Variable Electric Generator Improves Wind Power Efficiency
" Rather than layering individual legacy machines one on top of the next, the VIEG uses a series of coils, configured in "balanced stages".The magnetic balancing allows the use of permanent magnets, yet still reduces cogging torque to a bare minimum, which allows the VIEG to operate at extremely low wind speeds (near zero).As available energy increases, the VIEG matches generator resistance to source energy by electronically adding generator stages. Conversely, the VIEG is able to drop stages as available energy (wind speed) drops, cycling up and down without hesitation and without mechanical friction.The need for a gearbox is eliminated, and a single VIEG generator scales up and down with available energy in a way that would take almost 70 individual generators to match.

[Blogger notes:]
My guess is that wipespread deployment of this generator would also reduce the problem of wind intermittency since wind power wouldn't drop off suddenly below a threshold. The power supplied would decay more slowly. This would tend to make load balancing easier I would think. Anyone know if this intuition is correct? "

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/005715.html

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