Renewables East

Renewables East is the renewable energy agency for the East of England, exploring regional opportunities for on-shore and off-shore power generation. A key element of its work is to identify and support local innovators in the development of their ideas and translating them into commercial application.

The Challenge

To provide a design review for a novel concept of vertical axis wind turbine. From initial sketch drawings by the inventor, eg technology were asked to carefully review each of the novel features of the design for performance and to evaluate the entire system for manufacturability.

Approach

We addressed 4 key areas of the design. A CAD model was developed from the concept sketches to allow the evaluation of the physical properties of the unit. The weight of the model was calculated together with the stress & strain tolerances of the system. The electrical generation system was modelled mathematically to determine the potential power output under different ideal operating conditions. Bringing all of this data together, we established a preliminary cost of goods estimate for the system and then provided a benchmark for these results against existing commercially available systems.

The Result

In a detailed presentation we were able to give feedback to Renewables East and the inventor on our findings and identified several key areas in the initial design that required improvement prior to manufacture. On this occasion our initial review of the design indicated that it was not suitable to be taken forward into the prototyping stage. Nevertheless the results of the report were vital to Renewables East before committing substantial funds to a prototype phase.