Via the U.S. Department of Energy on YouTube, a video on how wind turbines work:
VIDEO: How wind turbines work
Reply
Tag Archives: Wind Turbine
WIND ENERGY in the news
- Superhighway for wind power proposed for Mid-Atlantic Coast. Via the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Investors on Tuesday proposed to build an underwater electricity superhighway that would carry wind power generated off the Mid-Atlantic Coast to land.
The $5 billion transmission line, announced by backers including Google, would run about 15 to 20 miles offshore.
It would act like a spine, linking the offshore projects to land at four locations – North Jersey, South Jersey near Atlantic City, the coast of Delaware and the coast of Virginia south of Norfolk.
“This is a huge, bold project,” said Robert Mitchell, CEO of Trans-Elect, an independent transmission company operating nationwide, which is leading the project. “It’s going to result in thousands of megawatts of offshore wind being delivered to the East Coast” along with thousands of jobs.
“Instead of multiple connections, this will serve as a superhighway with on-ramps for wind farms,” said Rick Needham, director of green business operations at Google, a major investor.
It also would increase the reliability of wind, they said. By joining the projects together, the variability of wind at any one location is smoothed out, lulls in one place compensated for by gusts elsewhere.
- Google backs ‘superhighway’ for wind power. Via the Washington Post:
Internet search engine giant Google announced Tuesday that it is investing in a mammoth project to build an underwater “superhighway for clean energy” that would be able to funnel power from offshore wind farms to 1.9 million homes without overtaxing the already congested mid-Atlantic power grid.
The project, dubbed the Atlantic Wind Connection, calls for spending as much as $5 billion to create a 350-mile network of underwater cables stretching from northern New Jersey to Virginia. It would eliminate the need for offshore wind developers to build transmission lines of their own, easing what can be a barrier for such projects.
Google is partnering with Good Energies, an environmentally focused international investment company based in New York, London and Switzerland, and Tokyo-based Marubeni to finance the project. The project is led by Trans-Elect, an electric transmission company in Chevy Chase.
- Report Identifies Transmission Corridors to Deliver 8,600 MW of New Wind in the Upper Midwest. Via Renewable + Law:
[The Upper Midwest Transmission Development Initiative's] renewable transmission corridors are based on the Midwest ISO’s estimate that about 8,600 MW of new renewable capacity will be needed in the region by 2025 to serve the renewable energy standards and goals of these five states. The group identified twenty “wind zones” where it would be most efficient to develop wind power based on available wind resources, existing wind generation, existing interconnection queue requests, and local geography. The six transmission corridors were chosen as the best general areas for transmission lines to move wind energy from the wind zones to load centers in a cost-effective manner.
- In 2009, 40% of new U.S. electricity generation came from wind. Via EERE News:
The U.S. Department of Energy has distributed the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recently published IEA Wind Energy Annual Report 2009, which is now available for free download. The report presents the latest information on domestic and international wind generation capacity, national incentive programs, progress toward national objectives, benefits to national economies, research and development results, and issues affecting turbines, market growth, and costs of projects. The Executive Summary synthesizes the information presented from IEA’s member countries, cooperative research tasks, the European Commission, and the European Wind Energy Association. Read the Executive Summary
.Wind power is a fast-growing source of clean energy. In the United States 40% of new electricity generation came from wind last year, while in Europe, wind power installations accounted for 39% of new capacity. IEA Wind member countries added more than 20 gigawatts (GW) in 2009, for a total of more than 111 GW of wind generating capacity. Five countries added more than a gigawatt of net capacity: the United States (10 GW), Spain (2.5 GW), Germany (1.9 GW), Italy (1.1 GW), and the United Kingdom (1 GW). Additionally, wind power electrical generation capacity grew more than 32% worldwide in 2009. These and other statistics on wind energy development are highlighted in the report.
The IEA Wind member countries—located in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Pacific Region—contain 70% of worldwide wind generating capacity. These countries share information and research efforts to increase wind energy’s contribution to their electrical generation mix, and they reach out to other countries to join the IEA Wind cooperation.
- Study: Offshore wind could generate all U.S. electricity (with graphics below). Via USA Today:
U.S. offshore winds, abundant off the coasts of 26 states, have the potential to generate four times as much power as the nation’s present electric capacity, a new Department of Energy report says.
Developing this resource would help the United States reduce air pollution, achieve 20% of its electricity (or about 54 gigawatts) from wind by 2030 and create more than 43,000 permanent, well-paid technical jobs, according to the 240-page study by DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Images via a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
RENEWABLE ENERGY: ~45 percent of the electricity in Portugal’s grid comes from renewable energy
Images, here and here, showing wind turbines in Portugal are via edgenumbers on Flickr.
Aggressive national policies in Europe are rapidly replacing nonrenewable energy sources with renewable resources as the source of electricity for their electricity grids. The new energy sources translate into national security gains and into meeting environmental and sustainable goals. Via The New York Times (emphasis added):
Today, Lisbon’s trendy bars, Porto’s factories and the Algarve’s glamorous resorts are powered substantially by clean energy. Nearly 45 percent of the electricity in Portugal’s grid will come from renewable sources this year, up from 17 percent just five years ago.
Land-based wind power — this year deemed “potentially competitive” with fossil fuels by the International Energy Agency in Paris — has expanded sevenfold in that time. And Portugal expects in 2011 to become the first country to inaugurate a national network of charging stations for electric cars.
. . .
Still, aggressive national policies to accelerate renewable energy use are succeeding in Portugal and some other countries, according to a recent report by IHS Emerging Energy Research of Cambridge, Mass., a leading energy consulting firm. By 2025, the report projected, Ireland, Denmark and Britain will also get 40 percent or more of their electricity from renewable sources; if power from large-scale hydroelectric dams, an older type of renewable energy, is included, countries like Canada and Brazil join the list.
The United States, which last year generated less than 5 percent of its power from newer forms of renewable energy, will lag behind at 16 percent (or just over 20 percent, including hydroelectric power), according to IHS.To force Portugal’s energy transition, Mr. Sócrates’s government restructured and privatized former state energy utilities to create a grid better suited to renewable power sources. To lure private companies into Portugal’s new market, the government gave them contracts locking in a stable price for 15 years — a subsidy that varied by technology and was initially high but decreased with each new contract round.
Compared with the United States, European countries have powerful incentives to pursue renewable energy. Many, like Portugal, have little fossil fuel of their own, and the European Union’s emissions trading system discourages fossil fuel use by requiring industry to essentially pay for excessive carbon dioxide emissions.Portugal was well poised to be a guinea pig because it has large untapped resources of wind and river power, the two most cost-effective renewable sources. Government officials say the energy transformation required no increase in taxes or public debt, precisely because the new sources of electricity, which require no fuel and produce no emissions, replaced electricity previously produced by buying and burning imported natural gas, coal and oil. By 2014 the renewable energy program will allow Portugal to fully close at least two conventional power plants and reduce the operation of others.
The potential higher cost of renewable energy was discussed in the previous article. However, undoubtedly, improved technology and grid modernization will bring down the cost of renewable energy. Also, personally, I’m willing to pay higher energy costs if higher costs reflect the elimination of fossil-fuel subsidies, efforts to modernize the grid, and efforts to introduce more renewable energy into the energy mix. I view this investment as a prudent investment or an investment into a more secure or sustainable future.
Tougher regulations that aim to clean up our environment, taxes on nonrenewable energy sources, and policies that reduce or eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies are examples of policies that can make renewables more competitive with cheaper fossil fuels. It’s important to note that the price at the pump or your electricity bill doesn’t reflect the actual price paid for energy derived from fossil-fuel sources, since negative externalities aren’t immediately considered. Via MLive.com:
In an earlier entry, I discussed how increased reliance on renewable energy can have the effect of reducing reliance on coal-fired energy production that in turn reduces the amount of mercury released from coal-fired power plants. But, tougher regulations concerning mercury may have the effect of creating a disincentive to use coal as a fuel source for power plants, thus creating a greater demand for alternative energy. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working on just these types of regulations.
. . .
EPA has already begun to collect the data in order to support its anticipated Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR) for utilities. The most likely technology used to reduce mercury emissions is flue gas desulfurization, known commonly as “scrubbers.” EPA has estimated that the cost for scrubbers range from $116 million for large EGU boilers to $7.1 million for small scrubbers on industrial boilers. In all, controlling mercury emissions will not come cheaply.
No later than November 16, 2011, large electric utilities that use coal-fired boilers to generate steam for electricity will need to make hard choices about how to do business. Adding to this tougher operating climate for electric utilities is EPA’s new “Transport Rule”, which regulates sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from some states’ electric utilities. While the anticipated CAMR is not designed to directly affect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, if utilities reduce their reliance on coal to generate electricity, choosing instead to use natural gas (which emits less than half the GHG emissions of coal-fired plants) or increase their reliance on alternative energy, GHG emissions will be reduced.
What’s more, fossil fuels are subsidized ten time more than renewables. Via guardian.co.uk:
Despite repeated pledges to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and criticism from some quarters that government support for renewable energy technologies is too generous, global subsidies provided to renewable energy and biofuels are dwarfed by those enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry.
That is the conclusion of a major report released late last week by analyst Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which analyses subsidies and incentive schemes offered globally to developers of renewable energy and biofuel technologies and projects.
The report concludes that in 2009 governments provided subsidies worth between $43bn (£27bn) and $46bn to renewable energy and biofuel industries, including support provided through feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, tax credits, cash grants and other direct subsidies.
In contrast, estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) released in June showed that $557bn was spent by governments during 2008 to subsidise the fossil fuel industry.
More via Autoblog Green:
Earlier today, we covered the words of some auto industry insiders at the recent Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminar in Traverse City, MI, who said the didn’t like that the Obama Administration was “picking winners” by funneling funds on plug-in vehicles. Well, okay, they’re entitled to their opinion. But, if the industry doesn’t want governments to push one particular energy type over another, maybe auto industry execs should seriously reconsider their support of fossil-fueled engines.
The reason? The Guardian recently reported that Bloomberg New Energy Finance has issued a report that found government subsidies for fossil fuels around the world just plain blow out renewable energy subsidies ten-to-one. Yes, for every dollar the auto execs don’t want spent on plug-in vehicles, there are more than ten bucks given to keep the gas and oil companies in the crude black. The report found that governments spent somewere between $43 and $46 billion on renewable energy and biofuel industries in 2009. By comparison, governments gave $557 billion to the fossil fuel industry in 2008.
–
The author or licensor of these images does not endorse my work or me and their images are protected under an attribution license.
VIDEO: Samsø: Denmark’s renewable energy island
In terms of applying prudent energy policy here in the United States, we can certainly do what Samsø is doing on a much larger scale. More from Popular Science:
Samso — about 30 miles long and 15 miles across — began its trek toward sustainability in 1997, and in just over a decade has erected 21 electricity-producing wind turbines and a heating system fueled by wood chip- and straw-burning furnaces bolstered by multiple small, unobtrusive solar panels. The 11 one-megawatt onshore turbines alone produce more than the island’s total electricity consumption (and enough power to offset 690,000 gallons of oil), while the 10 offshore turbines produce enough power to cover the island’s entire transportation energy budget. Excess power is invested into new energy projects.
—
Photo source for attribution. The author or licensor of this image does not endorse my work or me and their image is protected under an attribution license.
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
WIND POWER: T. Boone Pickens’s plan to build largest wind farm abandoned but site needed for 687 giant wind turbines already ordered
From the New York Times:
Mr. Pickens’s situation is of particular interest because he has spent much of the last year advocating an energy plan that includes increasing to 20 percent the amount of the nation’s electricity that is supplied by wind power. In his vision, that would free up natural gas now used to generate power so that it could be used in cars, reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. (Currently, wind accounts for just 1 percent of U.S. electricity.)
For the huge wind farm he had planned in Texas, Mr. Pickens had already ordered 687 large wind turbines from General Electric, to be delivered starting in 2011. But transmission lines being built by the state were unlikely to reach the location he has leased until 2013, so he needed to put the turbines elsewhere. Mr. Pickens had once planned to build his own transmission lines, but difficulty in finding financing amid the credit crisis forced him to shelve that plan.
Possible locations for the 687 turbines include Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Alberta, Canada, Mr. Pickens said. Collectively, at a capacity of 1,000 megawatts — about the size of a nuclear plant — his project would still amount to a substantial investment in wind power. He had planned his Panhandle wind farm at 4,000 megawatts.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
