Community wind shapes a growing trend

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Excerpt: An emerging group of wind-farm developers are focusing on midsized project farms and in places utility companies are overlooking. These community-wind projects, ranging from five to 80 MW, are cropping up in part due to recent financial incentives and guidance from firms such as OwnEnergy Inc, Brook …

A powerful idea: Wind turbines in the city

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Excerpt: Not all wind farms have to be located far from power purchasers. A recent ribbon-cutting for a 120 kW turbine was right in Cleveland, Ohio, where the turbine is visible to thousands driving by on I-480 and Pearl Rd. Electrical Design Consultants President David Graneto, Pepper Pike, Ohio, says p …

EPA says 12 environmental sites could be wind farms

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Excerpt: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are evaluating the feasibility of developing renewable energy production on Superfund, brownfields, and former landfill or mining sites. Superfund sites are the most co …

Solving the use-it-or-lose-it wind energy problem

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Excerpt: Examine a utility’s load curve over the course of a week and the trace looks like a roller-coaster. Demand for electric power peaks about 5 pm each day and declines to a low at about 2 am. Look closer and you see demand changing almost by the second. So there are two problems here that befuddle el …

Analyzing building-integrated wind

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Excerpt: Russell M. Tencer/CEO, Wind Products LLC/New York, NY Controversy seems to follow the installation of wind turbines on building rooftops, and for good reason. On one hand, there can be considerable wind with harvestable kinetic energy at roof level. Accessing this clean, renewable sou …

Rotor blades will deflect this much-says simulation software

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Excerpt: To bring costs down, wind-energy firms are recognizing the design benefits of numerical simulation. Transitioning to a simulation-based design process lets OEMs optimize performance and increase a turbine’s power output. A valuable tool in this process is Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) …

Lift assist ‘shortens’ long ladders

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Excerpt: Climbing 80 m to go to work may be routine for maintenance crews but three times in a day is a lot of climbing. By one account, only about 25% of turbine towers have service lifts. That leaves long ladders in the rest of them. Lugging up 20 lbs or more of equipment makes a climb more demanding. What …

Six criteria for more reliable wind farm networks

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Excerpt: Scott Killian/Sixnet, LLC/Ballston Lake, NY/sixnet.com A high-speed, industrial-grade network infrastructure offers wind farm operators many benefits, including improved operational management, visibility and access to key data. Networking a wind farm provides real-time data capture to moni …

Novel transmission to give small turbines a boost

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Excerpt: A continuously variable transmission with features similar to planetary gearbox could improve energy capture for smaller wind turbines along with reducing capital costs. The transmission works by changing the contact position on a set of planetary balls on which input and output disks ride. Continuo …

Modular towers and the quest for stronger wind

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Excerpt: Taller towers for wind turbines make sense in many ways. For instance, an 80-m tower can let modern 2 to 3-MW wind turbines produce more power than if  installed at 60 m, and taller towers will let larger turbines enter the market. Taller towers also allow putting turbines in less turbulent winds, …