Ultrasonic wind sensors or cup anemometers? That is the question.

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Excerpt: Mechanical anemometers have worked well for years but the rigorous duty on wind turbines may call for a more reliable sensor. Accurate measurements of wind speed and direction from reliable equipment are more important than ever in today’s competitive North American wind industry. Dem …

Siting the urban turbine

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Excerpt: Guilliam Dupont/Application Engineer, Meteodyn/Philadelphia/meteodyn.com Small wind systems in urban environments are becoming a frequent feature of cityscapes. Before installing a small wind turbine, a site requires an accurate characterization of its wind to put the turbine to best use and pro …

Lufft USA uses Campbell Scientific equipment in weather stations

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Excerpt: Lufft USA recently announced that it’s in-house manufactured ‘WS’ line of weather stations are now available with built in SDI-12 communication protocol. LUFFT WS weather stations and anemometers are now plug and play with any SDI-12 ready datalogger. Lufft intelligent weather stations and ane …

DWS Series Anemometers from Carlo Gavazzi

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Excerpt: The international electronic automations group, Carlo Gavazzi Automation, recently launched a line of dynamic wind sensors that can improve efficiency, enhance accuracy and provide safety in a variety of different applications. Their DWS Series Anemometers measure wind velocity from 3.3 to …

Can an air leak give turbine rotors an efficiency boost?

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Excerpt: An idea originally developed to increase lift in slow moving aircraft wings and simplify helicopter rotors may soon improve the efficiency of wind turbine rotors and possibly reduce their cost of manufacturing. This "circulation control" aerodynamic technology could let wind turbines produce signifi …

Fast Accurate Flow Solver for Wind Turbine Simulations

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Excerpt: AcuSolve, a general-purpose finite-element-based flow solver, has evolved through years of development, experience, and feedback. The software's advantages are its reliability, speed, and accuracy. Users can rapidly obtain quality solutions without iterating on solution procedures or worrying ab …

Simulating the Turbine-Simulating the Site

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Excerpt: Designing the most efficient and effective wind turbine calls for modeling tools that provide accurate, reliable numerical predictions of wind-turbine rotor performance over a machine’s full range of operating conditions. Simulating real-world conditions using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) le …

How to recognize drivetrain defects

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Excerpt: A Wind Turbine Drivetrain Diagnostics Simulator (WTDS) generates wind-turbine-drivetrain faults so users can learn to recognize signatures in a controlled environment. The setup lets users learn signatures of drivetrain component faults such as gear surface wear, cracks, chips, and missing teeth. By …

Simulation programs for the renewable-energy industry

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Excerpt: A range of simulation programs under the Ansys brand can models problems and equipment frequently encountered in the renewable energy industry. For wind turbines, the developer’s software models offshore wind-turbine foundations including fatigue and wave and current structure interaction; blade, …

CFD’s Role in the Windpower Industry

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Excerpt: Recent advances in CFD (computational fluid dynamics) codes and the availability of large scale computer “clusters” are guiding the design work of the next generation of wind turbines. Developers should be able to model a turbine’s power output versus wind velocity, and then the power output f …