Technology
The 2-bladed Wind Tulip is much more than a beautiful piece of Eco-Art!
Its patent-pending and patent-granted aerodynamics make it much more cost-effective.
An Important Technology Advance
We have addressed the technology and aerodynamic problems keeping small wind from contributing to sustainability on a large scale. The Flower Turbine produces clean energy from any direction, while still allowing people to live and work next to it …. Peaceful and quiet-unlike other turbines. You can read below how we did it.
Our patented technologies enable us uniquely to fill a large and important role in the energy transition with the potential of billions of dollars of sales.
Myth 1: Usually low noise and high efficiency do not go together.
Let’s look at some pictures to illustrate the technology.
The air space in the middle has to be just right in order to enable the advantage of the Savonius-type design of two overlapping semi-circles to stand out properly. This is an innovation that everyone else missed. The illustrations show why it is important.
In these illustrations, red is highest velocity, blue is lowest, wind comes from the left, and this is a horizontal slice through the middle of the turbine with the shaft in the middle.
Note that as the wind enters the turbine and reverses direction in order to hit the second blade as well (call it two for the price of one!), the second illustration reaches “red” speed in the middle but the first doesn’t. The higher the effective speed when the wind hits the blades, the more energy the turbine produces.
Here is an example of the wrong air space:
Here is an example of the right central air space:
Ribs
Here is a photo of the Tulip Wind turbine. Notice the horizontal ribs? You may have looked at this and thought that those ribs were just a way to hold the turbine segments together, but no! Much more. According to a patented formula, the correct placement of the ribs reduces the turbulence and increases the efficiency.
This higher efficiency is reflected in the lower starting speed, possibly a world record. In the graph below on the right you see a run of data of a 4.5 meter high turbine from a location where we kept a turbine for several years in a low speed area. Most wind turbines start at 3 meters per second (x axis); at this speed, the Wind Tulip is already producing 25-30 watts.
It shows how low the turbine starts to spin, around 1 m/s. This is a medium size Wind Tulip; the large version produces more, and the small version less at each wind speed. The graph on the left projects these numbers to make a graph of a power curve, showing the power output of unclustered and clustered 4.5-meter-high turbines at increasing wind speed.
Myth 2: Wind turbines close to each other interfere aerodynamically by creating vortices
Other turbines need to be placed far apart. The first illustration shows the problem with lift turbines when they are placed close together and their turbulence interferes with each other.
The other illustration is a graphical representation of what happens with our turbines, with red being a speed higher than the prevailing wind, because the turbines drive wind tunnels into each other.
This is what we call the cluster effect. When these turbines are placed at a patent granted distance from each other, they make their neighbors perform 20-50% better. The testing we have done so far, once on a full size turbine and once on a small model to test rpm, shows this effect clearly. We anticipate more advanced testing of the latest version soon.
Other wind turbines: Curlicue lines represent efficiency-decreasing vortices
The Wind Tulip:
Cluster effect
The illustrations above show areas of red spaces to the sides of the turbines. When the turbines are correctly spaced to benefit from that adjacent zone of higher velocity wind, the total power output jumps upwards. In the graph on the left you see the effect in wind speed compared with the distance the turbines are placed from each other.
Here is a video simulation at slow speed so you can see the way that the turbine throws off areas of faster wind for its neighbors to harvest.
Summary
When you add everything together, Flower Turbines has multiple innovations that change preconceptions about the role of small vertical axis drag-type wind turbines in the transition to clean energy. Here is a table of the results of our innovations.
