Wind Energy

• 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.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Picture+of+wind+cycle&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=G&tbo=u&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&tbm=isch&source=univ&ei=mxK-UK2lMe2M0QHR2IHgCQ&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1051&bih=528

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.

Wind Power History500 AD Persia (Iran) began using windmills

1300 AD Western Europe used horizontal-axis type windmills1850s Windmill production developed in the American West1900s Early Windmills used to pump saltwater to evaporate ponds in California.1950s Most windmill companies failed economically in the US1973 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 turbineIn 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 turbineIn 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 windfarmThe 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, power-wise: It will generate approximately 40,000 kilowatt-hours per year, enough for four homes.

Compact, Cost-Effective, And ConsistentWhat 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 CommunicationsWith 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 FansThe 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.

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.

Concord Monitor – Nov.18, 2012Valley News – June 3, 2012

Wind Farm Proposed for Groton, N.H.

• By Kathleen Ronayne Concord Monitor Wednesday, December 26, 2012 (Published in print: Wednesday, December 26, 2012)

• 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.

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-does-wind-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 rate2. 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.******************************************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.

WattsWatts 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 megawatt-hour (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?• 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

• 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. 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/argonne-lab-study/