AWEA - Wind Energy News Roundup

United Technologies closes on Clipper investment:
United Technologies Corp. closed its subscription and partial tender offer to acquire a 49.5% stake in Clipper Windpower, the California-based in wind turbine producer that trades on the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market. United Technologies, based in Hartford, Conn., is a diversified company that provides a broad range of high technology products and support services to the building systems and aerospace industries. The deal was announced in December.

Researchers apply aviation technology to wind power:
A technology originally developed to increase lift in aircraft wings and simplify helicopter rotors may soon help reduce the cost of manufacturing and operating wind turbines, say researchers.

“Circulation control” aerodynamic technology could allow wind turbines to produce significantly more power than current devices at the same wind speed. Circulation control techniques use compressed air blown from slots on the trailing edges of wings or hollow blades to change the aerodynamic properties of those wings or blades. In aircraft, circulation control wings improve lift, allowing aircraft to fly at much lower speeds as well as take off and land in much shorter distances. In helicopter rotor blades, the technique both simplifies the rotor and its control system and produces more lift.

Research aimed at adapting circulation control technology to wind turbine blades will be conducted by a California company, PAX Streamline, in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology. The two-year project, which will lead to construction of a demonstration pneumatic wind turbine, will be supported by a $3 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, the federal energy research-and-development organization also known as ARPA-E.

“Our goal will be to make generation of electricity from wind turbines less expensive by eliminating the need for the complex blade shapes and mechanical control systems used in current turbines,” said Robert J. Englar, principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “Because these new blades would operate effectively at lower wind speeds, we could potentially open up new geographic areas to wind turbine use. Together, these advances could significantly expand the generation of electricity from wind power in the United States.”

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