Wind turbine transportation is cumbersome and expensive, increasing the cost of wind turbine installation even further. The Danish wind turbine company Vestas wants to make wind power more cost-effective with its revolutionary design for the wind turbine.
The company decided to put more rotors on a turbine to reduce the costs. The new wind turbine flaunting four rotors and 12 blades is being tested at the Technical University of Denmark. The company announced the generation of the first-kilowatt hour (kWh) by the multi-rotor turbine via their Facebook page.
The Senior Specialist, Electrical, Load & Control, Erik Carl Lehnskov Miranda said:
“[Vestas will keep testing] various software functions.…by 2020 as much as 10 percent of the world’s electricity consumption will be satisfied by energy from the wind… [and] we have the confidence to say that wind power is an industry on par with coal and gas.”
Instead of the standard three blades seen on the conventional wind turbines, the Vestas multi-rotor design features 12 blades. According to the testing site dynamics, the turbine is being tested at the tip height of 74 meters (242 feet).
The company is using refurbished nacelles from the 1990s to realise their concept of multi-rotor turbines. A significant drawback of this design is the critical nature of the real-time monitoring. If one component of the multi-rotor wind turbine stops working, the design of the whole turbine will have to be adjusted to offset the fault.