VATIS UPDATE Article

Edgewind, the United States, a company with roots in aerospace has formulated a material and shaped it to provide vortex generation and leading edge protection in one package. Edgewind’s tough proprietary material, just 0.014-in. thick, sports a serrated edge for the vortex generator. Recent tests by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) revealed that when coupled with an elastomeric tab on the blade’s trailing edge, the turbine’s performance improved 22%.

Most vortex generators (VGs) appear as small tabs fastened perpendicular to a blade surface. Reports are that these “conventional” VGs improve production at best 2.5%, which is a significant figure. “The conformal vortex generator, or CVG, and tab offers the potential for operators to significantly increase their wind farm production and ROI without adding additional turbines or capital investment,” said Peter Ireland, at Edgewind. The work needs minimal surface prep, a visual alignment, and no special tools.

Also, an easy removal facilitates section repairs or replacement. The CART2 blades, a zero twist, high-speed design, do not represent a current commercial turbine blade design. However, its general power curve does have a shape similar to commercial MW-scale turbines. Tests collected five-minute average power and wind-speed data, which was filtered to remove noise from unstable wind. Data for the baseline was limited at wind speeds over 15 m/s. An increased area under the curve indicates increased power production.