They are very inefficient - producing AC at the top which is converted to DC down to the bottom, then back to syncronised AC to pipe onto the national grid which results in a big energy loss.
Clearly he knows not what he is talking about.
As somebody who many moons ago worked on DC link design including the control electronics (AC-DC-AC), the conversion stage will be 90% plus efficient.
And its a must, it has to be done because its the only way you can insert the power into the 50Hz grid!
Consider the variable AC frequency of a wind turbine and the rock steady 50Hz mega power behind the grid....you cant just connect the two together!
I just passed your comments on to him and his response was "do your homework, read up on elongated turbine systems - these are what I work on, notoriously inneficient & unreliable - obvious from the amount of heat the invertors give off and the fact that one of them has to be oil cooled!"
Just the messenger....
Ow dear, another fitter who does not understand.
Efficiency is not directly related to heat output. If the turbine is producing 500KW of power (i.e. a big one) then the converter may well get hot due to the dissipation of 10KW of heat.....but, its still very efficient (in this example 98%).
The biggest loss will be in the distribution grid which approaches 40%
Author
Topic: Wind Turbines Love them or Hate them? (Read 3843 times)