SheerWind recently announced their newest innovation as part of its Invelox technology. The technology integrates three turbines in a row or series and increases the electrical power output for a single tower. SheerWind’s Invelox system is a large funnel that captures, concentrates, and accelerates wind before delivering it to turbines safely and efficiently located at ground level.
By placing three turbines in a series in an Invelox system, additional 120% power may be generated compared to a single turbine. Recent reports state technologies have allowed some markets in renewable generation to be competitive with coal or natural gas. This is good news; however, renewable energies intermittency and massive size challenges will continue without industry changes. Invelox attends to the intermittency and size issues by combining the best traditional wind technologies with a unique wind delivery system that produces more efficient and powerful wind generation machines, says SheerWind
Three turbines in a single INVELOX wind funnel system means 120% greater power output while providing near zero downtime.
“This is a great achievement, for the first time in wind industry history three turbines may run in series in a single tower to produce more energy. This means customers can gain an increase in output from a single Invelox tower —reducing cost per kilowatt—all without additional structure or land use,” says Steve Hill, COO of SheerWind, “Plus increased capacity allows production in areas previously limited by low wind speed, size or land constraints.”
Ultimately, combining technologies will allow us to achieve the necessary power generation capacities to transform wind energy into a reliable base-load power source. This includes reducing intermittency issues by producing power at lower wind speeds, placing turbines safely covered at ground level allowing installation close to the end user. This could be the beginning of transforming wind power into the base-load power source that coal has been since the early 1900s.
Multiple turbines in a single Invelox tower means nearly zero operational downtime, because maintenance can be done on one turbine while the others continue producing energy. With Invelox capacity factor at 60 to 90% and turbines installed safely and conveniently at ground level, maintenance costs and failure is greatly
reduced.
Benefits of multiple turbines in single tower
• 120% additional power output at minimum added cost of turbine-generators
• Reduced capital expenditure per kilowatt
• Increased production capacity
• Gain in output without increasing footprint
• Offers upgradability to meet increase in power demands
• Minimizes operational downtime
SheerWind
SheerWind.com
Filed Under: Innovators & influencers, News, Turbines
See my final comment at
http://www.windpowerengineering.com/construction/sheerwinds-invelox-funnel-based-wind-power-technology-is-bird-safe/
Those who bought an Invelox turbine now know that they were fools. As predicted by many experts in the field.
Even if the principle works well enough on a small scale, which several experts have said it does not, the requirement that the machine must be built on a large scale to be practical means that it will never be practical. The cost would be enormous, completely negating any economic value. The thing would look like the War of the Worlds has started. This concept is ridiculous. Its only value is to flush out the wingnuts and the credulous.
If you have a PHD in fluid dynamics, you didn’t earn it.
Wrong the fatal flaw has been the inability to scale the devices. It is more than proven that ducted turbines do work. Get a PHD in fluid dynamics and perhaps you could begin to understand the technology.
Invelox and its kind explained by Mike Bergey at:
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/07/08/invelox-ducted-turbine-latest-long-line-failures/
“…Concentrators and ducted fans have been proposed and promoted by the dozens over the last 35 years that I have been in the industry. In your due diligence you must have missed Next-Gen Wind, Vortec, TurboDynamX, Enflo, Enco, Ring Turbine, Smart Wind, Wind Cube (Wind Sphere), WindTammer, Sky Wolf, Elena, Catching Wind Power, and OptiWind, to name a few. The fatal flaw in all these unsuccessful attempts to build a better wind turbine is the promoters failure to account for the wind’s ability and preference to go around a blockage like the entrance to a funnel. The operating environment of a wind turbine is nothing like the constraining ducting of a hose or a wind tunnel and that dooms the concept to poorer performance. And the dishonest use of the rotor area instead of the total intercepted area to inflate the calculated efficiency doesn’t change the physics…”
The author of the article linked above says:
“The inability of devices like Sheerwind to do anything except suck money out of investors’ wallets is well-documented and an ongoing proof of PT Barnum’s axiom.”