Windmills
Windmills have reached this level of commercial maturity, and in areas with average annual wind speeds exceeding 5 m / sec successfully compete with traditional sources of electricity.
Converting wind energy into mechanical, electrical or thermal energy is in wind-driven generator with a horizontal or vertical shaft wind turbine. The most widely used windmills with horizontal axis of the rotor, operating on the principle of the windmill. Turbines with horizontal axis and the high rate of rapidity have the greatest value of the coefficient of wind energy (0,46-0,48). Wind turbine with a vertical axis are less effective (0,45), but have the advantage that they require no adjustment to the wind direction.
The most popular of the network installations now have wind turbines with unit capacity from 100 to 500 kW. Unit cost Windmills capacity of 500 kW is currently about $ 1200 per kW and has a tendency to decrease.
Megawatt-class wind turbines are built in several countries and today are at the stage of pilot studies or pilot operation.
In many developed countries there are state programs for renewable energy, including wind energy. Through these programs to solve scientific, technical, energy, environmental, social and educational problems. Generators of renewable energy projects in Europe are research centers (Riso, SERI (now NREL), Sandia, ECN, TNO, NLR, FFA, D (FV) LR, CIEMAT, etc.), universities and interested companies.
In 1994, in Madrid , at the conference "The master plan of development of renewable energy in Europe " countries of the European Union adopted a declaration. In the "Madrid Declaration" have been formulated to achieve the target level of 15% renewable energy in total energy consumption in the European Union until 2010 in 1994 in the European Union, the installed capacity of solar panels, mini-hydropower plants and was 5.3 Tues by 2010 is expected to mount equipment with an installed capacity of 55 watts.
The objectives are achieved meet the challenges of the policy of preferential tax law, state financial support through a scientific and technical programs, confessional lending, an information network, education, training, promotion of high technology job creation on the production and preparation of public opinion.
Favorable conditions for energy development by 2020 will increase the consumption of electricity by 30%, including from renewable energy sources by 15%.
We give relations for the generation of electricity by various renewable energy in Europe for the optimistic and pessimistic forecasts to 2020. Forecast is based on the analysis of the growth rate of installed capacity of different types of renewable energy in the European Union. The share of wind energy will be on the pessimistic assessment of 15%, according to an optimistic assessment of 16%.
In 1990, the new renewable energy sources amounted to 164 Mote (1,9%) of the total energy consumption. In 1994, worldwide installed capacity was 3200 MW, 1,400 MW were in Europe .
Every year in Europe , the installed capacity of wind generators of 200 MW Under favorable conditions, growth of installed capacity can Squad 800 MW. The most effective capacity of the installed capacity is programs in Europe, China , India , USA , and Canada .
Annual turnover from sales European countries is 400 MECU. Over 10 largest banks in Europe are investing wind energy industry. More than 20 major European private investors are funding wind power. The cost of wind energy depends mainly on the following 6 parameters:
• investment in the production of wind generators (expressed as a ratio of $ / sq. M - the price of one square. Disc area meter rotor wind turbine);
• efficiency of the system;
• average wind speed;
• accessibility;
• technical resource.
Over the past three decades, the technology of wind energy resources has focused on creating a network wind generators WECS. In this area significant progress. Many thousands of modern installations WECS were fully competitive with conventional sources of energy. Existing electrical networks in the transport of electricity produced by wind farms in different regions.
In recent years, began to develop technology-intensive use of wind power in isolated networks. In isolated networks of power inevitable costs per unit of energy produced is many times higher than in the centralized power networks. Plants that produce electricity, usually based on small internal combustion engines, using expensive fuel, when the cost of transportation fuels are often only raises the cost per unit of energy produced ten times the cost of energy in the best of centralized power networks. In small networks, power plants, supplying energy, are much more flexible: a modern set of generators using diesel fuel can be run to synchronize and connect it to an isolated network in less than two seconds. Converting wind energy is an alternative renewable energy source to replace expensive fuel. New research and technical feasibility of wind power with diesel generator in isolated networks show that the global capacity for independent WECS system is even higher, what systems WECS, connected in the conventional transmission network. Table 6 lists the parameters of existing wind-diesel systems. These systems were built in 1985-1990 GG their operation has identified the need to improve systems, creation of automated control.