Container-Mounted Wind Turbine Erection Without Heavy Cranes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing wind turbines designs fail to optimize for blade area rather than swept area, leading to inefficient energy generation, high installation costs, and reliance on heavy equipment for erection, making them economically unviable and limiting their deployment.
Innovation Solution
Design wind turbines optimizing for blade area rather than swept area, allowing for compact and portable designs that can be manually erected and transported in standard shipping containers, with integrated power storage and distribution, and incorporating blade angle control mechanisms to handle varying wind conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Power
If wind turbines are designed to optimize swept area with long blades, then power generation capacity is improved, but installation complexity and cost increase due to requiring heavy cranes and massive trucks
Solution Approach 1:
The wind turbine system is divided into modular components (blades, hub, generator, tower sections) that can be transported in standard shipping containers and assembled on-site without heavy cranes. This segmentation allows the turbine to be transported and installed using conventional equipment while maintaining optimized blade area for power generation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from optimizing for swept area (two-dimensional projection) to optimizing for blade area (actual surface area of blades). This dimensional shift enables compact blade designs that generate equivalent power without requiring excessively long blades, thereby reducing installation complexity and equipment requirements.
2Productivity
If wind turbines use inordinately long blades to optimize swept area, then energy generation is improved, but transportability and manual erection become impossible
Solution Approach 1:
The patent incorporates adjustable blade angle mechanisms that allow the blades to dynamically optimize their angle of attack based on wind conditions. This dynamic adjustment compensates for the reduced blade length, maintaining energy generation productivity while enabling transportability and manual erection through standardized container shipping.
Solution Approach 2:
The optimization criterion changes from swept area to blade area, fundamentally altering the design parameters. This parameter change enables compact blade geometries that fit within standard shipping containers while maintaining energy generation productivity through optimized blade surface area and angle control.
3Area of stationary object
If conventional wind turbine designs are used, then swept area optimization is achieved, but economic viability is lost due to high installation costs and reliance on government grants
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the conventional optimization approach by prioritizing blade area over swept area. This inversion leads to compact turbine designs with shorter blades that can be transported in standard containers and installed without heavy equipment, dramatically reducing installation costs and improving economic viability while maintaining energy generation effectiveness.
4Volume of moving object
If wind turbines are designed with compact blades for portability, then transportability is improved, but power generation capacity may be reduced without proper optimization
Solution Approach 1:
The patent incorporates blade angle control mechanisms that are pre-configured to optimize performance at various wind speeds. This preliminary action of angle adjustment compensates for the reduced blade length, ensuring that compact, portable turbines maintain adequate power generation capacity without requiring inordinately long blades.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enhances energy generation efficiency by up to ten times, reduces installation costs, and enables deployment without heavy machinery, transforming wind power into a viable and self-sustaining energy source.
Implementation Method 1
a rope 80 is attached to an upper end 84 of a mast 28 and is wound around a winch 82
Implementation Method 2
a counterweight 400 is attached to the lower end 48 of the mast 28
Data Source
AI summary
The method of erecting a wind turbine, comprising pivotably mounting the lower end of a mast on a side or end of a container, connecting a first wire, rope, cable, or chain to the upper end of the mast and to the top end of an intermediate truss, connecting a second wire, rope, cable, or chain to the top end of the intermediate truss and to a winch, pivotably fixing a lower end of the intermediate truss to the container, operating the winch to support a portion of the weight of the mast, assembly the wind turbine on the mast, operate the winch to move the mast and wind turbine to the vertical position, engage a second connection to fix the mast in the vertical position, and releasing the wire, rope cable or chain from the upper end of the truss.