After spending over $18,000.00
in molds, castings, jigs, brackets, tooling and 300 hours of
testing labor we can't justify trying to sell you a cone for
the center of your wind turbine hub!
WHY! Believe it or not cones
actually CUT Wattage output by .87% (Almost a full 1%)
The results where NOT what
we had expected!
In fact, during the first
week of testing we thought we where all losing our minds so then
we went out and bought a whole new set of voltage and amperage
meters just to make sure our equipment was not malfunctioning.
After determining that a CONE KILLED POWER we THEN had to explain
the loss! (Having fun yet?)
This was an unexpected twist
for what had initially been anticipated as an exciting new product
addition that we hoped would INCREASE power!
The idea of a cone was to
redirect all of the wasted air that was blowing into the center
of the hub area thereby gaining extra thrust,,,,,,,,,,,, well
that's NOT what happened in the real world! The cone produced
more drag than power!! The cone has about 224 square inches of
surface area and it would seem that the spinning of this large
surface actually robbed power in the final analysis!!
HOW????
"Surface Drag",,, This is not what we had expected
to discover when we started this project.
Cones do indeed add that
nice modern look, giving wind turbines that exquisite space-aged
guise.
However in the final analysis
cones actually just added extra cost, weight and a bit of lost
power too!
In the final ratiocination
it would seem that at "wind turbine speeds" cones are
at best a beautification item,,, at best!
Perhaps at higher speeds
cones could be useful. For instance jet engines benefit from
centered turbine cones BUT having a cone on a wind turbine is
a losing proposition since at our company keeping performance
high while keeping costs down is job ONE!!! A cone is therefore
not a justifiable component for our wind turbines.
While this investigational
chapter required exploration and I am glad to say that our cone
research annals are closed!
On to more important research!
Sorry but that's the honest
truth and this is a true story. In all honesty after 20 years
of turbine building I would have to say that logic has failed
more often then not. You just have to build it and test, test,
TEST until it works! That type of ideology has always worked
best for our company,,, hard work, research, testing and logging
the positive results!!!
I wish only the best of luck
to our loyal customers and other wind turbine tinkerers and enthusiasts!
I hope this info helps you
save some time and money.