Wind energy - Vane furling

Vane furling may well not mean anything.

Another method (see previous post) of furling is to allow your vane to collapse a bit. I'm calling it vane furling. There is at least a 50 50 chance that I'm calling it that because that's what it's called, but the other 50 is because I'm studying too fast and not taking good enough notes. You be the judge.

It doesn't matter.

The vane on a wind turbine will always point directly downwind, and the fact that it's connected to the wind turbine at a 90 degree angle will make the turbine point directly into the wind.

 If we make the connection less rigid, we can use its floopyness to our advantage.

Floopyness and furling are virtually synonymous.

At least in my reference books they are, but someone named Robbo taught me to edit mine many years ago, so there may be discrepancies.

With vane furling, we once again see the windmill pointing directly into the wind when we have normal weather. As wind direction changes, the entire device pivots around in such a way as to always present the blades directly into the wind.

No surprises there.

It gets more interesting in rougher weather.

The floopyness is in the spring hinge that we employ. We can do this on a small scale by simply buying a sprung hinge, like the hinge you might find on a kitchen cupboard, if your kitchen is newer than mine. We could even use the kind that makes some cupboards stick open when they get to their limit. In a crazy storm, you might be better off not having your little windmill wanging around chasing the vagaries of a storm. It might be better if the little thing just packed up for the time being until it's human decided it was ok to come back out to play.

On a larger scale we might need to attach a spring to a gate hinge or similar. I'm not sure if there are sprung gate hinges, but if it turns out that I need to make one, I'm confident it wont be too hard.

The important thing is that, once the wind picks up to a point where you get a bit worried about your equipment, the hinge starts to give a little so that your blades don't present themselves quite so perfectly to the wind.

As the wind increases, we see the vane fold more. It still trails directly away from the wind, but the sprung hinge struggles more and more to keep the blade pointed into the wind, so at some stage it gives up trying and surrenders to the whim of the wind.

Even in the strongest winds, the device is protected. It also maintains a reasonably consitant speed. The more wind, the more it turns away from the wind. If the wind drops off a bit, the device turns the blades back to collect more wind, but while the wind is too strong, the wind turbine is safely pointed away from the extreme weather.

This means your wind turbine can to some degree be self governing. If everything is adjusted correctly, and you live in perfect land, you should be able to make your windmill rotate at the same speed regardless of the wind speed, as long as there is enough to get the thing spinning in the first place. But at your address, there always is. If you live in perfect land.

Unlike in the universe depicted in the previous post, the wind in this universe doesn't create ever bigger arrows as it's bluster increases. It creates the same size arrows, they just have more power on the inside. If you are already confused by everything that came before this paragraph, you can safely ignore this one without fear of missing out on anything of importance. In fact, if I were you, I'd go back to the beginning of this paragraph, and simply skip over it.

To this bit.