Wind energy technology is a complementary form of energy supply, regardless of scale. It
is a major component of the energy portfolio of the planet. With energy resources
becoming increasingly more scarce, expensive, and politically charged, it makes an
increasingly more attractive business case to harvest wind power.
The wind turbine market is divided into large machines deployed on wind farms using
turbines of 0.5 mW and up to feed an electric utility grid, and medium wind turbines (up to
500 kW) that serve farms and other rural enterprises.
Traditionally, feathering turbine blades, stepped ration gearboxes and power electronics
have been used in wind generation to regulate between variable input and the need for
steady output. Recently, there has been increasing interest in using IVT designs to
reduce reliability problems that have been seen in power electronics, as well as to increase
the amount of energy that can be harvested.
Turbo Trac is working with a medium size wind turbine assembler and integrator to
evaluate the applicability and advantage of the Turbo Trac IVT for this application.
