Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The Beginnings of Modern Developments
1970 to 1974
Professor Hütter's wind turbine program in Germany ended for the same reasons as
those that halted experiments in other countries: Energy from fossil-fuel and nuclear power
plants was inexpensive, and little emphasis was placed on research on alternative sources
of energy. At the end of the 1960's there was, unfortunately, little useful documentation
and almost no experimental data from these several decades of activities around the world.
For all the large advances in the ield of wind energy since the end of the nineteenth
century, prospective wind turbine designers in the '70s had little irm information upon
which to build.
Revival of Interest in Wind Power
By 1970, there was little or no activity world-wide for producing electricity by wind
power. Some water-pumping windmills were still being produced, principally for use in the
developing world. In the U. S., a few enthusiasts were rebuilding
Jacobs Wind Electric
(Fig.
1-20) and other small DC wind generators from the 1930s for use in remote rural applica-
tions.
Dunlite
(Australia),
Elektro
(Switzerland), and
Aerowatt
(France) were essentially the
only active manufacturers. Their systems were imported in very small quantities by the
Solar
Wind Company
in Maine. A number of companies in the U.S., staffed by young enthusiasts,
were beginning to attempt the design of machines in the 1-kW to 10-kW range. In the aca-
demic community, Hughes at Oklahoma State University and Heronomous at the University
of Massachusetts and their students were studying small-scale and large-scale wind energy
concepts, respectively.
At the
National Research Council
of Canada (NRC), the curve-bladed
vertical-axis rotor patented by G. J. M.
Darrieus in France in 1925 and in the
U.S. in 1931 was re-invented by Peter
South and Raj Rangi in the late 1960s.
The
4.3-m NRC Darrieus
VAWT
which they constructed was tested both
in a wind tunnel (Fig. 3-8) and out-
doors, producing some of the irst wind
turbine performance data obtained
under controlled testing conditions.
In the U.S. in 1972, engineers from
the
Lewis Research Center
of the
Na-
tional Aeronautics and Space Adminis-
tration
(NASA) were involved in mea-
suring winds in Puerto Rico (for other
purposes) and encountered some local
interest in wind power. This was the
start of wind energy research that con-
tinued at that laboratory for over 20
years. Aerodynamicists at NASA's
Langley Research Center
also began
theoretical and experimental research
on the Darrieus rotor.
Figure 3-8. Testing the 4.3-m NRC Darrieus
VAWT in 1972, observed by developers Peter
South and Raj Rangi.
(
Courtesy of the National
Research Council of Canada
)
Search WWH ::
Custom Search