Wind Turbine Hydraulic to Electrical Conversion

[deckart]

All I have to go on is what I can find through searches.

This is where I found the original .8-.9 gearbox efficiency: https://wind.globecore.com/wind-turbine-gearbox-efficiency.html

This article puts them in the range of 90-95%: http://people.bu.edu/dew11/turbineperformance.html.

cjl, you say that overall efficiency is 85-90%. I cannot find any good numbers on that. Can you cite something for me?

I see that you are a Wind Turbine Engineer! I'm going to be picking your brain if you don't mind. Is that graphic of the turbine breakdown scalable to the 2-3 MW turbines?

 

[deckart]

I found an abstract of a thesis written about replacing wind turbine gearboxes with hydraulic transmissions here: https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/3800

I like where she is going but again, it looks like she is considering the use of conventional pumps as opposed to a more efficient radial cylinder design. I'm going to see if I can look her up.

 

[cjl]

All I have to go on is what I can find through searches.

This is where I found the original .8-.9 gearbox efficiency: https://wind.globecore.com/wind-turbine-gearbox-efficiency.html

To me, that reads as if it's quoting an overall system efficiency of 0.8 to 0.9, which is in line with what I'd expect.

This article puts them in the range of 90-95%: http://people.bu.edu/dew11/turbineperformance.html.

As I said, I'd put them closer to 95%+, but that's really just quibbling over a few percent, so this number is pretty close. The 80% they quote for a modern generator is certainly on the low end though - I'd expect those to be more in the 90% range for the most part.

cjl, you say that overall efficiency is 85-90%. I cannot find any good numbers on that. Can you cite something for me?

Your first source seems to indicate overall of 80-90% to me, based on how I read it, so there's one source. I can't find anything with some quick googling other than that, but I don't have a lot of time right now.

I see that you are a Wind Turbine Engineer! I'm going to be picking your brain if you don't mind. Is that graphic of the turbine breakdown scalable to the 2-3 MW turbines?

I don't know about the cost breakdown. I know that current US market turbines in the 2-3MW range are running a bit under $2MM each right now (so I was actually even still estimating high earlier), but I couldn't tell you where in the turbine that cost is going.