Strength in Numbers: the multi rotor, 12 blades turbine concept

Picture courtesy of wind-turbine-models.com

The idea is not new: for instance around 1800 some “twin” mills have been used to pump water in Denmark and there are quite a few similar concepts and international patents dating the first half of 1900 – see for instance the drawing  below.

What is interesting here is the size of the company testing the idea – Vestas has installed approximately 1 year ago a multi rotor wind turbine, using old refurbished V29 nacelles equipped with new sensors and electronics. Blades tip distance is less than 2 meters.

I’m sure that people who think that wind turbines are ugly will think that this solution is atrocious. For me it’s a quite interesting “out of the box” exercise in a business where rotor diameter has been relentlessly growing in the last decades (V29 is from the ’90… twenty-something years later we have V112 and bigger models).

The benefits are self-evident: greater swept area, saving in tower and foundation, less land use, etc.

The challenges are equally impressive: a whole new set of loads to consider, a system that can easily become unbalanced, increased turbulence and so on. It’s early to say if it will ever become commercially viable but it is for sure an interesting experiment.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *