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Wind Power -- Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, wind mills for mechanical power, wind pumps for pumping water or drainage, or sails to propel ships. At the end of 2009, worldwide nameplate capacity of wind-powered generators was 157.9 gigawatts which is about 1.5% of worldwide electricity usage and is growing rapidly, having doubled in the three years between 2005 and 2008. --- Several countries have achieved relatively high levels of wind power penetration such as 19% of stationary electricity production in Denmark, 13% in Spain and Portugal, 7% in Germany, and 7% in the Republic of Ireland in 2008. As of May 2009, eighty countries around the world are using wind power on a commercial basis. --- Utility companies increasingly buy back surplus electricity produced by small domestic turbines. Wind energy as a power source is attractive as an alternative to fossil fuels, because it is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and produces no greenhouse gas emissions. The construction of wind farms has not been universally welcomed though because of the visual impact and other effects on the environment. --- Humans have been using wind power for at least 5,500 years to propel sailboats and sailing ships, and architects have used wind-driven natural ventilation in buildings since similarly ancient times. Windmills have been used for irrigation pumping and for milling grain since the 7th century AD. --- In the United States, the development of the water pumping windmills was the major factor in allowing the farming and ranching of vast areas otherwise devoid of readily accessible water. Wind pumps contributed to the expansion of rail transport systems throughout the world, by pumping water from water wells for the steam locomotives. The multi-bladed wind turbine atop a lattice tower made of wood or steel was, for many years, a fixture of the landscape throughout rural America. When fitted with generators and battery banks, small wind machines provided electricity to isolated farms. --- Small wind turbines for lighting of isolated rural buildings were widespread in the first part of the 20th century. Larger units intended for connection to a distribution network were tried at several locations including Balaklava USSR in 1931 and in a 1.25 megawatt experimental unit in Vermont in 1941. --- The modern wind power industry began in 1979 with the serial production of wind turbines by Danish manufacturers Kuriant, Vestas, Nordtank, and Bonus. These early turbines were small by today's standards, with capacities of 20–30 kW each. Since then, they have increased greatly in size, while wind turbine production has expanded to many countries. --- The Earth is unevenly heated by the sun, such that the poles receive less energy from the sun than the equator.In addition the dry land heats up and cools down more quickly than the seas do. The differential heating drives a global atmospheric convection system reaching from the Earth's surface to the stratosphere which acts as a virtual ceiling. Most of the energy stored in these wind movements can be found at high altitudes where continuous wind speeds of over 160 kmh/99 mph occur. Eventually, the wind energy is converted through friction into diffuse heat throughout the Earth's surface and the atmosphere. The total amount of economically extractable power available from the wind is considerably more than present human power use from all sources. An estimated 72 terawatts of wind power on the Earth potentially can be commercially viable compared to about 15 TW average global power consumption from all sources in 2005. Not all of the energy of the wind flowing past a given point can be recovered though. The strength of wind varies, and an average value for a given location does not alone indicate the amount of energy a wind turbine could produce there. To assess the frequency of wind speeds at a particular location, a probability distribution function is often fit to the observed data. Different locations will have different wind speed distributions. --- In a wind farm, individual turbines are interconnected with a medium voltage which is often a 34.5 kV power collection system and communications network. At a substation, this medium-voltage electrical current is increased in voltage with a transformer for connection to the high voltage electric power transmission system. The surplus power produced by domestic smaller generators can, in some areas, be fed into the network and sold to the utility company, producing a retail credit for the generators' owners to offset their energy costs. --- Different types of wind turbine generators behave differently during transmission grid disturbances, so extensive modeling of the dynamic electromechanical characteristics of a new wind farm is required by transmission system operators to ensure predictable stable behaviour during system faults --- Since wind speed is not constant, a wind farm's annual energy production is never as much as the sum of the generator nameplate ratings multiplied by the total hours in a year. The ratio of actual productivity in a year to this theoretical maximum is called the capacity factor. Typical capacity factors are 20–40%, with values at the upper end of the range in particularly favourable sites. For example, a 1 MW turbine with a capacity factor of 35% will not produce 8,760 MW·h in a year (1 × 24 × 365), but only 1 × 0.35 × 24 × 365 = 3,066 MW·h, averaging to 0.35 MW. Online data is available for some locations and the capacity factor can be calculated from the yearly output. --- Unlike fueled generating plants, the capacity factor is limited by the inherent properties of wind. Capacity factors of other types of power plant are based mostly on fuel cost, with a small amount of downtime for maintenance. Nuclear plants have low incremental fuel cost, and so are run at full output and achieve a 90% capacity factor. Plants with higher fuel cost are throttled back to follow load. Gas turbine plants using natural gas as fuel may be very expensive to operate and may be run only to meet peak power demand. A gas turbine plant may have an annual capacity factor of 5–25% due to relatively high energy production cost. --- Wind energy penetration refers to the fraction of energy produced by wind compared with the total available generation capacity. There is no generally accepted maximum level of wind penetration. The limit for a particular grid will depend on the existing generating plants, pricing mechanisms, capacity for storage or demand management, and other factors. An interconnected electricity grid will already include reserve generating and transmission capacity to allow for equipment failures; this reserve capacity can also serve to regulate for the varying power generation by wind plants. --- Studies have indicated that 20% of the total electrical energy consumption may be incorporated with minimal difficulty. --- At present, a few grid systems have penetration of wind energy above 5%: Denmark (values over 19%), Spain and Portugal (values over 11%), Germany and the Republic of Ireland (values over 6%). For instance, in the morning hours of 8 November 2009, wind energy produced covered more than half the electricity demand in Spain, setting a new record, and without problems for the network. The Danish grid is heavily interconnected to the European electrical grid, and it has solved grid management problems by exporting almost half of its wind power to Norway. The correlation between electricity export and wind power production is very strong. --- Electricity generated from wind power can be highly variable at several different timescales: from hour to hour, daily, and seasonally. Annual variation also exists, but is not as significant. Like other electricity sources, wind energy must be scheduled. Wind power forecasting methods are used, but predictability of wind plant output remains low for short-term operation. --- At low levels of wind penetration, fluctuations in load and allowance for failure of large generating units requires reserve capacity that can also regulate for variability of wind generation. Wind power can be replaced by other power stations during low wind periods. Transmission networks must already cope with outages of generation plant and daily changes in electrical demand. Systems with large wind capacity components may need more spinning reserve. --- In particular geographic regions, peak wind speeds may not coincide with peak demand for electrical power. In the US states of California and Texas, for example, hot days in summer may have low wind speed and high electrical demand due to air conditioning. Some utilities subsidize the purchase of geothermal heat pumps by their customers, to reduce electricity demand during the summer months, by making air conditioning up to 70% more efficient widespread adoption of this technology would better match electricity demand to wind availability in areas with hot summers and low summer winds. Another option is to interconnect widely dispersed geographic areas with an HVDC Super grid. --- In the USA it is estimated that to upgrade the transmission system to take in planned or potential renewables would cost at least $60 billion. Total annual US power consumption in 2006 was 4 thousand billion kW·hrs. --- In the UK, demand for electricity is higher in winter than in summer, and so are wind speeds. Solar power tends to be complementary to wind. On daily to weekly timescales, high pressure areas tend to bring clear skies and low surface winds, whereas low pressure areas tend to be windier and cloudier. On seasonal timescales, solar energy typically peaks in summer, whereas in many areas wind energy is lower in summer and higher in winter. --- Thus the intermittencies of wind and solar power tend to cancel each other somewhat. A demonstration project at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy shows the effect. The Institute for Solar Energy Supply Technology of the University of Kassel pilot-tested a combined power plant linking solar, wind, biogas and hydrostorage to provide load-following power around the clock, entirely from renewable sources. A report from Denmark noted that their wind power network was without power for 54 days during 2002. Wind power advocates argue that these periods of low wind can be dealt with by simply restarting existing power stations that have been held in readiness or interlinking with HVDC. Electrical grids with slow-responding thermal power plants and without ties to networks with hydroelectric generation may have to limit the use of wind power. Three reports on the wind variability in the UK issued in 2009, generally agree that variability of wind needs to be taken into account, but it does not make the grid unmanageable; and the additional costs, which are modest, can be quantified. Good selection of a wind turbine site is critical to economic development of wind power. Aside from the availability of wind itself, other factors include the availability of transmission lines, value of energy to be produced, cost of land acquisition, land use considerations, and environmental impact of construction and operations. Off-shore locations may offset their higher construction cost with higher annual load factors, thereby reducing cost of energy produced. --- Wind farm designers use specialized wind energy software applications to evaluate the impact of these issues on a given wind farm design. Wind power density is a calculation of the effective power of the wind at a particular location. A map showing the distribution of wind power density is a first step in identifying possible locations for wind turbines. --- There are 625,000 km2 in the contiguous United States that have class 3 or higher wind resources and which are within 10 km of electric transmission lines. If this area is fully utilized for wind power, it would produce power at the average continuous equivalent rate of 734 GWe. For comparison, in 2007 the US consumed electricity at an average rate of 474 GW, from a total generating capacity of 1,088 GW. World wind generation capacity more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006, doubling about every three years. 81% of wind power installations are in the US and Europe. The share of the top five countries in terms of new installations fell from 71% in 2004 to 62% in 2006, but climbed to 73% by 2008 as those countries—the United States, Germany, Spain, China, and India—have seen substantial capacity growth in the past two years. By 2010, the World Wind Energy Association expects 160 GW of capacity to be installed worldwide, up from 73.9 GW at the end of 2006, implying an anticipated net growth rate of more than 21% per year. --- Denmark generates nearly one-fifth of its electricity with wind turbines—the highest percentage of any country—and is ninth in the world in total wind power generation. Denmark is prominent in the manufacturing and use of wind turbines, with a commitment made in the 1970s to eventually produce half of the country's power by wind. --- In recent years, the US has added more wind energy to its grid than any other country, with a growth in power capacity of 45% to 16.8 GW in 2007 and surpassing Germany's nameplate capacity in 2008. California was one of the incubators of the modern wind power industry, and led the U.S. in installed capacity for many years; however, by the end of 2006, Texas became the leading wind power state and continues to extend its lead. At the end of 2008, the state had 7,116 MW installed, which would have ranked it sixth in the world if Texas was a separate country. Iowa and Minnesota each grew to more than 1 GW installed by the end of 2007; in 2008 they were joined by Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. Wind power generation in the U.S. was up 31.8% in February, 2007 from February, 2006.The average output of one MW of wind power is equivalent to the average electricity consumption of about 250 American households. According to the American Wind Energy Association, wind will generate enough electricity in 2008 to power just over 1% (equivalent to 4.5 million households) of total electricity in U.S., up from less than 0.1% in 1999. U.S. Department of Energy studies have concluded wind harvested in the Great Plains states of Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota could provide enough electricity to power the entire nation, and that offshore wind farms could do the same job. --- In addition, the wind resource over and around the Great Lakes, recoverable with currently available technology, could by itself provide 80% as much power as the U.S. and Canada currently generate from non-renewable resources, with Michigan's share alone equating to one third of current U.S. electricity demand. China had originally set a generating target of 30,000 MW by 2020 from renewable energy sources, but reached 22,500 MW by end of 2009 and could easily surpass 30,000 MW by end of 2010. Indigenous wind power could generate up to 253,000 MW. A Chinese renewable energy law was adopted in November 2004, following the World Wind Energy Conference organized by the Chinese and the World Wind Energy Association. By 2008, wind power was growing faster in China than the government had planned, and indeed faster in percentage terms than in any other large country, having more than doubled each year since 2005. Policymakers doubled their wind power prediction for 2010, after the wind industry reached the original goal of 5 GW three years ahead of schedule. Current trends suggest an actual installed capacity near 20 GW by 2010, with China shortly thereafter pursuing the United States for the world wind power lead. India ranks 5th in the world with a total wind power capacity of 9,587 MW in 2008, or 3% of all electricity produced in India. The World Wind Energy Conference in New Delhi in November 2006 has given additional impetus to the Indian wind industry. Muppandal village in Tamil Nadu state, India, has several wind turbine farms in its vicinity, and is one of the major wind energy harnessing centres in India led by majors like Suzlon, Vestas, Micon among others. Mexico recently opened La Venta II wind power project as an important step in reducing Mexico's consumption of fossil fuels. The 88 MW project is the first of its kind in Mexico, and will provide 13 percent of the electricity needs of the state of Oaxaca. By 2012 the project will have a capacity of 3500 MW. Another growing market is Brazil, with a wind potential of 143 GW. The federal government has created an incentive program, called Proinfa, to build production capacity of 3300 MW of renewable energy for 2008, of which 1422 MW through wind energy. The program seeks to produce 10% of Brazilian electricity through renewable sources. South Africa has a proposed station situated on the West Coast north of the Olifants River mouth near the town of Koekenaap, east of Vredendal in the Western Cape province. The station is proposed to have a total output of 100 MW although there are negotiations to double this capacity. France has announced a target of 12,500 MW installed by 2010, though their installation trends over the past few years suggest they'll fall well short of their goal. Canada experienced rapid growth of wind capacity between 2000 and 2006, with total installed capacity increasing from 137 MW to 1,451 MW, and showing an annual growth rate of 38%. Particularly rapid growth was seen in 2006, with total capacity doubling from the 684 MW at end-2005. This growth was fed by measures including installation targets, economic incentives and political support. For example, the Ontario government announced that it will introduce a feed-in tariff for wind power, referred to as 'Standard Offer Contracts', which may boost the wind industry across the province. In Quebec, the provincially owned electric utility plans to purchase an additional 2000 MW by 2013. By 2025, Canada will reach its capacity of 55,000 MW of wind energy, or 20% of the country's energy needs. Due to ever increasing sizes of turbines which hit maximum power at lower speeds energy produced has been rising faster than nameplate power capacity. Energy more than doubled between 2006 and 2008 in the table above, yet nameplate capacity grew by 63% in the same period. --- Small-scale wind power is the name given to wind generation systems with the capacity to produce up to 50 kW of electrical power. Isolated communities, that may otherwise rely on diesel generators may use wind turbines to displace diesel fuel consumption. Individuals may purchase these systems to reduce or eliminate their dependence on grid electricity for economic or other reasons, or to reduce their carbon footprint. Wind turbines have been used for household electricity generation in conjunction with battery storage over many decades in remote areas. Grid-connected wind turbines may use grid energy storage, displacing purchased energy with local production when available. Off-grid system users can either adapt to intermittent power or use batteries, photovoltaic or diesel systems to supplement the wind turbine. In urban locations, where it is difficult to obtain predictable or large amounts of wind energy. Equipment such as parking meters or wireless Internet gateways may be powered by a wind turbine that charges a small battery, replacing the need for a connection to the power grid. --- Distributed generation from renewable resources is increasing as a consequence of the increased awareness of climate change. The electronic interfaces required to connect renewable generation units with the utility system can include additional functions, such as the active filtering to enhance the power quality. Wind power available in the atmosphere is much greater than current world energy consumption. The most comprehensive study found that as of 2005 found the potential of wind power on land and near-shore to be 72 TW, equivalent to 54,000 million tons of oil per year, or over five times the world's current energy use in all forms. The potential takes into account only locations with mean annual wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m. The study assumes six 1.5 megawatt, 77 m diameter turbines per square kilometer on roughly 13% of the total global land area though that land would also be available for other compatible uses such as farming. The authors acknowledge that many practical barriers would need to be overcome to reach this theoretical capacity. --- The practical limit to exploitation of wind power will be set by economic and environmental factors, since the resource available is far larger than any practical means to develop it. --- A recent estimate gives the total potential average output for UK for various depth and distance from the coast. The maximum case considered was beyond 200 km from shore and in depths of 100 - 700 m, necessitating floating wind turbines, and this gave an average resource of 2,000 GWe which is to be compared with the average UK demand of about 40 GWe. Many potential sites for wind farms are far from demand centres, requiring substantially more money to construct new transmission lines and substations. In some regions this is partly because frequent strong winds themselves have discouraged dense human settlement in especially windy areas. The wind which was historically a nuisance is now becoming a valuable resource, but it may be far from large populations which developed in areas more sheltered from wind. --- Since the primary cost of producing wind energy is construction and there are no fuel costs, the average cost of wind energy per unit of production depends on a few key assumptions, such as the cost of capital and years of assumed service. The marginal cost of wind energy once a plant is constructed is usually less than 1 cent per kW·h. Since the cost of capital plays a large part in projected cost, risk will affect projected costs per unit of electricity. The commercial viability of wind power also depends on the price paid to power producers. Electricity prices are highly regulated worldwide, and in many locations may not reflect the full cost of production. Customers may enter into long-term pricing contracts for wind to reduce the risk of future pricing changes, thereby ensuring more stable returns for projects at the development stage. These may take the form of standard offer contracts, whereby the system operator undertakes to purchase power from wind at a fixed price for a certain period; these prices may be different than purchase prices from other sources, and even incorporate an implicit subsidy. --- Where the price for electricity is based on market mechanisms, revenue for all producers per unit is higher when their production coincides with periods of higher prices. The profitability of wind farms will therefore be higher if their production schedule coincides with these periods. If wind represents a significant portion of supply, average revenue per unit of production may be lower as more expensive and less-efficient forms of generation, which typically set revenue levels, are displaced from economic dispatch. This may be of particular concern if the output of many wind plants in a market have strong temporal correlation. In economic terms, the marginal revenue of the wind sector as penetration increases may diminish. --- For electric production, the most significant concern is pollution, which imposes social costs in increased health expenses, reduced agricultural productivity, and other problems. In addition, carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced when fossil fuels are burned, may impose even greater costs in the form of global warming. Few mechanisms currently exist to internalise these costs, and the total cost is highly uncertain. --- If the external costs are taken into account, wind energy can be competitive in more cases, as costs have generally decreased because of technology development and scale enlargement. Supporters argue that, once external costs and subsidies to other forms of electrical production are accounted for, wind energy is amongst the least costly forms of electrical production. There are over 6,000 wind turbines at Altamont Pass, in California, United States. Developed during a period of tax incentives in the 1980s, this wind farm has more turbines than any other in the United States. --- Countries such as Canada and Germany also provide incentives for wind turbine construction, such as tax credits or minimum purchase prices for wind generation, with assured grid access, sometimes referred to as feed-in tariffs. These feed-in tariffs are typically set well above average electricity prices. The Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 contains extensions of credits for wind, including microturbines. Secondary market forces also provide incentives for businesses to use wind-generated power, even if there is a premium price for the electricity. For example, socially responsible manufacturers pay utility companies a premium that goes to subsidize and build new wind power infrastructure. --- Companies use wind-generated power, and in return they can claim that they are making a powerful 'green' effort. In the USA the organization Green-e monitors business compliance with these renewable energy credits. For those with an economic interest in capturing as much of the climate-change pork barrel as possible, there are two ways of presenting the costs in a favourable light: first, define the cost base as narrowly as possible; and, second, assume that the costs will fall over time with R&D and large-scale deployment. --- Compared to the environmental effects of traditional energy sources, the environmental effects of wind power are relatively minor. Wind power consumes no fuel, and emits no air pollution, unlike fossil fuel power sources.

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Articles about Wind power

Wind Power Greed NY

by Timlynn Babitsky
Suspicious shenanigans by wind developers in upstate New York have prompted the State’s Attorney General to develop a code of conduct for wind energy companies doing business in The Empire State. There is no question that wind power in New York State has the potential to make positive changes for many who live there, but the ends should never justify the means. And, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, absolutely agrees.

In an early September post on my website – Wind Power Greed - I painted an ugly picture of wind energy lust. Some wind farm developers in upstate New York were bribing local officials to receive permission to build wind towers, colluding among developers to avoid competitive wind option leases, and shutting down discussion in local town meetings looking for the quickest way possible to acquire enough land to make their wind farms a reality.

Thanks to the concerted efforts of a number of good folks and solid investigation by the NY Attorney General, New York State now has a Wind Power Code of Ethics that spells out quite clearly what must, and must not occur as developers and towns bring wind energy to the state.

Although subscription to the code is not mandatory, the code itself and the Task Force created to monitor wind development in the state, will ensure that towns and wind developers both keep an eye on how they do business.

In brief, the Code covers conflicts of interest by banning wind companies from:

  • offering municipal officers bribes, gifts, compensation for services, contingent compensation, honoraria, or payment of legal fees and
  • soliciting from municipal officers restrictions on easements/leases, or confidential information.

 The Code further spells out specific public disclosure publication requirements covering any and every financial interests of municipal officers in the project/company and every easements and leases.

The wind development company must provide specific education and training to its possess employees and local municipal officers on how they need to conduct business within the Code of Ethics.

Click here to download a copy of the NY Wind Power Code of Ethics.

Or read it on line at the Wind Power Law Blog

Click here to go directly to the Code on their site.

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November 13, 2008 at 10:29 am | click here to view more

Think Forward – Get Hired

by Timlynn Babitsky
The wind energy industry is the fastest growing segment of renewable energy production. There is a great need and increasing demand for skilled wind energy related technicians. Right now in the US, there are jobs going unfilled. Community Colleges - mandated to respond quickly to changing demands in the job market – are scrambling to retrain Americans for the next wave of job opportunities. Are you ready for your new job?

In Texas alone the wind energy related job future looks excellent. For information on the employment potential, salary potential, and job location opportunities, in just Texas Click here . Now look into the job opportunities in the wind industry in your state. Check the job hunt websites and look into those renewable energy categories.

Are you ready to receive that job in wind technology? How about solar? Biodiesel? Geothermal?

Sure, I can already hear you saying, “I’m too old to retrain.  I’ve spent my whole life working as a ________ (fill in the blank) and I just don’t know much about this new energy stuff.” 

Hold on …. what makes you think that your many years experience as a machinist, electrician, tool and die technician, brick layer, rebar and cement person, ditch digger, assembler, lineman (or lady), truck driver, tech manager, etc., etc., has nothing to do with the job needs in the new energy fields?

Have you checked out the job descriptions in the new energy sectors? With a couple of community college courses can you fit the new job need? Have you taken a good inventory of what you know, what you don’t know, and what employeers are looking for? Would your new employer build on your experience and help pay to retrain you to fill his/her empty job needs?

Check your community college program list. If your regional school does not yet have a wind energy, solar, biodiesel or other renewable energy program being developed, ask them why not. Don’t be shy!

For information wind energy education programs by state, Wind Powering America has an excellent, interactive map of the US showing which states are currently offering higher education or continuing education in Wind Energy. You can click on the map to activate it and then click on a state to read more about the programs being offered there.

Click here to check out the wind energy education map.

If you think for a moment of every the other segments of this new energy “revolution” and every the potential jobs that are being created as we embrace renewable energy in the US, especially below the incoming administration …. The future – your future – is bright.

The current economic downturn might just be the kick in the pants for many of us to learn new skills for the economic boom ahead.

As Tom Friedman suggests in Hot, Flat and Crowded – the new industrial revolution is without a doubt in new energy technology. We can embrace this new “revolution” or be left behind.

To read my blog post on Tom Friedman, the new industrial revolution and your part in it, and to go look the Friedman interview video, click here.

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November 9, 2008 at 1:53 pm | click here to view more

Property Values Blown Away?

By Timlynn Babitsky
Do wind power farms, or even single wind energy turbines negatively impact the property values nearby? This controversial issue has people passionately lined up on both sides armed with anecdotal data and serious research results. The most often cited paper comes from a US study in 2003; it claims no negative impact. A second surely to be well cited study conducted in the UK in 2007 shows that property values close wind farms appeared to be negatively impacted. Wind project resistors will no doubt point to the UK study. Which is correct?

In an earlier post – Wind Power and Property Values - on this site, I provided an executive brief on the 2003 study, the Renewable Energy Policy Project (REEP). In essence, researchers assembled a database covering every US wind development project between 1998 and 2002 and more than 25,000 property transactions before and after the projects came on line.

The 81 page REPP Analytical Report was published In May 2003. The Report concluded that for the ten major wind project locations analyzed, property values increased faster in the view shed in eight of the ten projects. And, in nine of the ten cases property values increased faster after the project came on line than they did before. Finally, after projects came on-line, property values increased faster in the view shed than they did in the comparable community. Voila! Positive impact!

In her blog post on property values – What is the impact of wind turbines on home values? –  Vicky Portwain, director in a wind farm development company in the UK, points us to a 2007 project in the UK that claims just the opposite. In this study, property values appeared to be negatively affected by the development of a wind farm nearby.

Which study is correct? First, to compare two very different time frames raises caution. And, to try to compare the results of two very different studies would also be a mistake. But, more importantly, are we sure that the relationship between the presence/absence of a wind farm nearby is the only, or even most important variable affecting land values? This is a point that Vicky raises nicely in her blog post.

Every student of research design knows that outside of an extremely well controlled laboratory experiment, statistical results are always at risk from unknown or unsuspected other variables not included in the study – some other elements that could actually be having a great impact on your study results. Further, every student of statistical analysis knows that just because two variables appear to impact each other (correlation), does not in any way prove that one variable really does change the other (causation).

So back to the conflicting results of the two property value studies here.

The REPP project researchers acknowledge that their report was not an attempt to explain every the influences on property values. Their analysis “is an empirical review of the changes in property values over time…done solely to determine whether the existing data could be interpreted as supporting the claim that wind development harms property values.”

As for the UK study, Vicky points out that when researchers interviewed local real estate agents in the research area, they found that they may have missed some other very important variables also affecting those lower property values.

I don’t believe there is a definitive answer on property values being impacted by wind farm or wind turbine development. Wind project supporters and resistors need to back away from this issue. Taking a stand on property value effect is too fraught with unknown variables to use it as an argument either for or against developing wind power in an area.

If you are trying to develop a community wind project, make sure you do your homework on this issue. Read these two reports.

You do not need to be a statistician to understand the findings of the REPP Report, nor the Cornwall study cited on the Wind Energy Planning site. And, both of these studies provide useful background if you are working on a wind project. Both studies will help you answer opponents who use the “plummeting property values” argument against your project.

After sharing the studies’ details with your project opponents, the strongest argument you can make is that there may be many other variables that have greater impact on property values than the presence or absence of wind turbines.

Click here to look the full REPP report.

Click here to read about the UK research on the Wind Energy Planning website.

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November 18, 2008 at 1:10 pm | click here to view more

Urban Wind Power – Hype, Hope or Here Today?

By Timlynn Babitsky
We hear a great deal about wind farm development and even more about off-shore wind projects, but what’s being done on the urban wind scene? Are there wind projects afoot that will change the urban landscape?

Back in the 1970s a tiny Jacobs windcharger was installed on a tenement roof in Bronx, New York. The Bronx project succeeded. It proved that rooftop generated electricity could be fed back into a utility’s network without destroying the network, the building, or the city. And then the project was dismantled. What is the status of urban wind development today?

On the “can’t do it” side are wind experts like Paul Gipe. He has long claimed that rooftop mounting of wind turbines to capture urban wind is just not feasible for several very good reasons.

Turbines vibrate, and even strong commercial built-to-withstand-anything buildings will ‘feel’ those nasty ‘vibes’. If, like Jay Leno, we are mounting a turbine on a building that will only home our rare automobile collection, the vibrations are probably not a problem. But for homes, offices and other people-populated spaces, those building vibrations could jangle the nerves worse than a 4th cup of morning coffee. Has the vibration issue been resolved in today’s rooftop turbine designs?

Wind turbulence is another rooftop wind power problem. Ask any sailor about wind shadows and turbulence and they will tell you about the river of wind that flows unseen (but rarely unfelt) around and about every structure (natural or human-made) on the planet. Every building interferes with the natural flow of the wind, much like stones and rocks affect the flow of water in a stream. The building itself, the rooftop itself will affect the turbine’s operation by interfering with the natural flow of wind about the blades.

If a wind turbine is raised high over the roof line, the problem can be mitigated. But can the roof of the building and the building itself support the extra loads created by the wind turbine, the tower and the tug of the wind turbulence affecting both? Are tall turbines mounted on tall rooftops the only solution to rooftop turbine design?

Those are serious issues and unless today’s turbine designers have addressed these problems, the outlook for rooftop wind power projects looks rather bleak. Yet, several turbine manufacturers claim that they have at least part of the solution to the problem of capturing wind at the rooftop level without the past problems of vibration and noise. We’ll look into several of these in upcoming posts.

Is VAWT design an obvious answer? In several previous posts on my Wind Power Handbook blog site I take a look at tiny versus tall turbines and vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) versus horizontal axis designs (HAWT). We’ll look into the current state of both in upcoming posts.

There are two bright beacons on the US urban wind energy horizon – converting urban brown fields into urban wind farms and New York City’s ambitious wind power agenda to populate the city’s rooftops, bridges, and skyscrapers with wind turbines to generate electricity.

“When it comes to producing clean power, we’re determined to make New York the No. 1 city in the nation,” claims Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“If rooftop wind can make it anywhere, this is a great city,” claims New York City’s director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. “We have a lot of tall buildings.”

So is rooftop mounting of wind turbines feasible today or not? Has turbine design changed enough recently such that rooftop wind power is a real urban energy possibility today? What is the real viability of New York City’s urban rooftop wind agenda and the very interesting idea of converting urban brown fields into urban wind farms? Stay tuned as we do some deeper-digging homework and please do not hesitate to weigh in with a comment, a pointer to an interesting project or your general feedback on any of these issues.

With so much excellent wind power available in cities across the US,  can we really afford to drag our feet developing audacious means to tap and harness it?

As outspoken “green activist” Ted Turner said on Sunday’s Meet the Press interview, “…The days of fossil fuel are over.”

 

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December 2, 2008 at 3:55 am | click here to view more

SWIFT and Small Wind

by Timlynn Babitsky
The tiny wind turbine market is expected to grow by 18-20% through the next two years. When new tax incentives ($1,000 – $4,000 per system) go into effect in January ‘09, that growth will only accelerate. Between tax incentives, rising energy costs and increased environmental consciousness, residential and commercial scale wind turbine demand is already exploding. But until now, tiny wind systems have disappointed many.

Then along came SWIFT.

“The SWIFT Wind Turbine design solves many of the challenges of previous residential and commercial scale wind turbines: it registers as a whisper on decibel charts, it’s efficient, it’s safe and it’s clean,” states Cascade Engineering’s Michael Ford, on their new SWIFT Wind Turbine system.

Available in the US and Canada, the SWIFT Wind Turbine system provides businesses and homeowners an effective solution to lower energy bills and reduce carbon emissions. The unique design of the SWIFT system lies in the outer ring that connects to the turbine blades. As the wind travels down the blades and is dispersed along the outer ring, the outer ring acts as a diffuser eliminating noise and keeping the turbine silent.

It is the first very silent rooftop mounted wind turbine for domestic, community and industrial use. And it generates electricity by harnessing wind energy both quietly and safely. The SWIFT Wind Turbine incorporates safety features that meet IEEE safety standards and has achieved the Underwriter Laboratories (UL) certification by MET Laboratories, Inc., a global symbol of safety.

Optimally sited this turbine will produce approximately 2000 kWh of electricity per year in a good wind location. This is about 20% of an average home’s needs. The initial cost of $10,000 to $12,000 per system can generally pay for itself in about 3 years and multiple units can be used at one location to supplement industrial and commercial needs. The SWIFT system has a 5 year manufacturer’s warranty and is designed for a 20 year life.

Click here for more information.

The SWIFT Wind Turbine has been designed to be environmentally sustainable. The product produces more energy in its lifetime than is incorporated in the material and processes used to manufacture it – it is therefore “hurt neutral.”

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November 5, 2008 at 10:42 am | click here to view more

Job lost? Think turbines!

by Timlynn Babitsky
Layoffs continue to mount, unemployment claims reach new highs, and every indicators are “consistent with a deep recession” in the American economy. Let’s cease focusing on what has been and now is gone. We need to gear up ASAP for what Tom Friedman calls “the next great industrial revolution” – ‘green jobs’ in the new energy technology revolution.

Global warming is not a myth. And despite some politician’s attempt to “say it ain’t so,” climate change really is man-made. Thousands of concerned observers around the world already agree that solar, wind, geothermal, ocean wave, and every other form of renewable, non-polluting energy will be the only forms with which Spaceship Earth – and every animal life (including us humans) will be able to survive.

Elsewhere on this website I point blog readers to Tom Friedman’s latest book – Hot, Flat and Crowded. In it he says that the US can re-establish its world economic leadership by creating technologies to make the Earth livable for man. As he sees it, new energy technology IS the “next great industrial revolution.”

And so back to the tanking US economy.

The US is in deep economic trouble right now, today. But instead of continuing to bail out the very organizations that got us into this dark and dismal economic crater, we need to invest our difficult earned tax dollars into the new economic revolution that is already underway.

We need to step up to the front of the nation line and take responsibility for pushing the renewable energy revolution forward.

We need to refocus our educational mission. By developing green tech job training, green job skills development, and new energy education, we can re-establish the US as a world leader in innovative technology once again.

The need is out there. The opportunity is now. We can spend our efforts trying to preserve what won’t arrive back, or we can once again become a world leader in innovation, technology and education. Don’t believe we are on the cusp of a brand new economy?

The following clip from the Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari New Mexico…. pretty much says it every.

Certificate and Degree Programs

The high demand for wind turbines is creating a shortage of trained and qualified wind energy technicians who provide maintenance on the turbines. NAWRTC at Mesalands Community College provides instruction in wind turbine technology, turbine maintenance, tower safety, and wind economics. Completion of first-year courses will result in an Applied Science Certificate in Wind Energy Technology. Completion of the two-year program will result in an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Wind Energy Technology. Students in these programs will be prepared for rewarding and profitable careers in this growing field.

Click here to read more about the Mesalands future focused program.

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November 3, 2008 at 2:44 am | click here to view more

Bad vibe blues

By Timlynn Babitsky
The claim by wind power resistors that “infrasound” is a health problem for people living anywhere close modern wind turbines is not supported by facts. There is general agreement among acousticians that infrasound from wind turbines is not a problem. There is a turbine noise issue to which we do need to pay attention, but inaudible noise making your body parts vibrate is just not it.

Infrasound is sound with a frequency too low to be heard by the human ear – in general it is bass waves with a frequency below 20 Hz to 22 kHz.

We are surrounded by and have evolved within an environment of naturally occurring infrasound — ocean waves, wind, earthquakes, pounding surf, waterfalls, hurricanes, thunderstorms, and anything that produces a naturally occurring slow oscillation of the air.

And of course, there is a whole lot of human generated infrasound – from slow speed fans to engines, cars, buses, trains, motorcycles, airplanes, explosions, and machinery.

Yet the fuzzy connection between wind turbine infrasound and risk to human health continues. It hinges on the idea that high levels of low frequency noise excite the body to vibrate, most notably in the chest, and that profoundly deaf humans perceive noise through vibrations in their bodies. But the thinking is circular to claim that wind turbines generate inaudible infrasound that “can be felt but not heard” and that this infrasound vibrates the chest with dire health risks.

To start with, the noise frequency levels that produce body vibrations are well over the hearing threshold. You would hear the explosion, accident, or band speakers cranked to their maximum loudness as well as feel them, unless you were profoundly deaf. So the idea that unperceived wind turbine infrasound is pounding your body and making you sick – is another one of those “we don’t want wind turbines” myths.

On the other hand the “problem noise” that does arrive from wind turbines is the fluctuating swish sound of the blades passing the tower, which does irritate some people who are highly sensitive to fluctuating sound.

The problem is that wind project objectors use acoustic terms like infrasound incorrectly. They indicate that ‘infrasound’ is a generalized health problem for every people living close a wind turbine. It is something they cannot hear, but they can every feel it and that their health is at risk.

What we do need to note is that the turbine swish noise might be problematic for some people and when those affected by fluctuating sounds appear, we do need to pay attention. But if scores of people in an area start claiming that the blade swish sound is affecting them negatively – be skeptical. Intermittent sound fluctuation really only affects some very sensitive people – not everyone. It is a real problem – just not a really pervasive one.

For more on the infrasound and turbine issue, click here:
Infrasound from Wind Turbines – Fact, Fiction or Deception by Geoff Leventhall.

And click here for:
Do wind turbines produce significant low frequency sound levels?  by G.P. van den Berg

Click here for information on tubine noise assessments in other posts on my site:
A sound by any other name…

Special thanks to Appalachian State University for publishing the Leventhall and van den Berg papers in the Reports section of its very informative website.

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November 11, 2008 at 9:47 am | click here to view more

Ground Zero for Urban Wind Power?

By Timlynn Babitsky
With wind energy now such a broad topic of conversation, a number of places are looking to claim “best wind” bragging rights. Take Chicago for example. Widely known as The Windy City, locals there shiver, shake and proudly state how nearly continuously the wind off Lake Michigan blows briskly up and down their streets. As we take a deeper look at the state of urban wind energy today, is Chicago the best site for urban wind power development?

The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture claims that The Windy City nickname for Chicago does not have a thing to do with wind power. It came from an editorial written by Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun. He wrote his piece to belittle Chicago as it vied against New York (Washington, D.C., and St. Louis) to become the host city for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. He referred to the “windy” (as in full of hot air) bragging of the Chicago promoters making the case to pick their city.

Other sources claim that the nickname goes back even further to rivalry between Chicago and Cincinnati for bragging rights in the meat packing industry which then spilled over into baseball. Cincinnati newspapers covering the baseball rivalry used the term “windy city” to imply that Chicago was just full of bluster.

Whatever the source of The Windy City nickname, anyone who lives there, anyone who visits would certainly agree that it is quite windy almost every time in Chicago. How does Chicago’s wind power compare to other US cities?

Based on the National Climatic Data middle’s data on annual average wind speeds, the top windiest cities in the US in average wind speed in mph are:

  1. Dodge City, Kansas 13.9
  2. Amarillo, Texas 13.5
  3. Rochester, Minnesota 13.1
  4. Casper, Wyoming 12.9
  5. Cheyenne, Wyoming 12.9
  6. Great Falls, Montana 12.7
  7. Goodland, Kansas 12.6
  8. Boston, Massachusetts 12.5
  9. Lubbock, Texas 12.4
  10. New York City 12.2
  11. Oklahoma City 12.2

Chicago ranks about twenty-first out of 68 windy cities, with an average wind speed of 10.3 miles per hour. So the right to being called The Windy City based on wind power alone can continue to remain controversial. That is not really the issue.

The real question is with so many US cities having excellent average annual wind speeds, why is it that we don’t hear much more in the press about urban wind energy development? Why don’t we have numerous urban rooftop wind development test projects being covered in the news?

We will dig into the current state of urban wind development and look what’s available today in roof top turbine design over the next few blog posts here at the Wind Power Handbook.

In the meantime, if you’d like to read more on the history of The Windy City and how it got its name, here are a few good sources for your background reading.

Donald Miller’s City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America

Norman Bolotin’s The World’s Columbian Exposition: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893

And, my every time favorite – a very well written super read – Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

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November 22, 2008 at 3:04 pm | click here to view more

Wind Power Jobs? You betcha!

by Timlynn Babitsky
Demand is growing nationwide for wind turbine technicians, technologists, engineers, and wind energy educators. How is this pressuring universities, colleges, community colleges and technical schools to prepare their students for this rising job skills demand? A tiny sample of the educational scramble to meet the demands of this new “industrial revolution” points to an area of exploding job growth. Are you ready?

Community colleges are mandated to prepare their students for real jobs in their local regions. As you might expect then, the early bird programs in wind technology related education are sprouting up at the community college level. For example:

Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari New Mexico offers Certificate and Degree programs in Wind Energy Technology. Providing instruction in wind turbine technology, turbine maintenance, tower safety, and wind economics. Students in both their one and two year programs “will be prepared for rewarding and profitable careers in this growing field.”

Oklahoma State University’s Oklahoma City campus will offer the state’s first wind turbine technology degree program starting January ’09. Their 2-year associates’ degree will focus on training technicians for jobs in both utility-scale and facilities-scale environments. The program will include classes in electrical, mechanical and hydraulic malfunctions, scheduled maintenance and general service. Training could also include securing site leases, wiring the turbine network to the power grid and designing a wind farm. The wind technician degree program was created because the wind industry is becoming an increasingly important factor in Oklahoma’s economy.

Iowa Lakes Community College – Alliant Energy is collaborating with Iowa Lakes Community College (ILCC) to develop the curriculum for their Wind Energy and Turbine Technology Program, the first in the state of Iowa. The one year diploma program prepares students for entry-level positions in the wind industry, focusing on construction, maintenance, and operation of wind turbines. The two-year Associate in Applied Science degree prepares students to install, maintain and service modern wind turbines. Graduates will qualify for entry-level positions and also have the skills and education background to become a wind turbine operator and potentially a supervisor. Both programs prepare students to support Iowa’s growing wind infrastructure as companies rush to build renewable energy generation.

Lake Shore Technical College, on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin is offering a two-year Associates Applied Science Degree program in Wind Energy Technology. The program prepares students for increasing job opportunities in both the US and Canada wind energy industry. Upon completion of the program students will be ready to function as a: Wind Turbine Technician/Mechanic/Tower Climber; Installation Technician; Operation and Maintenance Technician; and Wind Farm Maintenance Manager.

Oregon Institute of Technology announced in March, 2008 the development of the country’s first four-year undergraduate degree program in renewable-energy systems. Although this program includes other renewable energy systems besides wind, the trend is obvious. Renewable energy – wind, solar, geothermal, etc., – are leading the way to economic recovery for the US.

Job search web site openings include wind turbine engineers, turbine technologists and wind technicians. And, the list of wind-related job types and job skills descriptions is definitely growing daily.

If you’ve just been laid off, or downsized or whatever other name losing your job is called these days…. go directly to your local community college and start preparing for a new job in wind technology or any other renewable energy-related field.

The more you know about wind energy technology, the more you will be prepared to either help promote a community with project or bring home the bacon and put it on the family table.

The old jobs are probably not coming back.

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November 7, 2008 at 11:18 am | click here to view more

The Age of Stupid

by Timlynn Babitsky
The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change set in 2055. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated world 45 years from now. He looks back at video footage from 2007 and asks: Why didn’t we cease climate change when we had the chance?

From every I’ve seen on the Internet so far, The Age of Stupid is an incredibly powerful film. It was funded through a viral, grassroots effort and not supported by the usual film studio, media attention, and marketing dollars to make it widely known to potential movie goers. But here again, through the power of the Internet, YouTube, bloggers and you, the word is getting out. This is a MUST look movie!

It had its world premiere in London on March 15th 2009. It was released in UK cinemas on March 20th 2009, and will be released in other countries (Click here to find out Where? When?).

If you do nothing else this week, take a look at The Age of Stupid trailers on YouTube and at the The Age of Stupid webiste.

Here’s the best of its trailers off YouTube-click here.

Click here for The Age of Stupid website

So what you might say. I won’t be alive in 45 years. What can you do? It’s just Nature’s way. What’s happening will not just suddenly hit the world 45 years from now…. it’s happening every around us on an every day basis. It’s already affecting your life and even your immediate future. It’s happening NOW. Will your kids and their kids look back to THIS time and THIS place and say “Why didn’t they cease climate change when they had the chance?

Special thanks toVicky Portwain at Wind Energy Planning for her post on The Age of Stupid and bringing it to our attention.

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March 21, 2009 at 1:46 pm | click here to view more


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