Scientists in South Korea have addressed a major, yet heretofore overlooked concern of offshore wind turbines — positive lightning strikes. Their first-of-its-kind solution could offer new resilience for turbines and even be used outside of the energy industry.
Interesting Engineering shared a news release detailing the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute team’s achievements, which were published in the Results in Engineering journal.
The key problem the team looked to address is positive lightning, which commonly occurs during winter months when clouds’ altitudes are lower. Positive lightning happens when those clouds have a positive charge while the ground has a negative charge. It is rarer than the inverse phenomenon of negative lightning, which accounts for 90% of lightning strikes. Positive strikes are more powerful and intense than negative ones and can cause greater damage.
A KERI team attacking this subject isn’t coincidental — South Korea is experiencing a boom in offshore wind energy demand designed for low wind-speed environments. However, offshore turbines are particularly exposed to lightning strikes, given their height and isolation from other tall buildings. Blade damage can lead to costly repairs and shutdowns.
Current turbines feature protections against negative lightning strikes with an air-termination system that effectively attracts negative strikes away from the blades but isn’t effective for positive strikes. Positive lightning’s “highly irregular pattern” and “much higher current” require a higher-tech solution, per IE.
The KERI team created a scaled-down model to learn more about positive lightning and develop new defenses. They found that because of its positive charge, the positive lightning strikes the side edges of the blade and evades the conventional air-termination system. After running numerous artificial lightning tests, the team landed on a new edge receptor. The receptor puts air termination on the side edges of the blade, effectively minimizing the damage from positive lightning.
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“KERI is the only institution in the world that has designed countermeasures against positive polarity lightning for wind turbine blades and successfully conducted experimental verification,” said lead researcher Dr. Woo Jeong-min. “We will greatly contribute to improving the stability and efficiency of wind turbines, promoting the expansion of renewable energy, and ultimately have a positive impact on reducing electricity bills for consumers.”
Offshore wind energy is growing as a way to take up less real estate on land as well as capitalize on high-wind environments. Being able to withstand challenging conditions like lightning or typhoons is critical to making its energy more reliable and efficient. On the positive front, Mingyang’s OceanX withstood Super Typhoon Yagi’s 139 mph winds. Extra weather resiliency is a major positive in clean energy’s path to ascendancy over dirty energy sources that heat the planet with alarming results.
The KERI team intends to bring the tech to full-scale turbine blades and do more experimental data, per the release. Additionally, the scientists are looking to file patents and explore technology transfer to businesses. They also see their tech assisting tall buildings and communication towers in lightning-prone areas and are looking to expand their research’s scope.
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