495 results about "Wind energy conversion" patented technology

A wind energy conversion system optimized for offshore application. Each wind turbine includes a semi-submersible hull with ballast weight that is moveable to increase the system's stability. Each wind turbine has an array of rotors distributed on a tower to distribute weight and loads and to improve power production performance where windshear is high. As much of the equipment associated with each rotor as possible is located at the base of the tower to lower the metacentric height. The equipment that may be emplaced at the bottom of the tower could include a power electronic converter, a DC to AC converter, or the entire generator with a mechanical linkage transmitting power from each rotor to the base of the tower. Rather than transmitting electrical power back to shore, it is contemplated to create energy intensive hydrogen-based products at the base of the wind turbine. Alternatively, there could be a central factory ship that utilizes the power produced by a plurality of wind turbines to create a hydrogen-based fuel. The hydrogen based fuel is transported to land and sold into existing markets as a value-added “green” product.

A wind energy conversion system includes upper and lower wind turbines having counter-rotating blade assemblies supported for rotation about a vertical rotation axis, with each blade assembly carrying a rotor for rotation past a stator to produce an electrical output. The wind turbines are supported by a tower at an elevated position above the ground. Each wind turbine produces torque, and the wind energy conversion system provides for balancing the torques to avoid a net torque on the tower. Adjustment mechanisms are provided for adjusting blade pitch and for adjusting the size of an air gap between a stator and a rotor that comes into alignment with the stator as the rotor rotates therepast. The wind energy conversion system provides a hood for supplying intake air to a wind turbine and an exhaust plenum for exhausting air from the wind turbine, with the hood and the exhaust plenum being directionally positionable.

A de-icing and anti-icing arrangement for a Wind Energy Converting System (WECS), a WECS comprising a de-icing and anti-icing arrangement and a method for preventing and eliminating ice accretion on the rotor blades of a WECS are provided. The WECS comprises a tower, a rotor having a plurality of blades that rotate due to wind force, a nacelle including a first means for transforming the rotor's rotational movement to electric power, and a second means for permitting the flow of fluid from volumes defined by the rotor blades, the rotor blades comprising an external surface having openings in fluid connection with the volumes inside the blades for permitting the flow of fluid to the outside of the blades to fluid-thermodynamically interact with the wind hitting the part of the blade surface, and thereby prevent or eliminate the accretion of ice on the external surface of the blade.

A protective wind energy conversion chamber provides a protected multiple turbine mechanism axially aligned to convert kinetic energy of a moving fluid (e.g., wind) into rotational mechanical power by the reaction of the moving fluid with the turbine. The conversion chamber may either be configured as a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) or horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT). The conversion chamber repositions an intake windward to collect and concentrate the wind prior to converting the wind into energy via the axially aligned multi-turbine mechanism. The remaining wind is released via a leeward-facing exhaust. Completely enclosed by the protective wind energy conversion chamber, the axially aligned multi-turbine mechanism avoids interference by birds and other outside objects.

A wind energy conversion device includes a propeller in which each of the propeller blades includes a proximal (radially inward) non-airfoil mounting section, a medial section and a distal tip section mounted to pivot relative to the medial section about a pitch axis running lengthwise of the blade. At low wind speeds, each tip section and its associated medial section cooperate to provide a single airfoil. When the propeller rpm exceeds a predetermined threshold, each of the tip sections begins to pivot toward a full governing position, which tends to reduce the propeller rpm. To permit wind tracking, the device is mounted to pivot on a vertical axis. The propeller blades are downwind of the vertical axis, and slightly inclined to define a cone diverging in the downwind direction. The electrical power generating components are located upwind of the propeller and centered about the propeller axis, and have a radius less than the length of the proximal blade sections. Forming the airfoil component of the blade in several sections (medial section, tip section and further sections as desired) facilitates fabrication by injection molding.

Airborne wind energy conversion system a with flying wing, using a cable or belt to transmit motion to a rotor of a ground based electrical generator with high velocity, achieving high aerodynamic efficiency of the wings and high power for a given torque.

An apparatus and method to efficiently convert erratic wind energy to a source of reliable standard AC electrical power by means of a complex tower-mounted windmill operatively engaged to power a pump. The pump in a sealed communication with a chamber evacuates air from the chamber to store the wind-generated energy as potential energy in the form of a pressure differential with ambient atmosphere. Regulated air inflow into the evacuated chamber is employed to drive a generator to produce electric power which is synchronized with the grid on demand.

A laminar flow, suction driven, wind energy conversion device is disclosed for extracting usable energy from wind. The device includes multiple vacuum generators that react with the wind flow to generate usable vacuum. The device avoids the use of potentially hazardous, high speed and exposed rotor or turbine blades of popular wind energy conversion devices and may therefore be safely located within human and animal habitats. The device incorporates many useful and novel features including a pneumatic transmission that the vacuum generators use to drive turbines to produce usable energy from wind energy, a framework that integrates components of the invention into a single structure, a method to cause the framework and components to self-orient into the oncoming wind, valves to manage the non-uniform distribution of vacuum pressures within the device that are caused by turbulent wind flow, and secondary airflow accelerators that serve to maintain an acceptably laminar flow of wind through the venturi-like openings within the device.

A system for reversible storage of energy, the system comprising: means for generating energy; first conversion means for converting the energy into stored energy by means of low ratio (3.2:1 or less) high pressure (200 bar minimum) compression of gas; and second conversion means for converting the stored energy by expansion or reversal of the first process into usable energy.

The invention discloses a wind and solar hybrid energy storage and power generation integration system and process. The system comprises a wind power generation subsystem, a solar energy storage subsystem, a liquefied air subsystem and a power subsystem. The process comprises the following steps: solar energy is gathered by a thermal collector to obtain heat energy, the heat energy is stored in heat storge medium; wind energy is converted to electric energy, the wind power is used to liquefy air and stored in the liquefied air; and when electricity is required, the liquefied air is pressurized to recycle cold energy for the air liquefying process, then the air is heated by the high temperature heat storge medium which stores solar energy to obtain high temperature and high pressure air, and finally the air is sent to a multistage reheating turbine to expand and do work. The system of the invention recycles the cold energy of the liquefied air to reduce the wasted work for air liquefying; a pump is used to increase the pressure of the working medium, thus reducing the wasted work for compressing the working medium; the turbine utilizes recycled heat for exhaustm, thus effectively utilizing heat energy; solar energy is utilized to heat the working medium at the inlet of the turbine, thus increasing the expansion efficiency of the turbine; and wind energy and solar energy can be utilized for complementation, energy storage and power generation can be integrated and the system of the invention has wide application prospect.

The invention discloses a high-power umbrella-type wind power generation system, which comprises a track rope, a lift force guiding body, an umbrella stair and a generating set, wherein one end of the track rope passes through the umbrella stair to tie the lift force guiding body, and the other end thereof is fastened to a heavy; the lift force guiding body straightens the track rope to form an umbrella track; the lift force guiding body and an umbrella keep distance; the umbrella stair is formed by one or more than one umbrellas; the adjacent umbrellas keep distance; the center of each umbrella is provided with a hole for the track rope to pass through; when the umbrella is expanded, a large upward tensile force can be formed due to the function of a wind force. The umbrella is divided into a bearing umbrella and an acting umbrella according to functions, wherein the bearing umbrella is fastened to the track rope for balancing the system; the acting umbrella makes movement up and down for acting; the acting umbrella is connected with an acting rope; one end of the acting rope is fastened and connected with the acting umbrella, and the other end thereof is connected with the generating set, and thus, the generating set is pulled to make mechanical movement, and thereby, the wind energy is converted into electric energy.

The invention provides a wind-light-storage island-type combined cooling, heating and power system based on solar light-heat utilization. The system comprises a wind energy conversion system, a solar heat collecting system, a micro compressed air energy-storage system and a heat storage system. When wind speed is high, surplus electric energy drives a multistage compressor to compress air from a level of atmospheric pressure to a higher level of pressure to be stored into a compressed air storage pipeline, and heat in the process of compressing is recovered into the heat storage system, at the moment, supplying of cold energy and heat energy is realized after pumped thermal-state heat conducting oil is shunted and enters an absorption-type refrigerating system and a heating system. When the wind speed is low, after absorbing heat from the heat storage system, compressed air enters a turbine to expand for doing work so as to fill a demand gap of electric energy, so that demands of a user on cold energy and heat energy are met through the thermal-state heat conducting oil.

An electric energy generation system may include a plurality of windmills, a windmill support system, an electric generator, and a coupling system. The windmills may each be configured to transform wind energy into rotational energy. The windmill support system may support the windmills in positions that are spaced apart from one another. The electric generator may be configured to transform rotational energy into electric energy. The coupling system may be configured to couple the rotational energy generated by each of the windmills to the electric generator in a manner that permits the windmills to rotate at different speeds during operation of the electric energy generation system. Other configurations are also disclosed.

A method for controlling a variable speed wind turbine generator is disclosed. The generator is connected to a power converter comprising switches. The generator comprises a stator and a set of terminals connected to the stator and to the switches of the power converter. The method comprises: determining a stator flux reference value corresponding to a generator power of a desired magnitude, determining an estimated stator flux value corresponding to an actual generator power, determining a difference between the determined stator flux reference value and the estimated stator flux value, and operating said switches in correspondence to the determined stator flux reference value and the estimated stator flux value to adapt at least one stator electrical quantity to obtain said desired generator power magnitude.

The invention discloses an umbrella type wind energy conversion device and an umbrella type wind energy conversion system. The device comprises a rail rope, and a lower control box, a lower baffle block and an upper baffle block which are fixedly connected to the rail rope sequentially from top to bottom, wherein the lower control box is connected with a sliding barrel through at least one umbrella control rope; a plurality of work application umbrellas are connected between an umbrella edge and the sliding barrel; the upper control box is in engagement transmission with a chain; when the lower control box reaches an operation lower limit position relative to the ground, a first prompting signal is transmitted to make the lower control box retract the umbrella control rope, so that the work application umbrellas are unfolded under the action of wind power; and when the lower control box reaches an operation upper limit position relative to the ground, a second prompting signal is transmitted to make the lower control box release the umbrella control rope, and the upper control box moves downwards along the chain to drive the tops of the work application umbrellas to move downwardsso as to fold the work application umbrellas. By the device and the system, the work application umbrellas can be more stably unfolded and folded in the air, the phenomenon of twisting caused by redundant rope tools during unfolding and folding of the work application umbrellas can be effectively prevented, and high-power wind energy can be stably converted.

The invention discloses a multi-fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control method of a wind turbine system. The method comprises the following steps: firstly, establishing a global fuzzy model of the wind turbine system by utilizing the T-S fuzzy algorithm; converting an actuator fault into a sensor fault by utilizing the characteristic of combining the sensor hardware redundancy technology with the actuator fault, and establishing a multi-fault diagnosis logical table to realize multi-fault detection; then, introducing a filter, converting the sensor fault into the actuator fault, establishing a virtual actuator fault, and realizing simultaneous reconstitution of two faults through reconstitution of the virtual actuator fault; finally, revising input and output of a controller based on a fault reconstitution value to realize active fault-tolerant control. The method has the following advantages: diagnosis and reconstitution of the wind turbine system with concurrent actuator and sensor faults can be simultaneously realized, accurate fault information is obtained in a real-time and on-line manner, fault-tolerant control is realized, the capacity of processing unknown faults of the system is enhanced, and the wind energy conversion efficiency under the fault is improved.

A method for determining a location of a conversion device for converting wind energy into electrical energy comprises establishing a plurality of data layers, including at least a wind data layer and a transmission grid data layer. Each data layer contains attribute data that is associated with corresponding location data. The location data of one layer is aligned with the location data of other layers to form a composite layer. The composite layer is searched to identify the first compliant location data associated with a target value or a target value range of the attribute data for the wind data layer. The composite layer is searched to identify a second compliant location data associated with a target value or a target value range of the attribute data for the transmission grid data. The composite layer is searched to identify a third compliant location data associated with a target value or target value range of the attribute data for an additional data layer other than the wind data layer and the transmission grid data layer. The intersection of the first compliant location data, the second compliant location data, and the third compliant data is determined. The intersection is identified as one or more preferential regions for locating an energy conversion device.

The invention discloses an offshore comprehensive energy generating system in the technical field of energy development and utilization. The offshore comprehensive energy generating system comprises a wave energy conversion device, a wind energy conversion device, an ocean current energy conversion device, a power transmission case and a direct drive generator, wherein the wave energy conversion device, the wind energy conversion device and the ocean current energy are respectively connected with the power transmission case, the power transmission case is connected with the direct drive generator, the wave energy conversion device is used for converting wave energy to mechanical energy and outputting the mechanical energy to the power transmission case, the wind energy conversion device is used for converting wind energy to mechanical energy and outputting the mechanical energy to the power transmission case, the ocean current energy conversion device is used for converting ocean current energy to mechanical energy and outputting the mechanical energy to the power transmission case, the power transmission case is used for receiving the mechanical energies output by the wave energyconversion device, the wind energy conversion device and the ocean current conversion device and superposing the received mechanical energies to drive the generator to generate electricity. By the adoption of the offshore comprehensive energy generating system, the problems of the traditional offshore comprehensive energy generating system, such as poor stability and complicated structure, can besolved.