Illustration of Vestas’ new multi-rotor concept demonstration wind turbine.
With a new concept demonstrator, Vestas challenges the core scaling rules that wind turbines have to grow in size to increase their energy output — which further leads to transportation and installation challenges in some markets. Many new load and control features will still need to be developed, tested, and proven to assess the technical and commercial feasibility of this new concept. But after successful demonstration, Vestas will know more about the possible use of this technology.
“Installing a concept turbine shows that innovation sometimes entails entirely new thinking and new approaches. This process of continuous innovation and exploration is extremely important,” said Jorge Magalhaes, Senior Vice President, Vestas Innovation & Concepts. “It provides us with essential knowledge that can help us bring down our products’ cost of energy and integrate key technologies to solve our customers’ challenges. Ultimately, the goal is to assess if we can build an even more cost-efficient turbine by challenging the scaling rules.”
Anders Vedel, Executive Vice President, Vestas Technology & Service Solutions added: “As a global company, it is essential that Vestas’ product portfolio remains versatile enough to deliver high performance in a wide array of different market conditions – and also innovative enough to succeed in markets with different energy systems and requirements. And we see a great opportunity and need to continuously explore alternative concepts to cover the world’s rapidly growing energy demand in a sustainable way, while simultaneously continue lowering the cost of energy our products deliver.”
With the Technical University of Denmark as a research partner, the multi-rotor concept demonstrator is being erected at the Risø test site near Roskilde, Denmark, where it will be studied closely in the coming years in order to test-specific functionalities.
Vestas
www.vestas.com/multirotor
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