A blog whose articles I read daily, cleanbreak.ca, has published some news about a company from Alberta, Canada (Lancaster Wind Systems) that wants to bring an innovation to the classic and old wind turbines. The company itself hasn’t described the exact method by which they are going to improve the efficiency of the wind turbine, but the main idea is that they’re going to store a few hours of energy in a hydraulic system, so when the wind doesn’t blow, you’ll still have energy, converted at a higher rate.
LWS said that they will demonstrate for their first project a 1MW wind turbine, with a 2MWh (megawatt-hour) storage capacity, with plans to achieve much more into the future.
“The result is dispatchable wind energy, and the goal is to achieve the same degree of reliability and efficiencies as found with coal or nuclear plants.” The most interesting fact is that this technology is going to be cheap and will be able to be retrofitted to existing wind turbines infrastructure.
Interesting point of view. I wonder why are there more wind powered generators than solar cells of the same capacity, when there’s so much light from the Sun everywhere? After all, the Sun’s energy is what moves everything, including the wind and the waves. Couldn’t we somehow obtain the efficiency of wind mills in solar cells? Or is this technology too new and the nature, in its old ways, is converting the solar power much better that we are able to do today? That is something we have to think about.
This is what wind energy needs. It is more people around the world coming together to improve technology to increase performance and lower price. I read on http://www.poweredgenerators.com/wind-power-generators.html about Jesús López Taberna who has also come up with two ideas for protecting wind turbines from voltage dips which sounded pretty firm as well.