The politics of progress; cleantech, the economy, antiwar
The primary goal of the project is to demonstrate that advanced control technology with energy storage can help expand the delivery of wind energy by effectively increasing the capacity of constrained transmission facilities in the area.
Power generated by the turbines will be stored for future use in the flywheels. IN addition, they flywheels aid in [...]
By 2020, Scotland expects to power 750,000 homes with commercial-scale wave and tidal power
Discover Magazine has a slideshow of the wave and tidal devices that will be used, such as the pictured tidal turbine.
PS These devices do not include Scotland’s vast potential amount of offshore wind power. That’s a whole separate subject.
The Vindicator fiber optic laser wind sensing system measures real-time horizontal and vertical wind speed and direction at varying ranges out to 300 meters ahead of the sensor. When mounted on a wind turbine nacelle, this forward-looking information facilitates smarter turbine control for increased power output and reduced turbine stress.
Ten huge energy and engineering firms in Europe are joining together in Friends Of The Supergrid to build a renewable energy supergrid to power Europe. Most of the power will come from offshore wind turbines, as well as from wave, tidal, and solar.
They want the EU to be energy-independent by 2050 and plan to build [...]
The Oil Drum continues their informative series explaining how those mammoth offshore wind turbines are assembled and installed. Lots of photos.
“Amidst Iowa’s massive expansion of wind power, our average electricity prices have remained below the national average and in fact have not increased as quickly as the national average price in the last four years,” the study said.
Iowans pay an average of 7 cents per kilowatt vs. a national average of almost 10 cents. The [...]
The platform is self-stabilizing, doesn’t need to be tethered to the ocean floor, and designers say it could run for decades with little maintenance.
I’m unclear on how it could not drift and how the power lines are connected to shore.
More info at Ecofriend, Inhabitat, and Hexicon.
On Feb. 28, at 12:54 pm, wind power in west Texas generated a whopping 22% of demand, a new record. But the grid couldn’t handle it, so they had to throttle back. Temporarily.
Texas is investing $5 billion to build more lines from wind farms to cities. They already have a self-contained grid and ranks #1 [...]
Way high tech.
Renewable Energy World has an authoritative, detailed explanation of the economies of scale from building taller, more powerful wind turbines.
Example of 100-MW onshore wind farm:
25 towers @ 4 MW
25 towers @ $500k/tower = $12.5 million in structure + foundation
10 miles roads @ $1.5 million/mile = $15 million
Total infrastructure cost = $27.5 million or $275,000/MW
100 towers [...]
The Rose fits in a car trunk and is whisper-quiet too.
The development of a “stealth” turbine blade, based on military technology, may help overcome the problem of wind farms interfering with aviation radar systems, its developers said.
One solution: Wrapping the blades in glass cloth impregnated with a special ink traps the radar.
FloDesign says their new turbine design is way more efficient than open-fan turbines and they just received major venture funding to bring them to market
The FloDesign wind turbines require much smaller blades and are much easier to manufacture and ship . Additionally, they can be placed much closer together than traditional wind turbines and they [...]
Designboom on a plans for a combined offshore wind farm and tourist resort in Norway.
‘Turbine city’, would utilize offshore wind turbines as a means of creating potential for tourism. the proposal would see the integration of a hotel, spa and museum built in a turbine within an offshore wind farm. just 1MW from 8MW turbines [...]
Two sites out of nine have been chosen. One site, off south Wales, will have 250 turbines, each up to 480 ft tall, generating 1.5 GW. That’s enough for one million homes.
The US is so far behind other countries on offshore wind that it’s getting embarrassing.
