1.

Discuss how the global wind pattern is formed

2.Global Wind Patterns

3.
4.

Image Credit: NASA

5. Large global wind systems are created by the uneven heating of the Earth’s
surface. These global wind systems, in turn, drive the oceans’ surface currents.
To understand how global winds form and drive the major ocean currents, you
need to know that wind is the basically the movement of air from an area of high
pressure to an area of low pressure. Pressure is force per unit area, and air
pressure is simply the weight (force) of the column of air above a particular
location, per unit area. Air pressure therefore depends on elevation or altitude
(higher up means less air above), the average temperature of the air above the
particular location (hot air is lighter than cold air), and what the air's composition
is. For example, air with a large amount of water vapor is less dense than dry air
because the water molecule has less mass than either an individual nitrogen or
oxygen molecule. Also as elevation or altitude increases, air becomes less dense.
6. Unequal heating of the Earth’s surface also forms large global wind patterns. In
area near the equator, the sun is almost directly overhead for most of the year.
Warm air rises at the equator and moves toward the poles. At the poles, the
cooler air sinks and moves back toward the equator. However, it is not this
simple. Global winds do not move directly from north to south or south to north
because the Earth rotates. All winds in the Northern Hemisphere appear to curve
to right as they move. In the southern hemisphere, winds appear to curve to the
left. This is known as the Coriolis effect, which is the apparent shift in the path of
any fluid or object moving about the surface of the Earth due to the rotation of
the Earth.
7. Near the equator, the trade winds converge into a broad east to west area of
light winds. The area is known as the doldrums because there are light winds.
This belt of air around the equator receives much of the sun’s radiant energy.
This area is known as the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), and is the area
with the most active weather. The latitude where Earth’s mean annual surface
temperature is highest is located at 10°N. As you learned the Northern
Hemisphere has more landmass and is relatively warmer than the Southern
Hemisphere. Also at the equator, warmer, moist air rises and produces a low-
pressure area extending many kilometers north and south of the equator.
8. Trade Winds – About 30° north and south of the equator, the warm, moist air
that rose vertically cools and begins to sink. Here the sky is clear. There are few
clouds and little rainfall. Winds are calm. These are called the horse latitudes,
because when food ran out, sailors had to throw horses overboard. Deserts, such
 as the Sahara in Africa, are also common at 30°N and 30°S. At the horse
latitudes some of the sinking air travels back toward the equator. The air moving
back toward the equator forms warm, steady winds, known as the trade winds.
9. The rising air at the equatorial regions and the sinking air at about 30°N and
30°S form huge convection current, known as a Hadley cell for the English
meteorologist who first proposed their existence to explain the trade winds.
10. Prevailing Westerlies – Some of the cool, sinking air continues to move
toward the North and South. These winds are called the westerlies and are
located between 40°to 60° latitude in both hemispheres.
11. Polar Easterlies – In both hemispheres, the westerlies start rising and cooling
between 50° and 60° latitude as they approach the poles. They meet extremely
cold air flowing toward the equator from the poles and form the polar easterlies.

2. What are the dominant wind patterns in the Philippines? How do these differ?

Amihan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For the mythical bird, see Amihan (mythology). For the fictional character, see Amihan (Encantadia).
In the Philippines, Amihan refers to the season dominated by the trade winds, which are
experienced in the Philippines as a cool northeast wind.[1] It is characterized by moderate
temperatures, little or no rainfall, and a prevailing wind from the east.
As a rule of thumb, the Philippines' amihan weather pattern begins sometime in November or
December and ends sometime in May or June. There may, however, be wide variations from year to
year.[2]
Throughout the rest of the year, the Philippines experiences the west or southwest wind; south west
monsoon,[1] which in turn is referred to as the Habagat. The habagat season is characterized by hot
and humid weather, frequent heavy rainfall, and a prevailing wind from the west.
The main indicator of the switch between the amihan and habagat seasonal patterns is the switch in
wind direction. In most years this transition is abrupt and occurs overnight. In some years there is a
period of perhaps a week or two where the wind will switch between amihan and habagat patterns
several times before settling into the pattern for the new season.

Habagat Southwest Monsoon Amihan Northeast Monsoon Weather

A "monsoon" is a weather pattern; a monsoon has a different name in each

country that it affects. In the Philippines, the Summer Monsoon (West or
southwest winds) is called the Habagat (ha-bag-at) and the Winter Monsoon
(North or northeast winds) is called the Amihan (a-me-han). The word
'monsoon' is believed to originate from the Arabic word mawsim (season), via
the Portuguese and then Dutch monsun.

A "monsoon" is a consistent wind pattern generated by a large weather

system, that lasts for a period of months and affects a large area of the planet.

Summer Southwest Monsoon - Habagat

Summer Monsoon weather is characterized by a strong, generally West or
southwest breeze that is responsible for bringing significant rainfall to the
Asian subcontinent and to South and East Asia. The significant southwest
monsoon rainfall is a by-product of air passing over large areas of warm
equatorial ocean, stimulating increased levels of evaporation from the
ocean’s surface; the southwest monsoon air, now laden with water vapour,
cools as it moves north and as it rises over land; at some point the air is no
longer able retain its moisture and precipitates copious volumes to irrigate
rice fields and drench rainforests, sometimes causing severe flooding below
hillsides that have been foolishly stripped of forest cover by Man. The
Summer Monsoon (West or southwest) is the predominant weather pattern
throughout most Asian tropical destinations from late April through to early
October each year.

Winter Northeast Monsoon - Amihan

Winter Monsoon weather features a generally less strong, East or northeast
breeze that is cooler and drier (compared to the Summer Monsoon weather),
with prolonged periods of successive cloudless days. The Winter Monsoon
(North or northeast winds) features cool and dry air that originates in a vast
anticyclone - a weather system with a high barometric pressure - which forms
over Siberia, Mongolia and northern China during each northern winter. The
Winter Monsoon air from the anticyclone pushes outward in a clockwise
motion from its centre and competes with the Summer Monsoon over a
period of a week or two, usually starting in late September and early October,
before finally dominating the weather with a cooler and drier northeast
monsoon in most Asian tropical and sub-tropical destinations through to the
following April.

There is no specific weather pattern equivalent to a monsoon season in

southern latitudes because there is no continent large enough to create the
anticyclonic conditions similar to those that drive the alternate Winter
Monsoon, as in the North. It could be said that the southern hemisphere is
perpetually in varying degrees of Summer Monsoon condition; Brazil and
parts of equatorial Africa occasionally experience some weather patterns that
show some seasonal differences.

3. Differentiate wind turbines from wind mills

Windmills and wind turbines both harness wind energy and put it to practical
use. The difference is in how they do it: One is a machine with mechanics
powered by the wind, the other generates electricity for use elsewhere.
Windmills
Windmills convert wind energy directly into mechanical energy for such
tasks as milling grain--the source of the term--or pumping water, which is
usually the purpose of windmills you see on farms.

Windmill Mechanism
The spinning vanes of a windmill turn a camshaft, which is connected by
gears and rods to the machinery that does the work. All power is directed into
the work

Wind Turbine
A wind turbine converts wind energy into electricity, which can then be used
to power electrical equipment, stored in batteries or transmitted over power
lines.

Wind Turbine Mechanism

A wind turbine has essentially the same parts as a simple electric motor, but it
works in reverse: A motor uses electrical current to produce motion; a wind
turbine uses motion to create electrical current.

Terminology
Though "windmill" is frequently used by laypeople to describe electricity-
generating wind turbines, the wind power industry and windmill
manufacturers both make a careful distinction between the terms.

Windmill vs. Wind Turbine

These two terms are commonly used interchangeably, even though they are very different
machines that work on different principles and serve different purposes. As you can see
from the pictures below, windmills generally have more blades than modern day turbines.
This is because windmills are used to do work, such as grind grain or pump water from a
well. Windmills operate on the law of conservation of momentum.

The conservation of momentum can be easily understood on a pool table. The cue ball
in motion has momentum and when it hits the other pool balls, the energy is
transferred. The energy is not always transferred in a linear fashion however, as can be
seen in the image at the right. Windmill blades are pitched so that when the wind hits
them, it doesn’t push the blades backward but moves the blades rotationally.
The linear momentum of wind is transferred into rotational momentum as it hits the angled
windmill blades, causing them to spin. That rotational energy then powers gears or shafts
that then do work.
Comparatively, Wind Turbines produce electricity. The blades are connected to a low speed
shaft which is connected to either a gearbox or generator. See the section How a Wind
Turbine Works to learn more about generators. Another key difference between windmills
and turbines is that turbine blades operate on the principles of lift and drag, similar to that
of airplane wings. As wind passes over an airfoil shape, a high and low pressure area form,
causing lift, or in the case of wind turbines, causes the blades to rotate. See the
section How a Wind Turbine Works to learn more about the lift/drag principles.

17. The Betz limit - and the maximum efficiency for horizontal axis wind
turbines.
Can it be exceeded and does it apply to vertical axis wind turbines?
The simplest model of a wind turbine is the so-called actuator disc model where the turbine is
replaced by a circular disc through which the airstream flows with a velocity Ut and across which
there is a pressure drop from P1 to P2 as shown in the sketch. At the outset, it is important to stress
that the actuator disc theory is useful (as will be shown) in discussing overall efficiencies of turbines
but it does not help at all with how to design the turbine blades to achieve a desired performance.

The power developed by the wind turbine is

where At is the turbine disc area. Volume flow continuity gives

From momentum conservation, the force exerted on the turbine is equal to the momentum change
between the flow far upstream of the disc to the flow far downstream of the disc. Thus

The final basic equations are Bernoulli's equation applied upstream and downstream of the actuator
disc

where P∞ is the ambient pressure in the flow both far upstream and far downstream of the actuator
disc.
From equations (4a),(4b), (3) and (2)

whence

i.e. the velocity through the actuator disc is the mean of the upstream and downstream velocities in
the stream tube.
Finally, from equations (1), (5) and (3), the efficiency is given by

The figure below shows the variation of efficiency (often referred to as the power coefficient, cp) with
the ratio of downstream to upstream velocity. By differentiating equation (7), it is easy to show that
the maximum efficiency oocurs when Ud/Uu=1/3 (i.e. when Ad/Au=3). The efficiency is then η=16/27 ≈
59%. This is the maximum achievable efficiency of a wind turbine and is known as the Betz limit -
after Albert Betz who published this result in 1920. There are assumptions in the above anlysis such
as the neglect of radial flow at the actuator disc but these have only a small effect on the final limiting
result.
The point to note here is that as you reduce the downstream velocity in the expectation of increasing
the power extracted from the wind, the area of the upstream stream tube that passes through the
turbine reduces in size. In the limit as the downstream velocity is reduced to zero, the area of the
upstream stream tube that passes through the turbine is just half the turbine area and the efficiency
is thus 50%.

Can the Betz limit be exceeded for horizontal axis wind turbines?

It is important to note that the equations

leading up to the Betz limit represent an overall momentum balance argument and therefore the
argument still applies to any horizontal axis 'device' that replaces the actuator disc in the above
derivation. The only question is what is the effective diameter of the stream tube that is influenced by
the device? There have been numerous devices that claim to improve the efficiency of a wind
turbine and the shouded turbine shown on the right is rather typical of these designs. In these
'shrouded' turbines, the general idea seems to be to use the shroud to create a low pressure region
downstream of the turbine and thus draw more air through the turbine.
Generally, with these designs, there is little in the way of experimental data to support the efficiency
claims but an exception to this seems to be some experimental and theoretical work carried out
mainly at Kyushu University in Japan. The reference is given below. The figure on the right shows
this design with a layout sketch.

In their report, the authors measure the turbine efficiency and, from a graph, they show a peak value
of about 29% for the turbine on its own and a figure of about 110% with the shroud in place. In both
cases, the efficiency or power factor is based on the swept rotor area. However, as can be seen
from the sketch, the ratio of the shroud diameter to the rotor diameter is about 2.53 (i.e. 1013/400)
and, if we base the efficiency of the shrouded turbine on the shroud cross-sectional area, the peak
efficiency falls to 17%. In other words, a straightforward turbine with the diameter of the shroud
would perform better in terms of efficiency than the shrouded turbine. The point here is that the Betz
derivation still applies but the diameter of the stream tube influenced by the shrouded turbine is
closer to the shroud diameter than it is to the turbine diameter. This seems a fairly obvious
conclusion and emphasises the point that there is no way of getting round the overall momentum
balance between far upstream and far downstream in the derivation of the Betz limit. Moreover, in
the case of the shrouded turbine, the drag on the shroud contributes nothing to the turbine power.

Reference
Abea K., Nishidab M., Sakuraia A. et al (2005) Experimental and numerical investigations of flow
fields behind a small wind turbine with a flanged diffuser. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial
Aerodynamics Volume 93, Issue 12, December 2005, Pages 951–970.

FloDesign-Ogin shrouded wind turbine.

An example of a shrouded wind turbine that is being put forward as a

practical design is one that is described on the websiteoginenergy.com but which was originally
designed by a company called FloDesign based in Massachusetts. A quite large demonstrator unit
was put up in 2011 at Deer Island in Massachusetts as shown in the figure. It was a design rated at
100 kilowatts. The astonishing thing about this design is that it seems to have attracted multi-million
dollar investments and yet nowhere in the web pages or downloadable literature is there any
apparent awareness of the instrinsic limitations imposed by the arguments behind the Betz limit. It is
almost certainly the case that the design will be less efficient than a conventional design whose rotor
diameter is the same as the shroud diameter. It is difficult to see any advantages in designs like this
and it is significant that no tests results on the turbine have been published which meet the IEC
61400-12 standards.
 Does the Betz limit apply to vertical axis wind turbines?
The short answer to this question is 'No' although it is not obvious how to produce an equivalent

theorem for a VAWT. The arguments that are used to derive the Betz limit for a HAWT do not apply

directly to a vertical-axis wind turbine.

It is possible that an equivalent theorem can be produced by splitting the approaching stream tube

into two parts; one passing through the advancing blades and the other passing through the

retreating blades. The torque exerted on the VAWT will have to be matched by an equal and

opposite angular momentum in the stream far downstream. It is much less obvious how to set up all

the conservation relationships for a VAWT than a HAWT but it would make a good student or even a

good post-graduate project.

From an experimental point of view, the efficiencies of VAWTs based on their frontal area seem

always to be lower than a HAWT of equivalent frontal area and no VAWT has yet been tested to

IEC61400-12 standards that has efficiencies in the upper range of large HAWTs - which can be in

the region of 45%.

In spite of their lower efficiency, there are situations where a VAWT might be preferable to a HAWT

(i.e. a gusty urban environment or some location with severe space constraints).