The aim of SWIIS Consortium contract is worldwide promotion of European Small Wind Turbines manufacturers products.
SWIIS Consortium work is intended to help energy planners and managers all over the world to make the good decision when comparing wind energy to the other energy sources, as well as making comparisons between available SWT.
Peculiarly, this promotion being proposed on behalf of European Commission, SWIIS Consortium cannot proceed with exactly the same marketing methods as individual SWT manufacturers, marketing methods subject to discussion.
The descriptions supported by SWIIS project are to be as technically realistic as possible.
One among the technical point under discussion is the following, after detailed survey of SWT manufacturers technical information delivered in their web sites: it appears none of these manufacturers call attention of their po-tential Customers on the physical limit of use of their machines, namely they do not assert clearly the wind limit of each type of wind turbine power control and design standard. For instance, a brand new Manufacturer, WINDSAVE of United Kingdom does not describe the power regulation of its new machines. It is only written, in the freshly presented website: “Cut out wind speed : 40 mph (17.87 ms-1)”. None information about the installed, if any, control.
One only finds indirect assessments, only understandable by wind experimented people, explaining limits of use of different types of power control of wind turbines proposed by the same manufacturer. This point will be as-sessed § 2.2.1.2. here under.
To explain the usable ranges of wind speed acceptable by different types of wind turbines, we, firstly, give a short description of the different power control technologies as potential users would be able to understand com-mercial and technical information delivered by SWT manufacturers, then ranges of acceptable wind speeds, finally a short cost comparison between the technologies.
This paper tries to clear this point as to give easy to handle technical information to our target, world energy planners and managers.
EWEA ©2005 - European Wind Energy Association
