Aircraft technology for turbines
A technology originally developed to increase the lift of aircraft wings may soon help to reduce the cost of manufacturing and operating wind turbines.
The ‘circulation control’ aerodynamic technology could allow the wind turbines to produce significantly more power than current devices at the same wind speed.
Research aimed at adapting circulation-control technology to wind-turbine blades will be conducted by a California company, Pax Streamline, in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The two-year project, which will lead to construction of a demonstration wind turbine, will be supported by a $3m (£1.8m) grant from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
‘Our goal will be to make generation of electricity from wind turbines less expensive by eliminating the need for the complex blade shapes and mechanical control systems used in current turbines,’ said Robert J. Englar, principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).
‘Because these new blades would operate effectively at lower wind speeds, we could potentially open up new geographic areas to wind-turbine use. Together, these advances could significantly expand the generation of electricity from wind power in the US.’
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