Carter - Wind Turbine Technology
The wind turbine technology Carter has developed is most significant in that produces 4 times the energy per pound of equipment weight versus conventional wind turbine designs. The capital investment required to manufacture, transport, install, and maintain wind turbines, is a function of equipment weight. More energy with less equipment weight means a lower cost of energy.
GE, Vestas, Siemens, Enercon, and others all understand the critical importance reducing weight has in lowering the cost of energy.
The Carter wind turbine design operates on the same principles as a conventional wind turbine, but achieves its superior energy to weight advantage by successfully integrating the enabling technologies of the helicopter industry into our wind turbine design.
Carter’s competitive advantage lies in its proprietary:
- Two bladed, downwind, teetering, bearing less rotor hub design, which eliminate and reduce many of the loads encountered by three blade turbines;
- Self-erecting guyed tower concept which eliminates the need for large expensive cranes for installation and maintenance.
By minimizing loads and utilizing a structurally efficient guyed tower, Carter turbines weigh a fraction of three bladed designs. The lighter weight and self-erecting tower, results in a lower manufacturing, installation, and maintenance costs, and as a result, allows our turbine designs to achieve a dramatic reduction in the cost of wind generated renewable energy.
As a result of the lower weight fraction, this technology’s optimal size for use in multi-MW onshore and offshore turbines will be larger than conventional 3-blade design, allowing for further reductions in cost. The result is a wind turbine architecture that can produce electricity at a cost that is competitive with the lowest cost fossil fueled power plant without the need for subsidy.
Carter turbines can better access winds offshore than conventional 3 blade wind turbine designs.
Wind flows at higher speeds offshore, often over waters too deep for conventional turbines to access economically. For example, in the US, the offshore wind resource is estimated to be more than 4 terawatts (three times existing capacity), with over 75% located above water over 30 meters deep. Carter’s floating, guyed tower can be cost-effectively based in waters hundreds of meters deep. Conventional turbine designs have fatigue challenges with floating structures because of the sea state induced nacelle motion. And just as with our onshore turbines, our offshore turbines can be installed and maintained without tall cranes. The floating, guyed, two-bladed turbine can be easily raised and lowered by submerging the tower structure (with the 2 blades horizontal) until the nacelle is at sea level.