Low Windspeed Wind Turbine

Well over 50 % of US land area constitutes low windspeed sites, yet wind turbines are either not effective or only marginally effective in such low winds. To extract significantly more energy from such DOE Class 1 or Class 2 winds requires substantially increasing turbine blade rotor diameter. However, due to limitations on turbine blade tip speed, this cannot be done without significantly decreasing blade rotor rpm, which in turn, due to limitations on generator output at low rpm, is typically costly to do. The lower the generator rpm at rated power, the more costly and massive it is (mass impacts installation costs). As a result, with current technology, it would not be economically feasible to make or buy turbines that generate a significant portion of their rated power within prevalent DOE Class 1 or Class 2 winds. Since most people live within such windspeed sites this is a severe drawback. Sonsight Inc. has been investigating innovative low rpm wind turbine generator designs. The current proposal is for demonstrating the feasibility of adapting and utilizing a low rpm generator to develop a novel low windspeed horizontal axis wind turbine that generates over 250 % more power in low DOE Class 1 and Class 2 winds than that generated by other ~5 kW wind turbines. Moreover, doing this at less cost, and with less mass and aerodynamic noise are also to be demonstrated. The research also includes analyses of the potential resulting economic and environmental impact.