GEGA1006-004

Lecture 14 – Wind Power

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 Outline
1. What is wind power?

2. Windmill and wind

turbine/farm.

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 Outline
History of wind - Ancient use

• Wind for sailing

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 Outline
History of wind - Ancient use

• Wind for war

萬事俱備
只欠東風

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 Outline

What is wind?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind 6
 Outline

• Simply, air motion…

• Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale.
• On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement
of air.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind 7
 What makes wind?
- Caused by the uneven heating of the earth's surface by the sun.
Since the earth's surface is made up of land, desert, water, and
forest areas, the surface absorbs the sun's radiation differently.
- Rotation of the Earth

Can we consider wind

energy as another format
of solar energy?

http://lsa.colorado.edu/essence/texts/wind.htm 8
 Outline
What is wind power?
• Wind power is the use of air flow through wind
turbines to mechanically power generators for electric
power.

• Wind power, as an alternative to burning fossil fuels, is

plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces
no greenhouse gas emissions during operation,
consumes no water, and uses little land.

Renewable/sustainable energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind_power_capacity_and_production 9
 Outline
Why we use wind power?

• Clean, zero emissions

• NOx, SO2, CO, CO2
• Power consumption

• Reduce fossil fuel dependence

• Energy independence
• No fuel-price volatility

Renewable/sustainable energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind_power_capacity_and_production 10
 Global wind capacity

• As of 2015, Denmark generates 40% of its electric power from wind, and at least
83 other countries are using wind power to supply their electric power grids.
• In 2014, global wind power capacity expanded 16% to 369,553 MW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power 10
 Global wind capacity

China Leads the World in Wind Capacity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power 11
 China’s wind resource
➢ China has abundant exploitable wind resources both onshore and
offshore due to its large land area and long coastline.
➢ China’s commercial onshore potential is between 1,000 and 4,000
GW; and the offshore potential in waters from 5-50m deep is another
500 GW.

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 China’s new 5yr plan to target 90 GW wind capacity

Building seven 10 GW wind power

bases, five of which are to be
completed before 2016.

Source:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=685352&page=41 13
 Jiuquan wind power base (酒泉風電基地)

• Construction of the first 10 GW wind

power base in Jiuquan in northwest
Gansu province started in August
2009.

• The first phase of 5.16 GW was completed in 2010.

• The capacity expand to 12.71 GW in 2020.

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 Dutch traditional windmill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIv7Va5MUeI&feature=related 15
 Wind farm in California

2023/10/28 16
 Useful websites
Wind with Miller:
• http://ele.aut.ac.ir/~wind/en/en/kids/
How wind turbines work:
• http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/wind_how.html

Videos:
Dutch traditional windmill
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIv7Va5MUeI&feature=related
Wind turbine goes wild and breaks
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raPM3wWhdHU
Palm Springs WindMills "Secrets of the WindMills”
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSDmgeobBRY&feature=related
Wind farm in California:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu3EyzOYpGY&feature=related

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 What are the most important factors for
energy transferring efficiency in a wind farm?

2023/10/28 18
 Outline
Two most important factors

• Air flow
➢ more moving air can increase the input.

• Wind turbines
➢ take advantage of moving air & extract the energy
➢ more power that can be captured

• We will discuss later about physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind_power_capacity_and_production 18
 Wind Turbine
Wind Turbine Components

A. Blades 葉片
B. Hub 轮毂
C. Nacelle 引擎
D. Tower 塔臺

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How many types of wind turbines?

• Horizontal axis • Vertical axis

• More common to us

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 Vertical Axis Turbine

• Vertical Axis Turbine

• Advantage:
- Free of (lighter) supporting stand (tower)
- Ease of service
- Generator, gearbox, etc. may place on the
ground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind_power_capacity_and_production 21
 Vertical Axis Turbine
The Air Flow
• Vertical Axis Turbine
• spin on a vertical axis

• Fatal disadvantage:
- The air flow near the ground is limited
- Low efficiency
- Poor self-starting capabilities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind_power_capacity_and_production 22
 Offshore Wind Farm
• Faster and smoother wind speed
• close to major population centers on the coast

The construction is critical…

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 Wind power

• How a wind turbine works? Information about the wind

turbine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DILJJwsFl3w 25
 Wind power
• How a wind turbine operates?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DILJJwsFl3w 26
 Wind power

• Overall view: from mechanical energy to electricity

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 Wind power - the formula

How can we get the

efficiency of the wind farm?

We have to know the power

per square (m2) firstly…

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 Wind power - the formula
• Firstly, we consider the length of tubular air, moving with speed v, passing
through a hoop of cross-section A in time t is vt.
• Its volume is Avt and its mass is ρAvt , where ρ is the density of air.

The kinetic energy of a circular tube of air is

½ mv2 = ½(ρAvt) v2 = ½ ρAt v3
The power of the tube of air is then
½ mv2 /t = ½ ρAv3
The wind power per square meter is then ½ ρ v3
Taking the typical speed of wind to be 6 m/s and the density of air,
ρ = 1.3 kg/m3, then the wind power per square meter is
½ ρ v3 = 0.5 (1.3) 63 = 140 W/m2

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 Wind power for use

From the intrinsic energy of wind, to the energy that

can be used…

• Consider a windmill with a diameter of d = 25m, the power

of wind mill is
efficiency factor ×power per unit area ×area
= 50% ×½ρv3×π(d/2)2
= 0.5 × 140 W/m2 × π (25/2)2 m2 = 34 kW

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 Wind power

½ ρAv3
• Wind Speed: Wind energy increases with the cube of the wind speed. 10%
increase in wind speed translates into 30% more electricity. 2X the wind speed
translates into 8X the electricity. (v3)

• Air density: Wind energy increases proportionally with air density. Humid
climates have greater air density than dry climates. Lower elevations have
greater air density than higher elevations.

• Blade swept area: Wind energy increases proportionally with swept area of the
blades. Blades are shaped like airplane wings. 10% increase in swept diameter
translates into ~20% greater swept area.

2023/10/28 31
 Wind power
Some definition you have to know:

1. Wind power per square meter:

½ ρ v3
2. Power per windmill:
efficiency factor ×power per unit area ×area of windmill
3. Power per unit land area:
power per windmill / land area per windmill

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 Evolution of power output and rotor diameter of wind turbines

From: Manas-Zloczower, Case

Western Reserve University

The world's most powerful turbine

(2014): 8MW power-rating and a
164-metre rotor diameter

• The size of wind turbines made a distinctive leap around the year 2000.
• The larger the area through which the turbine can extract the energy (the swept area
of the rotor), and the higher the rotor can be installed (to take advantage of more
moving air), the more power that can be captured.

http://www.windpowermonthly.com/10-biggest-turbines 33
 Problems involved in the size increase

▪ Power density is very low.

▪ Needs a very large number of windmills
to produce modest amounts of power.
▪ Cost.
▪ Visual Impact.
▪ Noise.
▪ Environmental costs.
▪ material and maintenance costs.
▪ birds and appearance.

People may complain that wind turbines look

industrial and take away from the natural beauty
of the landscape

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 Perspective

Source: Annual Energy Review 1999, U.S. Energy Information Administration. 35