Wind Power Success Stories

In my last piece for HuffPo Green, I looked at how much solar power was potentially available to us. One image I used showed the total number of solar energy hitting the Earth totally dwarfing humanity's current energy usage. But in between was another, smaller but still quite big, amount to represent wind power.

Today, I'd like us to look at that second form of clean energy: Wind power. Lets look at some success stories from around the world, the kind of news that might not get a lot of coverage in the big media, but that are worth knowing about if we want to know where we stand. We'll also look at how the wind power industry is doing. Basically, lets look at both supply and demand.

Wind Power Success Stories
Lets start small, literally. Residential wind power has been growing at a rapid pace, with dozens of new companies entering the market just since 2000. ABout 6 of them dominate, but the American Wind Energy Association tracks about 45 of them. For the US, small wind represents about 3 megawatts in 2007, a small amount, but that's three times more than in 2006. A few more years of exponential growth and we'll be talking big numbers.

If we go up in scale to something a bit bigger, the University of Pennsylvania became #1 in the US for wind power usage, with purchases of about 200,000 megawatt-hours per year, or about half of total electricity use.

Up another level, we find the energy independent town of Rock Port, Missouri. Wind power has produced 123% of electricity demand! Not surprisingly, that makes them #1 in the US for percentage of renewable energy. They are selling the extra to neighboring towns.

Still going up to something bigger, this time a whole country. Last year Spain hit a wind power production record, hitting 27% of total consumption, or 10,032 megawatts. That was during a week day, so depending how you count, a different record was broken this year on a weekend with 9,862 megawatts of power adding up to 40.8% of total electricity consumption in Spain. Not too shabby.

Finally, on the scale of a whole continent: Norway's energy minister wants to invest oil money into building offshore wind farms. Norway has the longest coast in Europe and lots of wind, so couple with their hydro power, this wind power could become 'Europe's battery'. When the wind blows, you get when power and you turn off the hydro dams. When the wind doesn't blow, you can use the stored water to generate hydro power.

I think this is enough for today. In a future article, we'll look at some of the latest developments in the wind power industry.

Comments

[cloudy]

One thing to keep in mind regarding various forms of clean and renewable power (photovoltaic (pv), wind) is that, if they aren't evenly producing energy 24/7, their energy at peak capacity can be very effectively stored -- by using say wind or pv as an energy source to extract hydrogen; this latter process has had some really MAJOR tech advances just within the past year, so it is more feasible than ever.

Remember that hydrogen as an energy "storage medium" can be extremely safe & nonexplosive, eg as metallic hydrides, such as Magnesium Hydride, a nonexplosive salt that can easily power cars. Back in 1981 -- though the NATION makes you jump through hoops to get these articles -- THE NATION ran a piece "Somebody Doesn't Like Hy-Fuel": this fellow out in the southwest US somewhere was transferring ordinary autos, at less than $1000 a pop, to run on magnesium hydride canisters, which produce ONLY WATER VAPOR as their byproduct, & then the magnesium canisters could be recycled by being rehydrized. Problem? Where do you get all that cheap hydrogen? There was even then enough cheap enough hydrogen (cheaper THEN than gasoline to power a car per mile) for less than 10% of all THEN US driving, but that's still quite a lot. With technological advances over the past quarter century +, especially of late, combining solar and/or wind to hydrogen production makes it easily transportable, and usable on demand.

[Jey]

Who are the companies that you can buy wind mills and solar panels from at a decent rate? I know they're way expensive but I'm open to hearing anyone's thoughts on this. Thanks.

[Guitarsandmore]

Another good argument in favor of both solar and wind is that no one will ever again be trapped in a coal mine and have to die.

Both solar and wind are delivered right to your door step thanks to mother nature.

[Guitarsandmore]

I am hearing from people getting ready to go off the grid that several small wind generators are more cost effective than one large one. Anyone have an opinion about that?

I know Ericson makes the huge 2.3 mega watt models for cities but for an individual consumer you could start with a 1 Kilo Watt unit from Mike's and string several of them together as needed.

There are definately areas in this country that have fairly constant wind and at high speeds. Why not take advantage?

[garbovatwins]

If one can travel to another world on solar winds, one can certainly help power your small world with wind.

[cylindar]

Those are fascinating statistics? Sounds Good!!!!

[noneIn2008]

Looking up the cost of wind turbines (Source American Wind Power Association), their capital cost is about 1,000X the cost of a coal fired plant.
The generation costs are finally down, but as a reminder, the turbines require substantial maintenance
Also, the large turbines require a steady minimal 13 mph wind.

[Guitarsandmore]

Yeah, but Mike built one for $ 140. For that price, if something goes wrong you could just throw it away and build another one!

http://www.mdpub.com/Wind_Turbine/index.html

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Wind/wind.htm


What I want is to power the air conditioner during the hottest part of the day which is also the windiest where I am building in the Sierra Nevada’s. Solar would seem the most logical choice but since it also gets very windy that time of day every day, I am thinking wind will be less expensive.

Solar project:

http://www.mdpub.com/SolarPanel/index.html

Site also shows parts available on ebay.

As for the buxom girls you can meet I can’t explain that part of the web site or what the connection they have to solar and wind energy!

[mamacat]

I have read the statistics that Wind energy development in the U.S. in 2007 was the largest of any year yet, and that total wind energy in this country has finally passed the 1% mark. It may not seem like much, but 1% means that in a 100 year span, one of those years could be completely free of oil and coal usage in the electricity generation field.
Plans are for wind to supply at least 20% of our electrical needs within a generation, which will also help our economy tremendously.