Power plant with four turbines tested – New Technology

The Danish wind energy giant Vestas is building a power plant with four turbines for testing the energy yield of a plant that is manageable even in difficult terrain.

The plant is being built at Risø near Roskilde Denmark and designated as a demonstrator. The power plant consists of four renovated generators of the type V29 225 kW each, a generator type Vestas built during the first half of the 1990s.

The four generators placed on the arms protruding from a central pillar. The rotor diameter is 29 meters. The two lowest placed rotors mounted at a height of 29 meters above the ground. The distance between the rotor tips is 1.5 meters.

The next pair of rotors placed at a height of 59.5 meters above the ground and the distance between the wing tips. Highest when the rotor blade height of 74 meters above the ground.

– The project known as Babylon was initiated two years ago, says Anders Vedel, director of technology development at Vestas.

The idea was to develop a type of wind turbine that is suitable for markets with no roads or ports are large enough for traditional wind turbines in the order of 2 MW to 3.45 MW to be shipped and installed.

one of the goals the project was to avoid the negative consequences of weight gain that follows the rotor diameters increases. The rule says that the effect increases with the square of the diameter, while the weight increases with the cube of the diameter.

By replacing a large turbine with several smaller and connect them to a power plant unit will be one of the challenges to see how quickly the plant can adapt to changing wind for safe operation. They also want to test how the system works on one of the rotors must be stopped in connection with extremely high winds.

– Another challenge is to construct a multi-rotor power and still keep costs down, says Anders Vedel. At the same time the advantage of small size and weight make such a facility easier to transport and install in a market with low level of infrastructure.

Multi Rotor plant now being built at Risø are a total of 900 kW and will serve as a concept facility. Any commercial facilities can later be built for higher power.