Whats Tip Speed Ratio (TSR)?
I’ve had a couple people ask me what tip speed ratio is and why it’s important in wind turbines. The tip speed ratio is simply a number from 0 – (theoretically a huge number, but usually 8 – 10) which tells you how fast the blades are moving in relation to the wind speed. The formula for tip speed ratio is as follows: TSR = Blade Tip Speed / Wind Speed For example, if we have blades whose tips are moving at 80MPH and a wind speed of 10MPH that would give us a tip speed of 8 (which is what the windmax blades give). In wind generators a higher tip speed ratio is better and here is why. We normally have 3 blades which are travelling through the air. A low TSR means that the blades aren’t moving very fast and there is quite a bit of air that passes through the wind generator without even touching the blades. With a higher TSR the blades are moving faster which means that they ‘touch’ more wind during each rotation. This means that they are able to extract more energy from the wind which me
