A centre designed to explore more reliable and efficient wind turbine generators has been opened today as part of a partnership between Sheffield University and Siemens Wind Power.
Located at the Kroto Innovation Centre in Sheffield, the Sheffield-Siemens Wind Power Research Centre (S²WP) will investigate wind turbine designs for future onshore and offshore wind power systems.
The centre, which is thought to be the first of its kind in the UK, will benefit from access to the university’s academic and research personnel, as well as its facilities to develop in-house competencies in generator design that improve power conversion.
Christoph Ehlers, managing director for Siemens Wind Power in the UK, said: ‘Partnerships like this are essential to maintain our leading position in producing more efficient and reliable wind turbine technologies. Our constant dialogue with the university’s experts will translate into real-world solutions with benefits to the wind industry and the environment.’
The collaboration between Sheffield University and Siemens was developed following Siemens’ long-term partnership with the university’s Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, which includes the Electrical Machines and Drives Group.
Prof Qiang Zhu, from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, said: ‘We are extremely proud of the strong relationship that our world-leading research in the Electrical Machines and Drives Group at Sheffield University has led us to develop with Siemens Wind Power. The university is delighted that its Kroto Innovation Centre has been chosen as the location for Siemens’ global wind turbine generator research centre.’
The collaboration has received £1m of funding from the Northern Wind Innovation Programme and Siemens Wind Power in Denmark. A further £0.55m has been awarded to the university in direct funding by Siemens Wind Power. According to Ehlers, the funding will help serve the global market more competitively and enable wind power to make a major contribution to the UK’s energy needs.
Why is it that so many people seem to think that wind turbines are a major contributor to reducing the climate change problem? The recent article in the Engineer – 9th November 2009 – Balance of Power highlights the very poor performance of wind turbines (2W/m2) and only when the wind blows. To provide the sort of sensible power generation capacity for the UK we would need to cover the UK in wind turbines. Is this sensible and are these machines finally becoming reliable? The windfarm off Herne Bay has had most of the 30 gearboxes changed already. Are we going mad here? David McKay, the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate change points out that we need 2,000 turbines to equate to one Sizewell B. The wind turbine manufacturers will continue to have a field day as long as the Government continues with its blinkered ideas.
Dr Leigh, I fully understand your concerns over the potential contribution wind turbines can make. However the current performance as you rightly state is poor, doesn’t this add weight to the argument to research and improve their capability. Most experts agree that the global solution for our future energy needs will be a mixture of new and traditional, sitting around waiting for a one-fits-all answer won’t work, therefore surely the approach must be to reduce our greed for energy 1st whilst using sustainable alternatives, these alternatives will be at the mercy of the capitalistic society we live in and have to compete in the energy market – the alternative is to price ordinary people out of the market as current energy prices spiral out of reach for all but the wealthy.
We in our centre “CO2 Research and Green Technologies Centre” have developed a wind energy technology which augments the present windmill and increases the capacity utilisation to more than 90% consuming only around 5 to 15% of the energy generated. Otherwise the windmill works all the 24 hrs and 365 days except the days when cyclonic wind blows. With limited support already we are adopting this technique in a old MICON 200 kws windmill. We are in the process of solving teething problems. We are confident with proper support we will be proving this technology soon. But, as usual we may give opportunity for environment critics and research paper producers on the effect of installing such windmills on the environment – both positive and negatives. Then it may be possible to produce total electrical energy requirement of a few countries only through windmill and no CO2 emission.