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Silence of the Wind Turbine Data Men

Today (17 Dec 06) I attempted to find some measured data of wind turbine output on the internet. Ever optimistic, I typed the words

wind turbines measured data

into the search engine “Google”. This is what I found:

1. www.habitat21.co.uk (our site)
2. www.habitat21.co.uk (our site)
3. www.bwea.com/aviation/radar.html
4. adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982WiEng…
5. adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1992STIN
6. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
7. linkinghub.elsevier.com
8. www.npower-renewables.com/langham/index.asp
9. www.fluent.com/solutionjs/examples/ex176.pdf
10. Clarkson.edu/honors/research/summer_papers?Dosiek-Luke.doc

Ignoring refs. 1 and 2 (this site), let’s see what came up………

3: BWEA: BRITISH WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION
This gave a graph showing the output for two thirds of a revolution of a wind turbine (yes, you read it correctly).

4. A COMPARISON BETWEEN PREDICTED AND MEASURED DATA FROM WIND TURBINE……(HARVARD)
This page told me it had data from a turbine in a wind tunnel. It didn't. Perhaps I had to pay. In which case - why was it on the public internet system?

5. MEASURED DATA FOR THE SANDIA 34-METER VERTICAL AXIS WIND TURBINE (HARVARD)
See above comment. No data available.

6. WIND POWER - WIKIPEDIA
Lots of interesting stuff, but no readings of measured turbine data.

7. SCIENCEDIRECT - RENEWABLE ENERGY: WIND TURBINE ……..
This page had a densely-written summary of an academic paper, impenetrable to the non-scientist, and no data.

8. NPOWER RENEWABLES: LANGHAM WIND FARM
Theoretical paper about a non-existent wind farm. Unsurprisingly, no data.

9. EX176-MAPPING A WIND FARM
A paper about computer modelling of wind turbine performance. By its nature, no data.

10. MODELLING A STAND ALONE WIND TURBINE FOR USE IN A HYBRID BIOMASS….
Computer simulation of the behaviour of a horizontal axis wind turbine. Again, no data.

I could have progressed to the next page, but somehow my enthusiasm had gone. So I ask, again -

Is there anyone out there with decent data from a domestic wind turbine? Will you share it with us?

Many years ago I asked a friend (perpetually unemployed) what his last job had been. He smiled, and said "Coronation Program Seller".

At the time, I thought this a witty reply, But it occurred to me later that he could have said "I measure the output of domestic wind turbines".

Nigel Deacon / Habitat21 website

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