Wind energy - Tilt furling

I always thought tilt had something to do with pinball. But it turns out its a method of furling.

The tilt back method of furling involves mounting all your kit in a straight line on a plank. Turbine, generator, vane and whatever else you feel like sticking up a pole.

Once it's all mounted on a plank, all you have to do is hinge it with a springy hinge, and hope.

In light wind, the device will point itself into the wind, and generally go about being a windmill.

In the event of winds that might make the generator spin too fast, or that could endanger the turbine, the pressure pushing against the turbine overcomes the spring on the hinge, and the device tilts back.

This tilting does at least two things I can think of. It  makes it so that less surface area is exposed to the wind, and it makes it so that the blades don't get presented to the wind in a very favourable aspect. That is, the blades are at the wrong angle to the wind to be at their most efficient.

In the event of dangerously high winds, the tilt mechanism leans everything back so far, that the blades are almost side-on to the wind.

If all goes well, and no gigantic arrows hit it, your windmill lives to see another storm.