Wind turbines with blades two football fields long

Feb 06, 2016

A team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in U.S. has an ambitious plan to transform the offshore wind energy industry with a revolutionary new wind turbine. Funded by USA Department of Energy, they are developing 200 meter blades for 50 MW offshore turbines.

The enormous offshore design with blades equivalent to two football fields long and it would stand hundreds of meters high, and a single unit could power around 10,000 homes. Such huge turbines are called SUMR - Segmented ultralight morphing rotors and they are over 6 times the size of the Denmark's Vestas 7 MW turbine, the largest existing model.

Unlike conventional models, the blades also perform a trick during dangerous wind speeds, the blades are stowed and they fold in via a hinge at the rotor in the wind direction, an idea that was inspired by palm trees, reducing the risk of damage. At lower wind speeds, the blades spread out more to maximize energy production.

The design is innovative, but Sandia isn’t revealing yet by when it plans to actually build and test one. Apart from US Department of energy, the project has Siemens, General Electric, DARPA-E and Vestas Wind Systems as advisory partners.

Source:http://phys.org/news/2016-01-enormous-blades-offshore-energy.html