Summary Background Draft #1

Summary:

With the increasing difficulty of finding suitable land for land-based wind turbines, the webpage “Products” from SeaTwirl (n.d.) introduces the SeaTwirl offshore vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) as a way to occupy the surface of deep ocean waters to produce clean energy while having economical production and affordable maintenance. Primarily, it utilizes wind to produce energy through the conversion of wind’s kinetic and potential energy to electrical energy. Listing its features, the offshore VAWT has wind blades attached to the turbine body, an energy converter, a buoyant turbine body consisting of a buoyancy-providing and ballast portion, and a water movement based braking arrangement (Ehrnberg, 2020). Functionally, the energy converter converts kinetic and potential energy caught by the VAWT’s wind blades to electrical energy. On the relentless ocean waters, the buoyancy-providing portion keeps it afloat while the ballast portion keeps it upright (Ehrnberg, 2020). When wind speeds are damagingly high, the water movement based braking system utilizes kinetic sea water’s kinetic energy to controllably reduce the VAWT’s rotational speed in the absence of mechanical braking (Ehrnberg, 2020). With these functions and features, SeaTwirl’s offshore VAWT is superior in terms of cost and accessibility to offshore horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT).

Thesis:

With these functions and features, SeaTwirl’s offshore VAWT is superior in terms of cost and accessibility to offshore horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT).

References:

SeaTwirl. (n.d.). [Products].

https://seatwirl.com/products/ 

Ehrnberg, D. (2020). FLOATING WIND ENERGY HARVESTING APPARATUS WITH BRAKING ARRANGEMENT, AND A METHOD OF CONTROLLING A ROTATIONAL SPEED OF THE APPARATUS (U.S. Patent No. 10,662,926). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/10662926