A new approach to wind energy: Opportunities and challenges
A new approach to wind energy: Opportunities and challenges
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风能新方法：机遇与挑战
DOI：
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Jifeng Peng
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Dabiri;J. Greer;J. Koseff;P. Moin;Jifeng Peng
尽管现代风能技术的普遍特征是成熟的，但全球巨大的风能资源（比全球总耗电量大20倍）与现有风能技术作为一种发电手段在全球的有限渗透之间仍然存在着持续的脱节。我们描述了一种风能收集方法，该方法有可能通过以更接近物理资源本身的方式在地理上分布风力发电机来解决这种脱节。为此，技术发展集中在小型风力涡轮机的大型阵列上，利用受生物学启发的工程新概念，可以在低海拔地区收集风能。这种方法极大地扩展了风能的覆盖范围，因为小型风力涡轮机可以安装在许多地方，而大型系统无法安装，特别是在建筑环境中。此外，它们具有较低的视觉、声学和雷达特征，对鸟类和蝙蝠构成的风险可能会大大降低。利用这些特点可以获得文化上的认可并迅速采用这种新技术，从而比单独使用现有技术更快地实现州和国家的可再生能源目标。新一代简单、可批量生产（甚至可3d打印）的垂直轴风力涡轮机的组件数量大幅减少，这对经济效益有利。然而，这一愿景只能通过克服过去三十年来限制进展的重大科学挑战来实现。下面的文章总结了我们的方法，以及与之相关的机遇和挑战，目的是激励在这一领域的基础和应用研究的协同努力。
Despite common characterizations of modern wind energy technology as mature, there remains a persistent disconnect between the vast global wind energy resource—which is 20 times greater than total global power consumption—and the limited penetration of existing wind energy technologies as a means for electricity generation worldwide. We describe an approach to wind energy harvesting that has the potential to resolve this disconnect by geographically distributing wind power generators in a manner that more closely mirrors the physical resource itself. To this end, technology development is focused on large arrays of small wind turbines that can harvest wind energy at low altitudes by using new concepts of biology-inspired engineering. This approach dramatically extends the reach of wind energy, as smaller wind turbines can be installed in many places that larger systems cannot, especially in built environments. Moreover, they have lower visual, acoustic, and radar signatures, and they may pose significantly less risk to birds and bats. These features can be leveraged to attain cultural acceptance and rapid adoption of this new technology, thereby enabling significantly faster achievement of state and national renewable energy targets than with existing technology alone. Favorable economics stem from an orders-of-magnitude reduction in the number of components in a new generation of simple, mass-manufacturable (even 3D-printable), vertical-axis wind turbines. However, this vision can only be achieved by overcoming significant scientific challenges that have limited progress over the past three decades. The following essay summarizes our approach as well as the opportunities and challenges associated with it, with the aim of motivating a concerted effort in basic and applied research in this area.