The world’s tallest wind turbine is currently being built in Schipkau, Brandenburg. It is intended to usher in a third level of renewable energy production.
Excerpts:
Construction of the world’s tallest wind turbine is beginning this week in the Brandenburg municipality of Schipkau. This was reported by RBB, citing the operating company Gicon. The center of the wind turbine currently under construction will be 300 meters above ground, and the tips of the rotor blades will reach a height of 365 meters. This makes the total structure only a few meters shorter than the Berlin TV tower. To ensure that the turbine remains stable, it does not have the typical closed tower base but instead a double scaffolding structure with an inner and outer section. The aim is to harness the significantly higher yields offered by high-altitude winds.
Renewable energies on three levels
With this huge wind turbine, Gicon aims to establish renewable energy generation on a third level. While photovoltaic systems produce solar power on the ground and conventional wind turbines rotate at low heights, the wind at higher altitudes will be harnessed. Once completed, up to 1,000 more are to follow across Germany. If they are installed between existing wind turbines, no additional land will be required. “The towers are so high that the rotors do not overlap and take the wind away from each other,” the MDR quotes the Gicon founder as saying. The design was invented by a 90-year-old engineer from Leipzig.
This plan seems interesting in that these wind turbines can coexist with lower wind turbines without additional land.
A video about various AWES mentions this 365 m height wind turbine, at 2:17:
The same video provides interesting curves about gradient wind, at 1:46. I copied some indications:
City Center: 40% at 50 m height, 51% at 100 m height, and 94% at 450 m height.
Outskirts: 56% at 50 m height, 68% at 100 m height, and 98% at 400 m height.
Rural Areas: 78% at 50 m height, 85% at 100 m height, and 95% at 200 m height.
It seems like an interesting pursuit. From my point of view it seems like a win-win situation. I still have a feeling there are good reasons to why the steel tube tower is a good solution and why tower height currently seems to be limited. I am afraid the people behind this project simply don’t understand the reasons why, but will find out pretty soon. Because - for anyone in eg Vestas or Siemens Gamesa, it wouldn’t be very hard to come up with a tower like this. Why haven’t they?
I don’t have a precise answer, but perhaps a few hypotheses.
First, steel tube towers like the one shown by GICON are ugly.
Secondly, manufacturers appear to be striving to increase the rotor diameter, and consequently the swept area and overall height, while maintaining the classic design of the tubular steel wind turbine tower. The general proportions remain essentially the same, regardless of the dimensions. Despite a heavier assembly and incompatibility with smaller neighboring wind turbines within the same wind farm (since the area swept by the larger wind turbine covers the entire area), the larger diameter rotor has the advantage of lowering the center of gravity (and also the center of thrust, and therefore reducing the adverse effects of pendulum moment and leverage due to wind force on the rotor at the top of a tall tower), with the greater mass concentrated in the nacelle, while the total height remains unchanged.
This is generally the case, except for this wind turbine project where only the tower is taller; the rotor retains its dimensions (126 m in diameter for a nominal power of 3.8 MW as specified below, which is common), thus allowing the swept area to be adapted to that of a neighboring wind turbine of “normal” height and the two swept areas to be superimposed.
However, in my opinion, the height of the tower induces additional leverage and pendulum moment effects, whereas these two negative effects would be less pronounced (in my view) if the rotor diameter increased with the tower height as “usual”, despite a greater mass.
Rotor Diameter 126.2 m
Tower Hub heights 86,9 m (Steel) | 96,9 m (Steel) | 136,9 m (Hybrid)
The same Vensys 126 wind turbine would be implemented at the top of a 300 m tall tower in GICON project.
Considering the fact of no AWE system in regular operation at any scale, this seems like a silly would-be topic. Yes, regular wind turbines have been getting larger and larger. Yes, lattice towers were deemed too ugly long ago. Meanwhile AWE is what, sitting around tippity-tapping on the internet, pretending they are doing anything whatsoever? Silly.
The wind turbine mentioned in this discussion is not larger, only taller, which allows it to combine its swept area with that of a shorter neighboring turbine of the same diameter.
It’s true that other wind turbines are also growing in both diameter and height.
That said, regardless of the method used, it gives an idea of what AWE should be doing in terms of altitude…Is this possible or not, based on recent developments? If that is not feasible, there will still be AWES projects for remote regions…
Lattice towers are an answer to the height limitations of towers, downwind rotors would be a similar answer to the size limitations of wind turbine blades. Maybe this is AWE after all, if it is actively actuated: Would blades inspired by palm trees be suitable to AWES? or there are AWE concepts that can turn into downwind rotors.
Well still, that’s an old topic, and also it is pitting one theoretical concept against another, since nobody is currently making either option. The idea of a windfarm with two different height turbines, one at a lower level, one at a higher level, brings back “DaBiri”, who turned out to be another Nigerian named “John O.”
(You can’t make this stuff up!)
I don’t see an engineering reason why they couldn’t make lattice towers taller than existing wind turbines, and install them between existing lower wind turbines, but I am not well versed on the exact specific engineering factors involved. Cost, installation procedures, weight, oscillations, damage to the turbines, etc - lots of interrelated factors would have to be considered.
One of the three ways to reach relatively high altitudes (close to 300 m) is achieved with the largest current wind turbine (MySE 16-260):
Growing proportionally is therefore what has been achieved and seems the most plausible.
The other two methods are AWE and tall lattice wind turbines that would be placed above the lower conventional wind turbines, as described in this topic.
For AWE, competing with MySE 16-260 would be difficult (if that is even possible) in terms of efficiency, swept area, reliability, lifespan, but maybe not in terms of mass. AWE chances seem to be dwindling over time.
This turbine may be large, but it would still fit in my yard, with plenty of room left over. Still, I’m sure the neighbors would freak out. The lifespan and reliability will only be known in the future, but you do remember all those “typhoon-proof” Chinese turbines that were blown to smithereens when the first real storm directly hit them, right?
You are right. It’s another advantage of AWE to be able to perform better in the event of a typhoon. Indeed, an AWES can be brought back when the wind becomes too strong. Because it’s really about comparing AWE with HAWT, both in this topic and in my last thought from which you took your quote, isn’t it?
“Repowering” is the term used to describe adding new turbines to an existing windfarm. NormaLLY THEY START BY REMOVING THE OLD TURBINES, THEN INSTALL LARGER NEW TURBINES, i ALWAYS WONDERED IF IT MIGHT BE ADVANTAGEOUS TO LEAVE THE OLD ONES. i GUESS IT COMES DOWN TO THE NUMBERS - OLD TURBINES MAY BE REMOVED DUE TO ECONOMIC FACTORS - WEAR, increasing MAINTENANCE COSTS, ETC. ALSO BUREAUCRATIC ASPECTS LIKE HOW MANY PERMITS ARE ISSUED. Either WAY, TWO LAYERS OF TURBINES WOULD MAKE ADDING awe MORE DIFFICULT. Remember getting your kite caught in a tree as a kid? Imagine it getting tangled in a two-layer windfarm! (Woops, guess I accidentally hit capslok.)
The tower would be built out of stacked kevlar cells inflated to extreme pressures with hydrogen or helium gas. Flywheels would be used to stabilize the structure, as the structure is much too tall for guywires to work. The tower is designed to be able to survive Category 5 hurricanes.
Among other projected uses for the tower would be as a communications tower, low-altitude replacement for satellites, high-altitude wind turbine platforms.
The Canadian space technology company (I do not see the inflatable tower project): Home | Thothx
In project: “high-altitude wind turbine platforms”. This inflatable tower could also be a basis for AWES, like Crosswind Kite Power with Tower, and others.
They built a 3 story test version. They describe wrinkling as a problem. I like that it is a tube, not a giant cylinder, and is made out of smaller cells, which makes the hoop stress much less of a problem, and makes it easier to manufacture.
Assuming AWE does not need to send elevators up and down, you could make a smaller, lattice tower version. I would combine the concept with Tensairity, and a tensairity torus idea which I think basically solves the wrinkling problem and makes the beams/cells 10-100 times more resistant to buckling.
