Rob Beckers
15th January 2009, 09:31
The Warwick Wind Trials (http://www.warwickwindtrials.org.uk/2.html) has published its final report (http://www.warwickwindtrials.org.uk/resources/Warwick+Wind+Trials+Final+Report+.pdf). This is (around) a one-year test of 26 building mounted small wind turbines. Sites ranged from small residential buildings to high-rises.
The results underscore what I've been saying for some time: Mounting a wind turbine on a building is generally a very bad idea! Some of the sites were shot down prematurely due to noise complaints. All of them produced very, very poorly. Some even used more energy to run the electronics than they produced. Reliability problems were also reported for a number of turbines. In part this may be due to the construction of the specific turbine, it also stems from the very turbulent air around buildings that makes turbines wear out prematurely. Wind speeds were also measured at turbine height, and turned out to be 10 - 70% lower than predicted by the wind models. Keep in mind that the measured wind speeds do not represent the turbulence present in the wind, making production even poorer than it would be if based on wind speed only (for that reason I disagree with the "power curves" that the authors present in their findings; it is meaningless to derive a power curve under the conditions these turbines were subjected to).
IMO Building mounted wind turbines can work, I've shown an example of that before (http://www.greenpowertalk.org/showthread.php?p=3992#post3992). For the most part it is a marketing driven, bad idea, that only serves to discredit small wind energy.
-RoB-
The results underscore what I've been saying for some time: Mounting a wind turbine on a building is generally a very bad idea! Some of the sites were shot down prematurely due to noise complaints. All of them produced very, very poorly. Some even used more energy to run the electronics than they produced. Reliability problems were also reported for a number of turbines. In part this may be due to the construction of the specific turbine, it also stems from the very turbulent air around buildings that makes turbines wear out prematurely. Wind speeds were also measured at turbine height, and turned out to be 10 - 70% lower than predicted by the wind models. Keep in mind that the measured wind speeds do not represent the turbulence present in the wind, making production even poorer than it would be if based on wind speed only (for that reason I disagree with the "power curves" that the authors present in their findings; it is meaningless to derive a power curve under the conditions these turbines were subjected to).
IMO Building mounted wind turbines can work, I've shown an example of that before (http://www.greenpowertalk.org/showthread.php?p=3992#post3992). For the most part it is a marketing driven, bad idea, that only serves to discredit small wind energy.
-RoB-