A revolutionary design
The WhisperRing® is small and flexible. It hardly makes any noise due to its lower rotational speed and thus does not cause a nuisance to nearby residents. This allows the mill to be placed close to an agricultural farm, or buildings and saves costs for the installation of cables and electricity connections. The WhisperRing® wind turbine has the lowest possible carbon footprint.
Ring Shape
The wind turbine’s unique ring shape is patented. Because the ring distributes incoming forces evenly, a main drive shaft and heavy nacelle are not needed. The aerodynamic shape of the ring directs airflow to the blades and increases turbine efficiency.
In a conventional turbine, the rotational energy of the blades is coupled to a gearbox via a shaft and transferred to the coils and magnets. The WhisperRing® has two half rings. A stationary one with the coils and a moving one with the blades and magnets. As a result, the magnets rotate at a much greater distance from the center and thus much faster along the coils than in a conventional turbine. Therefore, a heavy, wear-prone gearbox is not necessary. It also allows the use of much lighter magnets and requires much less expensive and rare magnetic material (NeoDymium).
The low speed leads to a lower tip speed, resulting in less noise and less bird and bat mortality. Finally, the ring is better cooled, allowing it to operate longer in high wind speeds and thus produce more.
Generator
The blades directly drive the generator, with no gearbox. The generator is composed of switchable generator units (the magnets and coils). Depending on wind speeds, more or fewer coils are turned on. The generator has high redundancy, which allows repairs to any damaged units to be postponed to regular maintenance without problems. The mill can then continue to run and generate energy as usual. In addition, the lack of a gearbox also leads to much less maintenance.
Lightweight Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics (CFRP)
The wind turbine consists mainly of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymeres (CFRP). The mast, ring and blades weigh a fraction of current turbines built with concrete, steel and fiberglass. An additional advantage is that this makes the WhisperRing® much less affected by wind, salt, rain or oxidation. In addition, much weight is saved by the lack of a gearbox and because less magnetic material is required.
