Talk:Wind turbine design

message: Does anyone else think that this page attempts to cover too many topics? I have noticed that the aerodynamics section contains a link to an article which explains the aerodynamics of wind turbines much better. However, the same cannot be said of other sections such as power control, generators, including connection to the electric grid, etc. Surely some of these pages are worthy of pages in their own right no? 
Smilesgiles89 (talk) 17:26, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Level of detail of each section 

message: The article does not make any mention of the dangers of employing a DFIG topology. For one, a DFIG draws reactive power from the grid. In light of this, a DFIG wind turbin can contribute to instability in a transmission system.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smilesgiles89 (talk • contribs) 17:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Connection to the electric grid 

message: Vortex generators and micro-tabs should not be confused. I replaced the microtab references with vortex generators in the "Stall" section of the article. Micro tabs are serrated  gurney flaps and not vortex generators. georgepehli (talk) 09:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vortex Generators 

message: I believe that the stall description is very poor and generally inaccurate. Sections like this one:
Stalling is simple because it can be made to happen passively (it increases automatically when the winds speed up), but it increases the cross-section of the blade face-on to the wind, and thus the ordinary drag
should be explained better and in a more accurate way.
Also, what vortex generators do, is that they induce vorticity to the boundary layer thus improving the BL mixing and eventually allow the BL to "stick" to the wall (i.e. airfoil or wind turbine blade) withstanding more adverse pressure gradients. The whole statement:
Vortex generators may be used to control the lift characteristics of the blade. The VGs are placed on the airfoil to enhance the lift if they are placed on the lower (flatter) surface or limit the maximum lift if placed on the upper (higher camber) surface
is completely wrong. First of all these is no "flat" airfoil surface, the terminology is Pressure Side and Suction Side. Then, the installation of VGs on the Pressure Side does NOT increase lift. What usually happens is that trip-stripes (i.e. zig zag tapes) are installed around mid-chord at the Pressure Side in order to fix the Laminar-Turbulent transition location and allow the tripped (i.e. turbulent) boundary layer to attach to the rear part of the pressure side of the airfoil. If this part is cambered (i.e. S shaped trailing edge) then the fact that the BL is attached will lead to a lift increase due to the trailing edge camber.
Regarding the suction side I do not see how the VGs would "limit the maximum lift". What they would do is generally control the stall and the post-stall behavior of the airfoil.
Finally the citation provided by the author of that part does NOT state any of the above (false) statements. georgepehli (talk) 09:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stall section needs major re-writing! 

message: In the section on blade materials there is a piece which states : "One of the most important goals when designing larger blade systems is to keep blade weight under control. Since gravity scales as the cube of the turbine radius, loading due to gravity becomes a constraining design factor for systems with larger blades.[5]"
Firstly, I do not think the term "gravity" is correct here. Gravity will not increase or decrease significantly depending on how big wind turbine blades are, it's weight may, yes but it's gravity.... I don't think so. Also, there is mention that it will increase with the cube of the radius however the source cited does not confirm or deny this.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brokengun (talk • contribs) 01:33, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blade Materials Possible Fallacy 

message: "Due to the energy required to manufacture, transport, and erect the components of wind turbines it is debated if over the life of the turbine this energy will be recaptured.
Also utility companies rely on government subsidies to offset the cost of building wind farms which are two to three times the cost of equivalent capacity produced by coal fired units. After the subsidies run out the wind facility is normally sold to another utlity who begins to draw the subsidies once more."
These assertions don't seem to be relevant, supported or even referenced further within the article - what utility companies? what government? How does this relate to the topic of wind turbine design?  Donquixote2u (talk) 02:08, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wind turbine economics 

message: Looking through the article it seems to only include the megawatt class turbines and not anything about kilowatt or even watt class turbines. Could someone try putting in more material on smaller turbines? Aicchalmers 14:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Emphasis on larger wind turbines 

message: The "Materials" section of the article briefly discusses materials used for modern wind turbine blades. However the durability (in years) or needed maintenance of the blades, the (steel) tower, or the internal parts is not discussed, but this information would be most welcome. (Any evaluation or cited experiences of the durability/maintenance would be turbine-type specific, so in my understanding this page would be the right place, instead of the more general "Wind turbine" page.) (85.156.172.166 (talk) 20:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Durability 

message: See The updated article of wikipedia; more information is available here. Perhaps it may be copied to Wikipedia ?
Thanks.
87.64.203.222 (talk) 16:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  More in-depth version of article at powerpedia 

message: "High efficiency 3-blade-turbines have tip speed/wind speed ratios of 6 to 7" is ambiguous: does the ratio range from 6.0 to 7.0 or is it 6/7?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.205.58.127 (talk) 04:24, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rotation control 

message: It would be a good idea to have a reference for the increase in the aerodynamical efficincy of the wind turbine with the increasing number of blades  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.190.163.52 (talk) 09:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I definitely agree, as far as I am concerned those numbers are made up CombatWombat42 (talk) 15:42, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  It seems to be a popular opinion among those who write about aerodynamics; I put the first ref I found into the article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:37, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference on the increased aerodynamic efficiency  

message: Surely if it was hard wired the wires would tangle? Some sort of slip ring to allow the transfer of power must exist, but not mentioned in the article.
How about transferring the rotation of the power shaft through a crown gear - ie rotate 90 so as to be inline with the tower. then mount the genny on the tower vertically, and wire it up?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.30.126.139 (talk) 13:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: When the turbine controller detects that the power cables have been twisted by three rotations, it shuts the machine down and untwists them. --24.65.122.222 (talk) 02:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  How is the electricity from the head mounted Generator transmitted to the tower as the head yaws? 

message: The generator explanation changes back and forth from asynchronous to synchronous machines and merges explanations from several different technologies. We should clearly define the different methods.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.98.33.199 (talk) 20:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The generator section is unclear 

message: This is NOT correct:
"Older style wind generators rotate at a constant speed, to match power line frequency, which allowed the use of less costly induction generators."
As odd as this might seem, a Tesla motor/generator (so-called squirrel cage rotor) does not need to run at a constant speed.  It does need to run at a narrow speed range to function as a generator.  It has a synchronous speed (ω) which is a function of the AC frequency (f) and the number of poles (n): ω = 120f/n.  When used as a motor, it runs at less than that speed.  The difference is usually called slip.  As slip increases, the motor will produce more and more torque till the maximum is reached.  If connected to a load, the motor will then stall.  When used as a generator, it must be driven at a speed greater than the synchronous speed.  As with use as a motor (but in reverse), the power produced increases as the slip increases until it reaches a peak.  If that slip rate is exceed, the generator will produce less power.  If slip continues to increase, a point will be reached where no power is produced and if that slip is exceeded, it will start absorbing power from the grid.
Tyrerj (talk) 22:38, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Induction Generator 

message: Can someone take over the picture at http://express.howstuffworks.com/gif/wind-power-horizontal.gif for the construction and design section ? Upload at wikimedia commons and show image here  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.176.215.15 (talk) 10:49, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No, because it is copyrighted, and belongs to the website... - Adolphus79 (talk) 13:08, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I already took over the image myself, legally. Perhaps that the EERE_Illust_large_image may be imbedded to the image; the image I draw thus being the larger whole, and the with the EERE image as magnification of the head of the turbine (as it contains more info). The large picture has added info as it mentions the nacelle, rotor blades, rotor hub and transformer. See
thumb|right|150px
91.182.191.178 (talk) 17:04, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Image

message: My 81-yr old mom asks a very elementary and important question, "What was wrong with the 4-arm dutch windmills of the 1800's ??  Why do modern wind turbines have such a different shape?"   We should try to address this question early in the subsection about blade shape.
Also, from a cursory reading of the article, I cannot figure out what are the primary, secondary, and tertiary design criteria for a windmill blade design.  Thus, this article fails to address a fundamental question about turbine design.  For example, what's more important to efficient power generation, torque (which probably implies large blades), blade speed (which probably implies small blades), or availability (which probably implies lowering the stall windspeed, and thus blade mass and generator resistance and having variable pitch, so the turbine can generate power all the time)? SystemBuilder (talk) 18:55, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blade Shape 

message: Dear All,
When wind turbine rotor rotates it's blades especially blade roots undergo cyclic stresses. These stresses are due to gravitation forces and inertial forces.
Could any body of you explain me how these cyclic forces vary? I am interested to know the basic mechanics of these forces for example what would be the stress level in a blade root when the blade is perpendicular to group (pointing towards ground or sky), or the stress level when a blade is horizontal etc....(I am not much interested in Aerodynamics forces, since for steady mean wind flow they are constant)
Apart from basic mechanics of these stresses I would also like to go in the details of mathematical analysis of this phenomenon. So could you please suggest me some good reference book, lecture notes or any other written material.
thanks a lot in advance,
regards,
Milind.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Milindashokshende (talk • contribs) 14:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Qn: mathematical analysis of the cyclic stresses in the blade root while rotating 

message: The title would invite consideration of design of any type of wind turbine, not just the towered HAWT.  VAWT and other types ...belt, airborne are neglected. So, the sentence :"This article covers the design of horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) since the majority of commercial turbines use this design" is POV on "commercial" and does not count well, as VAWT and other sorts have a count that might be more than the count of the HAWTs.
:WP:Notability and WP:SPLIT applies here. This article already has a reasonable size, and additions about VAWT, small or non-commercial types could be mentioned here but is best expanded upon in the relevant articles Unconventional wind turbines, Vertical axis wind turbine, Darrieus wind turbine, Savonius wind turbine,  Small wind turbine and the like. The vast majority of wind energy production is made from large grid connected commercial HAWTs (as per  and maybe  ), they happen to be commercial because that is what is feasible. As for a non-commercial wind turbine, see  free to copy I guess, but so far feasibility seem to overwhelmingly prefer commercial solutions. TGCP (talk) 13:18, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  ARTICLE has focus challenge per title 

message: I would question the statement in the current version (May 9) that the noise varies with the 5th power of the tip speed.  If that were true the Vestas V47 (229 fps at nominal rotational speed) would be noisier than the Vestas V82 (202 fps at nominal rotational speed).  There seems to be broad agreement that the reverse is true.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlfoss (talk • contribs) 22:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wind Turbine Noise 

message: If your average house fan has wide fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* when applied to a wind turbine?
How can you extract the majority of energy in a circular field of wind by having narrow blades that occupy only a small fraction of that swept-area circular field?
Do water turbines have blades that only expose themselves to 10% or so of the total circular area of water rushing down a penstock water pipe?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.94.216 (talk) 21:46, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I still don't know the answer to this one and I've been intermittently looking for it for some time. The fluid dynamics explanations I've read so far talk about the significance of the "chord" (the width of the blades), but I haven't found an explanation I understand well enough to paraphrase here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It comes down to aerodynamics. "The total blade area as a fraction of the total swept disc area is called the solidity, and aerodynamically there is an optimum solidity for a given tip speed; the higher the number of blades, the narrower each one must be. In practice the optimum solidity is low (only a few percent) which means that even with only three blades, each one must be very narrow." I found the comments here enlightening too. --Avenue (talk) 04:38, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose what the original question was asking and what I don't yet understand either is why the optimums seem to be different for fans vs. turbines; now, a household fan operates in a vastly different way than a wind turbine, but it would be good to have some comprehension as to why the answers are different for fan blades and turbine blades. Though I suspect no household fan blade has ever been optimized for aerodynamic performance! --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:12, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I gather most household fans are too compact and slow (for good reasons) to be aerodynamically optimal. Ceiling fans might be the most similar to wind turbines. Efficiency can be more critical for industrial fans, but a wide range of designs are used there, and I don't know what they're all good for. ---Avenue (talk) 16:27, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

text: Aspect ratio (wing) (length/Chord) is important for lift-to-drag ratio; sailplanes are the most efficient. Blade design could elaborate on this. Power direction also means something, as much more wind speed (and power per area) can be transmitted from Propeller (aircraft) to air than from air to rotor, affecting tip speed and therefore aspect ratio. Fan thrust depends on blade area, but inline references for this is not found in the propeller article. TGCP (talk) 19:47, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why are wide blades good for fans, but not wind turbines? 

message: Design feasibilIty of Wind turbine systems is not about its title topic, but is about this topic. Any non-redundant useful content should be merged here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. The present article is 50k, and Feasibility is 15k. Wikipedia:SIZERULE#A_rule_of_thumb suggests articles be split when 50-100k, so another action could be to expand and rename the other article to more technical content, and rewrite this article towards less technical content for the average reader. TGCP (talk) 10:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, but if the redundant content is eliminated, this article increase by a lot less than 15 k. We have some really stupid articles over 100 k, so it's more a guideline than a rule. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggest merge

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thread_title:  Blacklisted Links Found on the Main Page 

message: The Castellano book appears to use large chunks of this article, but when I used Google Books to search its contents I was unable to find a Wikipedia credit.  I checked for the phrase "night time" and found it was added in this edit  in January 2006, well before the copyright date of the Castellano book.  The Google preview of its contents shows me that this book section is substantially derived from Wikipedia articles, not the other way around. I have reverted this edit  since citing a source dervied from Wikipedia isn't a citation to a reliable source. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:54, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Uncredited use of Wikipedia material

message: These links may provide info on design for low temperature. 
This claims to go beyond Betz TGCP (talk) 09:46, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Low temperature 

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