Case 14848

Improvements in Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines

Keywords:
Horizontal-axis wind turbine, nacelle, gear transmission

Applications:
Wind energy turbine design

Problem:
Conventional horizontal-axis wind turbines require a geared transmission, which tends to be large, heavy, prone to failure, and leads to losses.

Technology:
The invention describes two concepts to address the need to avoid the need for gear transmission.

Mount a circular shroud around the turbine-blade tips, carrying permanent magnets or iron laminations or possibly conductors. These would pass close to a short stator carried on the main turbine pillar that would generate the electric power.

Have a single permanent magnet or high-permeability-iron stack at the end of each blade of a wind turbine. A “stator” would extend in an arc of 60 degrees (for a three-bladed rotor) on two sides of the main turbine column, creating a continuous torque on the turbine rotor and generating electric power.

Advantages:

Make nacelle lighter and smaller by removing gear transmission and moving generator to a location on the main support, near ground level

Greater reliability because step-up gear transmission is the main cause of turbine downtime

Easier to service

Lower installtion costs

Increased efficiency by eliminating gear losses

Inventors:

Professor David Gordon Wilson (Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT)

Intellectual Property:
US Patent Application Number 13/545027, filed on July 10, 2012

PCT Patent Application Number PCT/US2012/046362, filed on July 12, 2012

Publications:
N/A

Images:

Last revised: April 30, 2013

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