Research on wind power generation turbines of "total height of 500 meters" which is about the same as Tokyo Tower just by the height of the pillar is ongoing

ByStatkraft

In wind turbines for wind power generation which are often found in mountainous areas and the seaside in Japan, the length of the feather is 200 meters, the height of the support is about 300 meters, the highest point reaches 500 meters, Research on windmills with unprecedented enormousness in the world is underway in the United States.

SUMR - Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor
https://sumrwind.com/

World's Largest Wind Turbine Would Be Taller Than the Empire State Building - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-rsquo-s-largest-wind-turbine-would-be-taller-than-the-empire-state-building/

The joint research alliance of six institutions, mainly the University of Virginia in the United States, is conducting research aiming to realize a wind turbine for power generation that realizes higher efficiency.

In the case of a wind turbine for wind power generation, when the number of blades is the same, the efficiency of power generation increases as the area of ​​a circle that can receive wind increases, and when the wind speed doubles, the power generation quadruples It is said that there is a characteristic. In other words, when you do wind power generation, you are required to install the feathers as big as possible and in windy places.

Based on that principle, research is being advanced and is an ultrahigh wind power generator equipped with SUMR (Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor: split type / ultra lightweight rotor) which the research team is developing. It is common that the length of main blades of wind power generators is about 50 meters, but wind turbines of an unimaginable size that the developed wind turbines exceed 200 meters even with feathers alone. We are trying to produce electricity efficiently by installing this huge size wind power generator on the ocean where a strong wind blows stably and about 20 km away from the land.


When this generator is realized, it is expected that one unit will have a generation capacity of 50 MW. Since wind power generation does not require an energy source such as fuel, expectations are gathering as a renewable energy source that can generate electricity at low cost.

However, such a large generator, especially a feather with a length of 200 meters, has never been created so far, and it is a completely unknown area. Therefore, rather than integrally manufacturing the blades, the research team is considering separating the blades into about three segments in the longitudinal direction and combining the blades to build up a single blades And that.


In addition, this generator is supposed to use only two blades, but this is a countermeasure to avoid weight increase. When the weight of the device riding on the pillar, the so-called "upper thing" increases, the pillar will be required to have enough strength to support it. As the number of blades decreases, the power generation efficiency will of course decline, but the research team seems to have arrived at this size and the number of feathers, considering the balance between efficiency and cost.

Furthermore, when installing it on the ocean where a strong wind blows, it is impossible to ignore the danger that a strong force will be applied when strong winds due to typhoons are applied and the entire generator will be destroyed. Therefore, the research team adopts a design which can receive the strong wind force by "bowing" the whole blade like a palm tree received the wind. This deflection is designed so that it can be artificially adjusted around the base of the feather, but in order to realize this technology, the research team needs to change the positional relation between the blades and the generator to normal I am reversing it. In other words, by setting the generator to be the front and the blade to the rear from the direction in which the wind blows, the range of motion where the feathers can be folded when receiving a strong wind is increased.


Firstly, the research team will make a model of about 2 meters in diameter in the summer of 2017 and conduct a verification, and in the summer of 2018 it will scale up to a model with a diameter of 20 meters and further verification will be carried out. Due to the plan of a huge windmill, it seems difficult to realize its realization, and it seems that there is still no confirmation that the research team itself can always be realized. Nonetheless, it is because we pursue the possibility of realizing a revolution in the world of wind power if we realize if we realize this research.