Wind power and solar energy are the most mainstream renewable energy technologies in the world. Recently, there is good news in equipment manufacturing. Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Acciona is creatively in the wind turbine tower of its Brea wind farm in Albacete. The surface is equipped with flexible solar panels. It is said that this technology can not only meet the energy consumption of the fan itself, but also increase the output power of the whole device by 10KW, and effectively balance and optimize the power output of the two power generation modes.
The model of the fan installed by Acciona in this project is Nordex-AccionaWindpower AW77 / 1500. The height of the hub is 80m. 120 flexible solar panels are installed on the surface of the tower. The panel faces from southeast to southwest. Capture solar energy. These flexible solar panels are mounted on the fan tower surface in a vertical parallel arrangement of 8 columns, approximately 50 m long, with an output power of 9.36 kWp and a thickness of only 1 mm.
The photovoltaic modules are supplied by the German start-up company Heliatek. Unlike traditional silicon-based solar panel manufacturing technology, these organic photovoltaic modules use carbon-based solar films and are flexible in structure, so they can be well adapted to different mounting surfaces. In addition, such flexible panels are less expensive to maintain, consume less energy in the manufacturing process, are easier to fully recycle, and have a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 13.2%, which is the most efficient in organic batteries, but lower than conventional silicon-based batteries.
ACCIONA Energy Innovation Director Belén Linares said the pilot project aims to optimize the space utilization of renewable energy generation and to help test the power generation efficiency of organic photovoltaic panels. We believe that this photovoltaic technology will have a good power generation efficiency curve. which performed.
Usually, when the fan is running, part of the electricity generated is used to power its own auxiliary system; in the absence of wind, some internal systems need to continue to operate, so the grid needs to be powered, then the fan becomes net Energy-consuming equipment. The company hopes that through such modifications, the operating efficiency of the wind turbines can be improved, because these solar panels can still provide the required power for the internal system of the wind turbine even when the wind turbine is idle.
The solar panels installed on the tower can completely or partially cover the power requirements of the wind turbine when there is sunlight. The next step is to continue to install the energy storage system so that it can continue to supply power in the absence of light. Thereby further improving the power supply capability of the entire device.
The solar panel on the fan is connected with two inverters, which realize DC-AC conversion through the inverter to provide the required power for the grid-connected electrical equipment of the wind turbine.
Acciona is monitoring the operation of the entire system in real time to assess the power output performance under real-world conditions and the power attenuation of solar modules.
This unique and innovative technology combined with the design concept is completely different from the previous ground solar + wind power hybrid power generation. Will it bring a clean stream to the clean energy equipment manufacturing? We will wait and see~
