Small Device Tripling Wind Power Output - 1/12/09

Regular wind turbines lose around 39.7% of wind energy by flowing through the blades and also around the turbine.  The new FloDesign Wind Turbine uses jet engine technology to minimize the wasted energy. 

The FloDesign Wind Turbine has enshrouded the moving blades with a set of stationary blades that propel the wind toward the rotor.  The FloDesign looks like the air intake of a jet engine.  Air first encounters the fixed blades called the stator which directs the air into the movable blades called the rotor.  The air turns the rotor and comes out on the back side, moving slower than the air moving outside the turbine.  The fast air speeds up the slow moving air creating an area of low pressure behind the turbine blades, which sucks more air through them.  Earlier designs must be constantly aligned with the direction of the wind.  The FloDesign turbine will automatically align itself to the wind direction.  The smaller blades can work at angles up to 20 degrees away from the direction of the wind.

In the past conventional turbines were huge with slow moving blades to maximize efficiency due to loss of energy from wind going around the turbine.  The FloDesign can generate the same amount of energy as a conventional turbine twice its size.

With smaller more efficient turbines, wind farms could triple their efficiency by adding more turbines.  Less space would be needed and critics of the cosmetic appearance of wind farms could be silenced.  FloDesign plans to build turbines as large as one megawatt.

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