How to protect large parts for shipping

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Excerpt: Shrink wrap protects anything, says Dr. Shrink, a manufacturer of shrink wrapping in Manistree, Mich. It protects equipment against weather damage because the waterproofing can be sealed around an entire unit. The wrapping comes in 12 to 40-ft widths so even large items are covered in one piece. …

CAD and data management make turbine designer more efficient

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Excerpt: UK-based wind-energy company quietrevolution says it will use PLM software from Dassault Systèmes, Paris, to improve design and manufacturing of its wind energy generators. Having calculated a mathematically correct shape for its aerodynamically-optimized vertical axis rotor blades, quietrevolu …

Wind-kite concept could capture countless watts

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Excerpt: Conventional wind turbines just scratch the surface in a few favorable locations on what is an enormous energy field. They cannot reach upper altitude winds, and conventional designs now are close to dimensional limits. For instance, there is difficultly positioning hubs at over 100 m up, towers …

Website for those blue alpha gearboxes

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Excerpt: The company that designs and manufactures the blue alpha gearboxes, Wittenstein, Bartlett, Ill, has launched a new website, that it says better serves users and markets with an improved online feel. The company says the new website is phase 1 for improving its customer service to meet market’s …

Tiny turbines might provide building power

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Excerpt: Product designer Agustin Otegui has an idea for an organic skin that could wrap around a building to provide its energy needs. His concept, NanoVent Skin (NVS), is to wrap buildings in an organic lattice made of micro wind turbines, little vertical-axis turbines. Advances in nanotechnology, the …

Maps show areas where sea breezes most useful

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Excerpt: Efforts to harness the energy potential of ocean winds could soon gain a new guide: global satellite maps from NASA. Scientists have been generating maps using nearly a decade of data from NASA's QuikScat satellite that reveal the best ocean areas where winds could produce energy. Potential uses …

Worlds largest wind farm going up (where else?) in Texas

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Excerpt: General Electric says it received orders in 2008 for 667 of its 1.5-megawatt (MW) wind turbines from Mesa Power LLP, a company founded by T. Boone Pickens, the former oilman and founder of BP Capital. This energy investment firm and Pickens launched Mesa Power to build the world's largest wind power …

Think up, way up for more powerful winds

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Excerpt: It’s no secret that power in the wind between 500 and 12,000-m up is probably stronger and steadier than at ground level. But by how much? To find out, a study called Global Assessment of High-Altitude Wind Power examined 28 years of wind data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction …

5-MW turbine intended for on and offshore

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Excerpt: The REpower 5M takes company technology to a larger dimension. With a rated power of 5 MW and a rotor diameter of 126 m, the 5M is one of the largest and most powerful wind turbines in the world. The unit, says REpower, Portland, Oreg., sets new standards for the economic viability of windfarms, esp …

A weak RES might be worse than no RES

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Excerpt: Representatives of the renewable energy industry recently called on Congress to strengthen proposals for the national renewable electricity standard (RES) in legislation before the House and Senate in hopes of seizing an historic opportunity to put the U.S. on a path to increased renewable energy an …