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Smart wind turbine blade receives award
UK based Amber Composites will be showcasing an innovative new 10kW wind turbine blade on its stand at the Energy Engineering 2011 show which takes place this week at Birmingham's NEC. The company will be holding a joint presentation in the show session with partner and blade manufacturer, FuturEnergy. Through innovative blade design and the use of high-precision Amber Composites prepreg, FuturEnergy has created a turbine that is said to be quiet
8th November 2011
Innovation in Textiles
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Nottingham
UK based Amber Composites will be showcasing an innovative new 10kW wind turbine blade on its stand at the Energy Engineering 2011 show which takes place this week at Birmingham's NEC.
The company will be holding a joint presentation in the show session with partner and blade manufacturer, FuturEnergy. Through innovative blade design and the use of high-precision Amber Composites prepreg,
FuturEnergy has created a turbine that is said to be quieter, more efficient, and more cost effective than anything else in its class. The new 10kw wind turbine is said to generate 50% more output at wind speeds of 6 meters per second than any turbine on the market.
In addition to an innovative blade design, the ‘guaranteed' skin thickness possible with prepreg is said to create significant efficiency gains and decreases wear on the entire turbine. The new 10kw turbine aims to bring new levels of efficiency and therefore a new level of payback that was previously unattainable in this class of wind turbines.
In addition to a carefully engineered design, FuturEnergy's success came from developing the processes to fabricate their blade design with a highly uniform surface quality and thickness. Previously thought to be cost prohibitive, FuturEnergy and Amber Composites worked together to create a process to manufacture these high-quality blades with less material and labour.
"Amber Composites really partnered with us, helping us at each step of the design and development of this blade. Their composites knowledge complemented our design expertise, resulting in a very high-quality turbine with a 3-year payback period," said Peter Osbourne, President FuturEnergy.
Amber Composites and FuturEnergy worked together to develop an innovative manufacturing process for the 10kW wind turbine blade. FuturEnergy says it is making renewable energy more accessible through lower cost, higher quality small wind turbines.
Amber Composites was founded in 1988 by a small team of people to develop and manufacture high performance composite prepreg. Prepreg technology was still in its infancy then and the team was involved in developing some of the very first commercial applications.
The company's corporate headquarters and centre for technical excellence is located in England's East Midlands, a region known as the setting for the industrial revolution in textiles and therefore a logical place for the birth of the carbon fibre industry decades ago. England is also home to many F1 racing teams, the key customer segment that is said to have driven growth at Amber.
Amber Composites' success with the F1 community is said to be based on the principles it was founded upon - developing the highest quality material, providing service that goes above and beyond the expected, and setting the industry standard for response times.
The company now serves a wide variety of industries worldwide including Aerospace, Automotive, Marine and Communications. The company says on its website that it is passionate about the advantages of advanced composites and it will continue to be an advocate for reducing weight to increase performance and efficiency.
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