WIND farms, those green-but-ugly blots on the rural landscape, could soon be
banished far offshore or placed high up mountains thanks to a new type of
hyper-efficient wind turbine invented in Sweden.
In conventional wind turbines, the rotating blades are attached to an
internal generator by an axle. The generator normally needs to turn at high
speed, so a gearbox is used to increase the speed of the axle from around 18
revolutions per minute to 1500. But gearboxes are expensive and can wear out
quickly, so wind farms must be built where the turbines can easily be reached
for…
