Two energy companies are issued patents on the same day, both deal with the challenges of connecting windmills to the power grid
While we know that windmill generated electric power offers huge promise for supplying our electric needs, currently only a small percentage of power is generated in this way.
Power systems engineers, recognize, however that once a larger percentage of electricity is generated by windmill generators, there will be significant challenges presented to our power distribution systems. In particular as the wind changes, so does the power generated by the windmill. What results, might best be understood as similar to power surges that we sometimes experience even with fossil-fuel based power systems, which can wreak havoc to our electronic equipment, and other power equipment. Accordingly, voltage drops and other system “faults” from decreasing wind can potentially cause major problems. These problems will greatly increase as we generate more electricity from the wind.
Apparently the major solutions for this are in temporarily disconnecting the windmill when a power fault is detected, and “riding through” the fault condition.
Patents tackling this problem were issued today to two different U.S. companies:
United States Patent No. 7,432,686 was issued to Clipper Windpower of California. Download U.S. Patent No. 7,432,686
United States Patent No. 7,432,611 was issued to Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc. Download U.S. Patent No. 7,432,611
October 21st, 2008 at 10:27 am
[...] United States Patent No. 7,437,216 describes another approach of dealing with the problem of having non-performing windmills connected to the power grid. This problem appears to be a popular problem to tackle - at least in the multiple patents issuing that deal with it. (See previous post) [...]