01 June 2004 21:03
okay, while i was writing yesterday on water recycling, i idly ran a search on wincharger's, a subject that has always facinated me but that i've never searched the internet on before. the result was a three hour long research spree that was every bit as informative as it was exhausting.first of all, a well rounded paper on the history of wind turbine power. here. i actually spent 15 mins reading/skimming the entire thing. very informative, just keep hitting next as you reach the bottom. written in 2002.
another cool site with some exceedingly helpful information to those interested in actually running their own windcharger... here, on homebuilt technology.
wind atlases, showing the amount of average wind energy available:
national map
state maps
entire atlas
i said hello i think i'm broken
and though i was only jokin
it took me by surprise when you agreed
i was trying to be clever
for the life of me i would have never
guessed how far the simple truth would lead
and i bless the day i met you
and i thank God that he let you
lay beside me for a moment that lives on
and the good news is that i'm better for the time we spent together
and the bad news is your gone
a cool page on vertical axis wind turbines here.
some random quotes:
this one was interesting because of some of it's wording and phrases, and just the general attack. it was more like what i'd expect a mennonite to say rather than a public brochure on the benefits of wind power...
Environmental impacts are relative. All energy technologies have some negative environmental impacts. Society makes tradeoffs when making power plant choices. Wind plants may result in some bird fatalities or other unwanted impacts on wildlife and their habitats. Coal plants cause premature human deaths from respiratory problems. Maintaining open channels for free flow of oil causes military deaths. Society needs to choose from these alternatives, and it cannot assess a single energy technology in isolation. (source unknown).
Probably the greatest pleasure reported by the owners of small wind systems is watching their utility meter spin backward on a windy day. Under a net metering agreement, when the wind turbine produces more electricity than the home needs, the excess travels out to the utility power lines, spinning the utility meter backwards. The meter reading may be lower at the end of a windy month than it was at the beginning of the month! from a california publication (here).
A wind turbine typically lowers a household electricity bill by 50% to 90%. It is not uncommon for wind turbine owners with total-electric homes to have monthly utility bills of only $8 to $15 for nine months of the year. niiiice! from here.
The demise of these systems [home windchargers] was hastened during the late 1930s and the 1940s by two factors: the demand of farmsteads for ever larger amounts of power on demand, and the Great Depression, which spurred the U.S. federal government to stimulate the depressed rural economies by extending the electrical grid throughout those areas.... A lot is made of this development and how horrible it was for the government to intervene. (At this point in most wind energy documentaries, there's a plaintive whine of a harmonica and a shot of a rusting wind turbine hulk.) But I doubt the farmers who were helped by the new electrical grids would share this feeling. from that well rounded guide i mentioned ealrier. i like his humour.
(She says baby
It's 3 am I must be lonely
When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes
Says the rain's gonna wash away I believe it)
some pictures of very large turbines:
one
two
three
four
more most excellent websites:
AWEA, esp "offshore wind" and "small wind energy systems."
USDE.
i've been here, in southwestern kansas, the site is very cool with the 292' diameter blades going swoosh swoosh swoosh.
Gray County Wind Farm
random, but ver cool:
http://wvlightning.com/gallery.html
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