CWind is developing an innovative new wind turbine design with greater generating capacity than existing turbines. CWind Turbines will have capacities ranging from 2.0 megawatts to 7.5 megawatts rated power output.The greatest size limitation on conventional wind turbine designs has been the difficulty in economically designing and constructing a gearbox with the capability of transferring the higher megawatts of wind energy collected by the rotor to a generator, and for direct drive permanent magnet wind turbines is high nacelle weight and cost. Like conventional wind turbine technology, the CWind Turbine is a three-bladed horizontal axis, direct drive, variable speed wind turbine. But unlike conventional turbines, the CWind design has independent load paths, which, when taking advantage of the variable speed mode of operation, enables the turbine to deliver higher part load efficiency at lower wind regimes. The design has greater reliability and availability, lower maintenance costs, lighter nacelle (engine housing) weights and a better absorption of sudden wind gusts, when compared with conventional wind turbines. The CWind Turbine not only addresses the present limitations of current turbines, it also captures a greater energy yield per turbine footprint. Using conventional industry scaling and cost of energy models, a wind farm of CWind Turbines could produce significantly higher energy output at a much lower cost than a similarly sized wind farm of traditional wind turbines.
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