Could you fit solar panels to wind turbine blades?
Talk about inception! Solar panels in wind farms... renewable energy source within renewable energy source.
Asked by: Graham Rawlings, Newport
Wind turbine blades have a reasonable surface area and extra power from solar panels mounted on them could easily be transmitted to the grid via existing wind farm infrastructure.
But even so, the idea is pretty impractical. For one thing, the blades are mounted vertically, so panels would only harvest decent solar power with the Sun low in the sky at sunrise or sunset. And turbines facing the optimum wind direction aren't necessarily ideally orientated to catch sunshine.
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