Wooden Tower for SWTs ?

[Julien Daligault]

Hello All,

In Scandinavia, they like wood and have huge resources of trees so they decided to use this wood in a innovative way ... to make tower for small wind turbines.

Wooden towers has a lot of advantages compared with steel tower: no amplification of vibration as the steel pipe, 12 m tower fit on a EU pallet, no corrosion problem, sustainable material which adsorbed CO2 and beauty of design (depends on the taste...)

Do you think that the design and the use renewable is the solution for tower?

[Dave Turpin]

Sure, it's nice, but you are limited in how tall you can build it. As discussed elsewhere a 10 meter tower is not going to get you up into the wind, and there is no way you are building a 30 meter tower out of wood.

[Julien Daligault]

Agree!
We are going step by step. We installed already more than 10 wooden towers (12m). We installed only one 16m tower with a 5kW generator downwind, test period is done for this model so we start to promote it. Next one is a 20m for 10 to 30 kW generator ... calculation and CAD done, soon prototype will be built.

[Dan ohl]

They had two systems on "oland".

Both of them failed. One with catastrofic failure where the tower fall down.... NOT GOOD!!!

http://www.olandsbladet.se/index.php?id=19241&placid=3&template=

http://www.olandsbladet.se/index.php?placid=3&id=18381

Please note that one wing is missing... in the second link. This is a common problem with wind turbines that is from SWG,,,, There is a new page. www.F-N.CC that is up that contains new horror stories about untrustworty company Shenzhou Wind-driven Generator Co., Ltd
... :(

[Julien Daligault]

Only one system in Oland failed and it was the generator not the Tower. One blade from Huaying 5 kW (not SWG) flew away, bolt default. The tower had no problem and handle a generator with 2 blades for 2 days (Crazy unbalance!). Then those 2 blades just flew away after. Since then, we stopped to buy from Chinese manufacturer. Tower manufacturer were impressed how strong is wooden tower and were not sure that a steel tower would have resist to such unbalance.

The other system, donQi on a 12 m wooden tower is working without any problems.

By the way, I know SWG (worked from the factory in Jiangdu for a year), Mr You and April are good friends ... but now we only buy EU or US made generator ... SWWP, Braun, Gaia!

[Dan ohl]

o.... sorry i didnt see that you where a representative from the company innoventum that is trying this exelent building way.

Tower swaying all over the place even in relative calm winds shifting from one side to the other... Also with alot of squeeking noice.
But i guess that you will improve the design :)

/Edited after one cup of coffe :)

[Julien Daligault]

Thanks for the details, Dan.

Just want to correct that the tower didn't fall down. It was removed with the help of a crane. It will be reinstalled with a Braun but not on Oland.
The Mörbylånga site was a testing site for our towers (not the turbines) and it was agreed with the Mörbylånga municipality.

[Rob Beckers]

As with anything, whether it is good/bad/ugly depends on now well it's engineered, and then tested. There are good steel towers, there are very bad steel towers. Wood will be no different. I think it's a great idea that's worthy of trying! :idea:

Dan, I understand that due to your experience you're no great fan of small wind turbines (and from the sound of it, not of their towers either). Keep in mind though that not all are created the same, and not all companies treat their customers like SWG. While I regret that so many well-meaning people that had little knowledge of wind energy lost so much money on faulty turbines, you should also understand that most that had been in the wind industry for some time had zero confidence in the flood of Chinese turbines that hit the market a few years ago. Their prices were just too unbelievable (as in, 1/4 or less of an equivalent western-made wind turbine, and nobody was getting rich selling those expensive US/European turbines).

That said, the small wind turbine market is (still) a mess: Manufacturers still overpromise, many installers are still clueless regarding turbine siting and how wind energy really works, and even the best of the turbines have lots of issues. If you want to read about it in general, see my article (http://www.solacity.com/SmallWindTruth.htm). This is slowly getting remedied, at least to some extend, because countries are starting to require certification to receive incentives or rebates. Such as Brittain's MCS, and the US's SWCC programs, both are very serious and not easy to get. The downside is that certification is so expensive that a small startup that may have a great idea, and a great wind turbine, won't be able to afford it.

-RoB-