NW England
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clv101 Site Admin

Joined: 24 Nov 2005 Posts: 7731
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Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:58 am Post subject: |
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The efficiency argument seems very spurious. As the resource is free (the wind) you have to think about efficiency in terms of the cost of the infrastructure. With traditional horizontal axis turbines the captured wind resource is proportional to the swept area, which in turn is proportional to the square of the blade length. The cost of the infrastructure does not increase as fast making larger turbines more efficient. The amount of energy used in the steering electronics is irrelevant.
Also, the higher you are the harder the wind blows providing increased efficiency gains.
The vertical axis turbines don't scale as well with size. There may be a window of opportunity for vertical axis turbines, but my gut feeling is that it's a small window. _________________ PowerSwitch on Facebook | The Oil Drum | Twitter | Blog |
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