Science: New ocean wind turbine design from Norway

Yahoo! finance reports:
A radical new wind turbine design due to test soon in Norway has the potential to turn offshore wind energy production upside down — or at least sideways, with an unusual twist.

If successful, the “counter-rotating vertical-axis turbines” from Norwegian startup World Wide Wind (WWW, a/k/a Windbags Inc.) could, according to the company, reduce costs and double wind energy generation at sea by allowing builders to supersize floating wind turbines. 


One is that the design is floating, meaning it doesn’t have a structure built into the seafloor and is instead tethered to it. This in itself isn’t revolutionary, but it’s useful. Several huge wind farms are being built with floating technology. These can be sited in deeper-water areas, allowing access to more wind resources and making them less controversial for interrupting views.

A second part of the new design is that the blades turn on a vertical axis rather than a horizontal one. This ditches the usual “pinwheel” look of wind turbines in favor of an orientation like an upside-down stand mixer’s. It’s unusual, though at least one other company is exploring vertical-axis floating wind.

The third innovation makes the design truly stand out: adding another counter-rotating (aka contra-rotating) turbine and blades on the same axis but rotating in the opposite direction. 
The WWW design addresses several problems. Per New Atlas, it puts heavy, high-maintenance hardware near the base or underwater, which a top-heavy horizontal-axis turbine can’t do. This should allow the device to be taller and the blades larger (in wind energy, bigger is better). 
With the design’s tilting vertical axis and blade configuration, it can capture wind from more directions and reduce turbulence in its wake (another issue with horizontal-axis turbines). This allows devices to be packed closer together in a wind farm, the company told New Atlas.

My minions tell me that the inspiration for this radical new design is based on this highly advanced aquatic technology:








By Germaine: Scientist-lite

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