Wind Energy
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Definition
History
Converting to Electricity
The Grid
Applying to the N.H. Site Evaluation
Committee
Definition of Wind Power
» What Is Wind?
• BACKGROUND: The Earth’s atmosphere is made of air, which is composed of
different gases. The sun shines on the Earth’s atmosphere and heats its surfaces. As
we know the Earth is not flat; it is a sphere, and so the sun does not reach all surface
areas evenly or at the same time. As air heats it rises; the molecules in the air spread
out because the air is light. Cooler air falls; its particles are denser and so the air is
heavier. As the warm air rises, the cooler air fills in the space. This process of warming
and cooling air placement is called convection, and this is what causes the air to move.
This is wind.
Wind is a source of energy.
Still air is not. It is the
movement of air that
produces energy and power.
Wind power is the use of
wind to do useful work.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Picture+of+wind+cycle&h
l=en&client=firefox-a&sa=G&tbo=u&rls=org.mozilla:enUS:official&channel=s&tbm=isch&source=univ&ei=mxKUK2lMe2M0QHR2IHgCQ&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1051&bih
=528
 Wind Power History
 500 AD
Persia (Iran) began using windmills
 1300 AD
Western Europe used horizontal-axis type windmills
 1850s Windmill production developed in the American West
 1900s Early Windmills used to pump saltwater to evaporate ponds in California.
 1950s Most windmill companies failed economically in the US
 1973
Wind energy interest increased as oil prices rose. (Due to OPEC)
 2006
Wind power accounted for 5% of renewable energy in U.S.
 2007
U.S. total wind power generating capacity increased by 45% in 1 year.
 2008 AWEA estimates U.S. wind farms will generate 48 billion kWh of wind energy
which is the equivalent of powering over 4.5 million homes.
The early windmills were used to grind grain and irrigate crops. They were
constructed horizontally (the wheels being horizontal to the ground). These types of
windmills were not efficient as the vertical ones developed primarily in the 20th century.
Windmills were especially useful in Denmark because of the nearly constant (300 days
per year) winds blowing off the Jutland.
Mesopotamia; First historical records of windmills. Vertical
axis windmills.
Photo: Ullesthorpe Windmill Project
500 AD
Persia (Iran) began using windmills
Vertical-axis, Chinese windmill Ming Dynasty of
China (1368-1644)
http://www.ivt.ntnu.no/offshore2/?page_id=266
James Blyth (1839-1906) and the first known
electricity generating wind turbine (vertical
axis wind turbine)
History of Windmills
1931: The Darrieus wind turbine
In 1931 the French aeronautical engineer Georges Jean Marie Darrieus
constructed and patented “the Darrieus wind turbine”. The wind turbine was a
vertical axis wind turbine, still in widely use today. In contrast to the traditionally
vertical wind turbines collecting the wind in “cups” dragging the turbine around
using the drag force, the Darrieus wind turbine used the lift force hitting the two
or more airfoils to create rotation.
1941: World’s first megawatt-sized wind turbine
In 1941 the world’s first megawatt-sized wind turbine, the Smith-Putman wind turbine, was
built and connected to the local electrical distribution system in a mountain in Castleton,
Vermont, USA, with a capacity of 1.25 MW. The Smith-Putman turbine was a horizontal
axis wind turbine, manufactured by the S. Morgan Smith Company. Unfortunately, the
turbine only operated for 1100 hours due to a weakness in one of the blades. The turbine
wasn’t repaired, because of the shortage of material during the Second World War. No
similar-sized unit was to repeat this experiment for about forty years.
The Smith-Putnam wind turbine, the world’s first megawatt-sized wind turbine, installed
in Vermont, USA in 1941.
1980: The first windfarm
The world’s first wind farm consisted of 20 wind turbines rating
at 30 kW each, was installed in southern New Hampshire, USA,
in 1980.
2009: Hywind; The world’s first floating off-shore wind turbine (2.3
MW)
The first floating off-shore wind turbine was installed outside
Karmøy, Norway, by Statoil. The 2.3 MW wind turbine was
designed by Siemens and more of these wind turbines are
planned to be installed in the North Sea.
Hywind; The world’s first floating off-shore wind turbine.
Source: Statoil ASA
© Corbin-Hillman Communications. The new turbine on the
Cleveland Indians baseball stadium.
An innovative wind turbine reminiscent of an IKEA collapsible lamp
has been installed on the roof of the Cleveland Indians baseball
stadium, ready to begin churning out energy on opening day, April 5.
The 18-foot-wide helix turbine, designed by Cleveland State
University professor Dr. Majid Rashidi, isn't a huge hitter, powerwise: It will generate approximately 40,000 kilowatt-hours per year,
enough for four homes.
Compact, Cost-Effective, And Consistent
What Rashidi's design does have going for it is its compact size, cost-effectiveness, and ability to generate
power consistently in an urban environment where wind speeds can be too variable and turbulent to make
traditional turbines truly effective, as TreeHugger Mat wrote in a previous article about using the technology
on city roofs.
© Corbin-Hillman Communications
With sports stadiums using as much energy as thousands of American homes, the helix turbine on
Progressive Field, a project three years in the making, isn't so much a solution to the Indians' electricity
needs as a high-profile way to show baseball fans what could be done elsewhere.
Setting An Example For Sports Fans
The helix turbine's ability to be retrofitted on existing structures such as farm silos and former water towers
makes it a cost-effective solution for powering individual buildings in rural or urban areas during peak energy
hours, power outages, and other emergencies, according to Cleveland State University.
The Indians have been one of the teams on the forefront of sustainability efforts in baseball, launching an
ongoing recycling campaign in 2008 that now includes organic-waste composting and become the first
American League ball club to use alternative energy with their 2007 installation of a solar-panel array.
Wind farm proposed near Mount Cardigan
Credit: By TRIS WYKES, Valley News Staff Writer, vnews.com, Sunday, 6/3/2012 ~~
GRAFTON – The renewable energy company that opened New Hampshire’s first wind farm in Lempster in 2008 is eying an
area south of Mount Cardigan State Park in the towns of Grafton, Alexandria and Danbury for another possible wind farm.
Atlantic Wind, a subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables, has erected seven 200-foot-tall meteorological data collection towers –
one on Grafton’s Melvin Mountain, two on Alexandria’s Forbes Mountain and four on Danbury’s Tinkham Hill. Ed Cherian,
an Iberdrola project manager, said his company is in the process of gathering and analyzing weather data along ridgelines
east of Route 4.
Valley News – June 3, 2012
Concord Monitor – Nov.18, 2012
Melvin Mountain has an elevation of about 2,175 feet. Wind farm turbines, which can be roughly 250 feet high and carry
140-foot blades, would be visible from Mount Cardigan and numerous other locations in the area.
Wind Farm Proposed for Groton, N.H.
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By Kathleen Ronayne Concord Monitor
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
(Published in print: Wednesday,
December 26, 2012)
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Groton, N.H. — EDP Renewables, an
international energy company, is seeking
approval to build a 60-meter
meteorological tower in Groton to begin
studying wind quality for a proposed
wind farm straddling the borders of
Groton, Alexandria and Hebron.
The wind farm would be the third in the
Newfound Lake region, and the second in
Groton. The town’s Planning Board held
an initial hearing last week, attended by
about 60 people, on permitting placement
of the tower, which is one of the initial
steps toward building the proposed
3,500-acre wind farm. It would include 15
to 25 turbines among the three towns and
generate 60 megawatts of power, enough
to power more than 14,000 homes, said
Jeffrey Nemeth, project manager for EDP.
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Although construction of the project, called Spruce Ridge Wind Farm, is
not guaranteed and would be several years away, some residents and
environmental groups plan to oppose the tower on grounds that wind
power is inefficient and could destroy the region’s tourism industry.
Although the wind farm would have turbines in all three towns, the
proposed tower will be in Groton, adjacent to Spruce Ridge Road, so
the company needs approval only from Groton’s planning board. A
decision is expected by the end of January. All projects generating more
than 30 megawatts of energy must get permits from the New Hampshire
Site Evaluation Committee, making some opponents worry that allowing
the tower is the last chance for locals to have their say.
“If the town gives the (meteorological) tower the thumbs up, that’s it for
having any control over the wind turbine that’s going to follow,” said
Jenny Tuthill, an Alexandria resident and member of New Hampshire
Wind Watch, a group that opposes wind turbines in the area.
But the company would still have to make tax agreements with the town, and the
town and individuals can apply for legal intervener status, giving them a voice in
the permitting process, said Pamela Hamel, administrative assistant to Groton’s
Selectboard.
In addition to using the tower for wind study, EDP will conduct wildlife studies,
wetland delineations, visual simulation models, sound studies and more, Nemeth
said. The earliest the turbines would be built is likely 2015, he said. EDP chose the
area because it is a prime resource of wind in the state, and EDP was able to
lease 3,500 acres of land from Maxam North America Inc.
EDP first requested a zoning change from Groton’s Zoning Board at a November
meeting. Following that meeting, Nemeth began a presentation on the proposed
wind farm to the Planning Board, taking several attendees from Alexandria by
surprise because they and other abutters did not know the zoning change was
related to a wind farm.
“Abutters to the Groton property were not all informed of this, and that’s really
a crucial thing,” Tuthill said. “If you’re an abutter you need to be informed of
these things, and they hadn’t done that.”
But communicating with area residents throughout the process is important to
EDP, Nemeth said, and the company plans to have meetings with all
stakeholders over the next several years.
“Our company definitely takes the stance of community involvement,
recognizing that the wind farm becomes part of the community,” he said. The
company will work on “really opening those lines of communication so people
can actually come to us for facts rather than listening to a neighbor’s rumors.”
Groton and surrounding communities have found themselves in debates over
wind farms before. Iberdrola Renewables put its first meteorological towers in
Groton in 2006, and the Groton Wind Farm received state approval in July
2011. The turbines should have a date set to go online by the end of this year.
In November, Iberdrola proposed a 37-turbine wind farm on land in Danbury,
Alexandria and Grafton.
Opposition to the EDP project is more pronounced than opposition to Iberdrola’s
first wind farm in Groton, Hamel said. Some people have expressed concern that
the town already has a wind farm and doesn’t need another, fearing it could harm
the area’s tourism industry.
Potential harms to tourism and the environment outweigh energy benefits because
wind farms are not very efficient, said Tuthill, of New Hampshire Wind Watch. The
turbines, which are more than 400 feet tall, can cause a decline in property values
and may deter tourists who come to the region for its natural beauty, she said.
But wind farms can also give towns a major revenue boost.
The Groton Wind Farm, for example, is not yet online and has already brought in
$236,000 in revenue from a land-use-change tax and two payments of $50,000
during the construction phase, Hamel said. The first year’s payments are expected
to double the town’s budget.
That leaves a lot of extra money for voters to decide what to do with. Improving
roads, saving money for the capital reserve fund and tax relief are ideas that have
been floated, but it will be up to voters to decide how to spend the money.
Despite the controversy over wind towers, the planning board is focusing on
whether EDP’s proposal for the tower falls within the town’s regulations.
“I’ve tried to explain to people you can’t just decide, ‘I don’t like the project so we’re
going to say no,’ ” Hamel said.
Wind Farm Cycle
Converting Wind Power to
Electricity
http://exploringgreentechnology.com/wind-energy/how-doeswind-energy-work/
The three most basic units in electricity are
Voltage (V),
Current (I, uppercase "i")
Resistance (r) Voltage is measured in volts, current is measured in amps and
resistance is measured in ohms.
A neat analogy to help understand these terms is a system of plumbing
pipes.
1. The current is equivalent to the flow rate
2. The resistance is like the pipe size.
The basic equation in electrical engineering says that the current (flow rate)
is equal to the voltage divided by the resistance (pipe size).
Let's see how this relation applies to the plumbing system. Let's say you
have a tank of pressurized water connected to a hose that you are using to water
the garden.
What happens if you increase the pressure in the tank? You probably can
guess that this makes more water come out of the hose. The same is true of an
electrical system: Increasing the voltage will make more current flow.
Let's say you increase the diameter of the hose and all of the fittings to the
tank. You probably guessed that this also makes more water come out of the
hose. This is like decreasing the resistance in an electrical system, which
increases the current flow.
Amps is a scientific term that measures the RATE of electrons flowing in a
current.
Here is a comparison that makes it easier to understand: How many cars
go by your house in a minute? The higher the ampere, the greater number
of cars or electrons passing a single point.
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Volts is short for voltage.
It measures the FORCE or power of the electrical flow.
Here are some demonstrations that might help us grasp the concept of
volts.
1..Use a coffee stirrer and a regular straw to drink. Which has more power?
2.Compare a small creek with a large raging river. Which has more
power?
4. Look at a regular electrical outlet (110 volts) and a 220 volt outlet for a
washer and dryer. Which has more power?
5. Look at different size batteries. Which has more power?
Electrical power is measured in watts.
In an electrical system power (P) is equal to the voltage
multiplied by the current.
The water analogy still applies. Take a hose and point it at a
waterwheel like the ones that were used to turn grinding
stones in watermills. You can increase the power generated by
the waterwheel in two ways. If you increase the pressure of
the water coming out of the hose, it hits the waterwheel with a
lot more force and the wheel turns faster, generating more
power. If you increase the flow rate, the waterwheel turns
faster because of the weight of the extra water hitting it.
Watts
Watts is short for wattage.
It is the amount of power produced or electricity consumed.
The scientific definition is one joule per second.
Household electrical use is often measured in kilowatts or 1000 watts.
Project: Go to an appliance store and note the difference in kilowatts
for the different appliances.
How many light bulbs could be powered by 2 megawatts?
This depends on the wattage of each bulb. If each bulb is,
say, 100 watts, you can power ten thousand bulbs. To
calculate for your own bulbs, divide 1,000,000 watts by the
wattage of each bulb.
An average U.S. household uses about 10,000 kilowatt-hours
(kWh) of electricity each year. A watt is a unit of power, or
energy per unit time, so it's the rate at which energy is being
used. A kilowatt-hour (or 1000 watt-hours) is a unit of energy,
so 10,000 kWh is how much total energy each household uses
over the course of a year. This means that each household, on
average, uses energy at a rate of about 1 kilowatt (1000 watts,
which equal to ten 100-watt light bulbs).
One megawatt is equal to one million watts, so for one instant,
one megawatt can power 1000 homes.
A better question to ask is how many homes can a megawatthour (MWh) provide with energy for one hour? If one home
needs 1 kWh of energy for one hour, then 1 MWh of energy can
sustain 1000 homes for one hour. (wikianswers.com)
What Is The Grid?
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The national grid system is the network of cables which transport electricity from the
power stations in Britain to homes, factories and other places that require it.
Power stations produce electricity at high currents. Electricity transmission at high
currents would encounter a large resistance in the transmission wire and therefore lose a
lot of its energy as heat. To prevent this, the current generated is passed through a step up
transformer. Here the voltage is increased to as much as 400,000V and the current
decreased (remember the relationship P = VxI an increase in voltage and decrease in
current by the same ratio will give the same power).
The high voltage (400,000 Volts) electricity is carried along overhead lines and
underground cables referred to as the supergrid. The voltage is the reduced in several
stages making before reaching the end user. The voltage reduction is made in step down
transformers.
The diagram below gives a simplified representation of the National Grid system
Your Ecological Footprint
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www.footprintcalculator.org/ or
www.mec.ca/Apps/ecoCalc/ecoCalc.jsp
The ecological footprint concept is a way to roughly
measure the impact of a person’s daily and long-term
choices on the environment. People have become so
accustomed to their diet, cars, homes, and energy usage
that they don’t realize that the Earth will not be able to
provide the needed resources indefinitely. When students
go online to calculate how many Earths it would take if
everyone on the planet lives the way that they do, they
will be astonished. For many students, it is the beginning
of increased awareness about the delicate balance of the
planet.
The concept of Ecological Footprint is based on the
assumption that anything that consumes items or energy
needs a certain amount of land, water and other natural
resources to live the way it is. That means the more active
and consuming someone or something is, the larger the
Ecological Footprint for him, her, or it. There are many
ways to measure, calculate and estimate the Ecological
Footprint.
The fast track can take minutes to years to complete. Carbon moves from the soil, water or
atmosphere through living things by photosynthesis, respiration, and decomposition and back to the
soil, water, or atmosphere. The demand for carbon is great but only producers can convert carbon
dioxide gas into carbon compounds through photosynthesis. This energy removes hydrogen atoms
from water that enters through the plant roots and releases carbon from carbon dioxide. The carbon
dioxide enters the leaves through small openings called stomata. The carbon is then trapped within
the plant by energy-rich chemical bonds and, along with hydrogen, combines to form glucose. Light
energy from the sun has now been transformed into chemical bond energy. Upon its release from the
water molecules, oxygen exits the leaves through the stomata. Most of the carbon on Earth is
recycled through a slow track that can take millions of years. As marine organisms die, their shells
and skeletons become buried under layers of silt on the ocean floor and their carbon becomes part of
sedimentary rock. When sediments covered marine organisms before they decomposed, the resulting
heat and pressure caused huge deposits of petroleum (oil) to form. Millions of years ago the remains
of plants became buried in sediments under swamps where they were compacted into coal. Today,
these fossil fuels are the major energy source used by humans. Burning these fuels releases carbon
back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide that is then available for the fast track.
Most of the carbon on Earth is recycled through a slow track that can take millions of
years. As marine organisms die, their shells and skeletons become buried under layers
of silt on the ocean floor and their carbon becomes part of sedimentary rock. When
sediments covered marine organisms before they decomposed, the resulting heat and
pressure caused huge deposits of petroleum (oil) to form. Millions of years ago the
remains of plants became buried in sediments under swamps where they were
compacted into coal. Today, these fossil fuels are the major energy source used by
humans. Burning these fuels releases carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon
dioxide that is then available for the fast track.
Argonne National Laboratory, under the stewardship of
the Department of Energy, just released a study that found
wind energy does not reduce carbon dioxide emissions
from electricity generation as much as expected due to
the need to ramp up fossil fuel plants when the wind is not
blowing.
It takes more energy and thus more carbon dioxide
emissions to ramp a coal plant up and down than if the
same coal plant is operated at a continuous, efficient
base-load level.
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This is not a new finding. A study by Bentek Energy[i]
identified this phenomenon about 2 years ago, and the
findings are summarized by IER here.[ii]
The difference in the studies is that Argonne evaluated
Illinois electricity market data and Bentek evaluated the
analogous situation in Colorado and Texas.
But, the findings are essentially the same.
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2012/06/08/argo
nne-lab-study/