Substantially Improved Wind Power Performance

The University took the approach of trying to get students interested in engineering as a career by focusing on how we might help America become more energy independent, particularly in their wind prone area. This paper is a report on the resulting actual middle school, high school and college student testing demonstrating that the performance of wind turbines can be increased by a factor of at least 10 by updating and revising "best practices". The results clearly show that wind turbine power is a function of the total blade area rather than the conventional understanding that it is a function of the swept area. Includes test data and history of testing by university students, testing by students of area high and middle schools, and an explanation of why such a substantial improvement in performance is available at this time. This testing will lead not only to additional future student testing at the same size, and also a new generation of larger scale testing to confirm the results as something closer to a commercial size.