What can you do?

Here is a website to see the many different activities in Alaska involving Wind Power. There is a list of things available to almost everybody. Please take a look and do what you can do it support the Wind and Hydropower Technologies Program.

Fact vs Myth

Fact or Myth: Wind Turbines are a nuisance.
Fact or Myth: Turbine lighting is exccessive.
Fact of Myth: Nearby residences will be affected by shadow flicker.

Chech out this site to get the facts and myths of wind turbines. Brought to you by the American Wind Energy Association.

Stimulus may get small wind turbines spinning

According to this March 2009 CNN article, President Obama's 787 billion dollar stimulus package can possibly jumpstart the industy of small wind turbines. With the United States being the leading manufacturer of small wind technologies, with this new package, the small turbine market can go up 40-50% yearly.

However, the actually placement of the turbines is a little difficult. "It is true that doing wind in urban environments is a lot trickier than in rural environments," said Johanna Partin, San Francisco's Renewable Energy Program manager, who also coordinates the task force. "But the reason you rarely see [turbines in cities] may be that we just haven't figured out how to do it yet." Therefore, soon we will possibly be seeing more turbines in urban areas along with rural areas. With the improvement of technology nowadays, anything is possible.

From the Danish Wind Energy Association website, this graph shows the power curve of a wind turbine which shows how large the electrical power output will be for the turbine at the varying wind speeds.

An anemometer is used to find the power curve. It is placed near but not too close to the turbine itself, because the wind created by the spinning wheel will cause an unaccurate wind speed.

The second image is of an anemometer. These are also used at weather station to measure wind speed.

Wind Turbines video in Kotzebue

Take a look at this video of the wind turbine operation, called the Northwind 100 Arctic Operation, taking place in Kotzebue, Alaska. These turbines are currently capturing and converting wind into energy, as of April 2008.

Purchasing a Wind Turbine

Purchasing a wind turbine is just as easy as buying a new pair of shoes. There are many different websites to order personal wind turbines, such as northerntool.com. According to this website, wind turbines run from between $199 to $10,000. If you are interested in purchasing a wind turbine and putting it into use, take a look at this website.

Sydney's Carbon Footprint

Your energy use is approximately:
42299 kWh per year

Your carbon footprint is approximately:
42.2 tonnes CO2 per year


I am not at all surprised to see my carbon footprint to be this high. Before my siblings and I left the house for college, there were 5 of us living in a two-story, 14 bedroom home. One can only imagine the amount of energy it took to heat a house that large in the winter. Fortunately the winters in southeast Alaska do not get as cold as the winters up here in Anchorage, which has a positive effect on the environment. We do own a wood stove that we use quite frequently in the fall and winter, but we still own a few electric heaters to distribute the heat upstairs, since the wood stove is downstairs.
We also owned 2 cars, plus my dads work van he drove to and from work everyday. Metlakatla, Alaska is a very small town and cars there are almost unnecessary, except for my family and a couple other individuals who live approximately 7 miles out of town. Our commutes to and from work and school were relatively short, compared to the average person living in a larger city.
On top of that, my family loves to travel. We have flown clear across the country a few times.
As you can see, my family does not particularly live a 'green' life. However, my Dad works for the local power company in Metlakatla, Alaska and recently came up to Anchorage to promote the use of wind turbines. So I guess you can say we're doing a little green livin' :)

3 Wind Turbines in Eskimo Village

Milkowski, S. (2009, February 17). Alaska Is a Frontier for Green Power. New York Times , pp. 1-2.

According to a February 2009 New York Times article, in an Eskimo village on the Bering Sea, locals are going green. Alaska has become a testing ground for many new technologies, and the use of wind turbines is one of them. In remote areas like the villages on the Bering Sea, gas and other resources that are used are hard and very expensive to come by, so with the addition of wind turbines, it saves these people money and also improves their environment. With Alaska's windy coasts, it became an ideal place to install and test out wind turbines. However, since the previous testing and success of the turbines, many more have been installed in as many as 9 different villages since 1997 (Milkowski, 2009). Again, with the scarce jobs in the many Native villages in Alaska, the high price of fuel resulted in high electicity prices, which were unbearable (Milkowski, 2009). These turbines provide a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to fuel and electricity.
Turbines are still being tested and used in a few different Alaska locations, and are expanding at a fast rate. I would not be surprised to see wind turbines everywhere in Alaska within the next few years.

Guided Tour on Wind Energy

I have provided a link to a guided tour of Wind Energy. For those who need a more basic approach to understanding wind energy and its processes, take a look at this tour. This tour ranges from where wind energy comes from to the history of wind turbines. Everything you need to know about wind energy is a just a click away. Enjoy!

Last Wind Energy News from windenergynews.com

World Wind Energy

World Wind Energy Association. (2007, January 29). Retrieved April 4, 2009, from WWEA expects 160 GW to be installed by 2010: http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=167&Itemid=43

Looking at this graph, it is obvious that that the wind power capacity is going up at a steady and healthy pace. In this article, it explains the whole growth of wind energy around the world.

The Next Really Cool Thing by Thomas Friedman

Friedman, T. (2009, March 14). The New York Times. Retrieved March 29, 2009, from The Next Really Cool Thing: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15friedman.html

In the opening this article, Friedman gives us the knowledge that the rumors of changing coal to vegetable oil and also the hydrogen powered car are in fact, impossible. With my small amount of knowledge of energy, I had believed this all the way until now. "If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard one of those stories, I could buy my own space shuttle," was Friedman's response to these stories he has heard in reference to using random natural resources and converting them into energy. However, there is an even better 'really cool thing' that scientists have discovered, hence the name of this article.
"The way the N.I.F. works is that all 192 lasers pour their energy into a target chamber, which looks like a giant, spherical, steel bathysphere that you would normally use for deep-sea exploration," is the quote used by Friedman in describing the initial process of this 'really cool thing.' With this process, the outcome is eventually a pellet that carries more heat and more energy than the sun itself, that would give these pellets the ability to drive a turbine and heat homes using that energy. These pellets would be "carbon-free, globally available, safe and secure and could be integrated seamlessly into our current electric grid," says Friedman. Cool huh?
These pellets are still in the testing stage, however, and is said to be complete in about 3 or 4 years.
After reading this article, I became really excited to learn that they have found a potentially new way to convert energy using an environmentally safe resource. I believe we are on our way to saving this planet after all. :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15friedman.html (link to this article)

"The Use of Energy" by Wendell Berry response

Berry, W. (1996). The Unsettling of America Culture & Agriculture. California: The University of California Press.

While I read this article, I was very interested in the way energy was described. I have never viewed the use of energy in this sense, and I have learned a lot from this view. Berry's use of the quote by William Blake, "Energy is the only life..." caused me to stop and think deeply. Berry goes on to also say that energy is superhuman in the sense that it cannot be created or destroyed by humans. That fact, however, I have known for quite some time. So in a nutshell, energy in a way, seems superior to us humans, because we have not found a way to control it completely. It runs our lives in a short term sense, only. But after these opening and eye catching facts, we get into the real issue. This issue being the extreme case of wasted current energy on a daily basis. We, as humans living our complex lives, waste so much energy throughout the day that many of us don't even realize. Many people are searching for ways to fix this issue by finding other sources of energy like using natural resources to produce energy, such as wind. As you view this page, you will find information about wind energy that I have posted. So educate yourself and help support the American Wind Energy Association.

American Wind Energy Association- Wind Energy Potential

The wind doesn't blow all the time. How much can it really contribute to a utility's generating capacity?

Utilities must maintain enough power plant capacity to meet expected customer electricity demand at all times, plus an additional reserve margin. All other things being equal, utilities generally prefer plants that can generate as needed (that is, conventional plants) to plants that cannot (such as wind plants).

However, despite the fact that the wind is variable and sometimes does not blow at all, wind plants do increase the overall statistical probability that a utility system will be able to meet demand requirements. A rough rule of thumb is that the capacity value of adding a wind plant to a utility system is about the same as the wind plant's capacity factor multiplied by its capacity. Thus, a 100-megawatt wind plant with a capacity factor of 35% would be similar in capacity value to a 35-MW conventional generator. For example, in 2001 the Colorado Public Utility Commission found the capacity value of a proposed 162-MW wind plant in eastern Colorado (with a 30% capacity factor) to be approximately 48 MW. For more information on the Commission's finding, see http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy01osti/30551.pdf

The exact amount of capacity value that a given wind project provides depends on a number of factors, including average wind speeds at the site and the match between wind patterns and utility load (demand) requirements. It also depends on how dispersed geographically wind plants on a utility system are, and how well-connected the utility is with neighboring systems that may also have wind generators. The broader the wind plants are scattered geographically, the greater the chance that some of them will be producing power at any given time.

More reading:
What Happens When the Wind Stops Blowing?
British Wind Energy Association

American Wind Energy Association

What is wind energy?

In reality, wind energy is a converted form of solar energy. The sun's radiation heats different parts of the earth at different rates-most notably during the day and night, but also when different surfaces (for example, water and land) absorb or reflect at different rates. This in turn causes portions of the atmosphere to warm differently. Hot air rises, reducing the atmospheric pressure at the earth's surface, and cooler air is drawn in to replace it. The result is wind.

Air has mass, and when it is in motion, it contains the energy of that motion("kinetic energy"). Some portion of that energy can converted into other forms mechanical force or electricity that we can use to perform work.

More reading:
“Where Does Wind Energy Come From”
and its subsections contain a very extensive description of the various geographical and geophysical factors that drive the circulation of the winds around our planet.

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What is a wind turbine and how does it work?

A wind energy system transforms the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical or electrical energy that can be harnessed for practical use. Mechanical energy is most commonly used for pumping water in rural or remote locations- the "farm windmill" still seen in many rural areas of the U.S. is a mechanical wind pumper - but it can also be used for many other purposes (grinding grain, sawing, pushing a sailboat, etc.). Wind electric turbines generate electricity for homes and businesses and for sale to utilities.

There are two basic designs of wind electric turbines: vertical-axis, or "egg-beater" style, and horizontal-axis (propeller-style) machines. Horizontal-axis wind turbines are most common today, constituting nearly all of the "utility-scale" (100 kilowatts, kW, capacity and larger) turbines in the global market.

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Turbine subsystems include:

• a rotor, or blades, which convert the wind's energy into rotational shaft energy;
• a nacelle (enclosure) containing a drive train, usually including a gearbox* and a generator;
• a tower, to support the rotor and drive train; and
• electronic equipment such as controls, electrical cables, ground support equipment, and interconnection equipment.

*Some turbines do not require a gearbox

Wind turbines vary in size. This chart depicts a variety of historical turbine sizes and the amount of electricity they are each capable of generating (the turbine's capacity, or power rating).

	1981	1985	1990	1996	1999	2000
Rotor (meters)	10	17	27	40	50	71
Rating (KW)	25	100	225	550	750	1,650
Annual MWh	45	220	550	1,480	2,200	5,600

The electricity generated by a utility-scale wind turbine is normally collected and fed into utility power lines, where it is mixed with electricity from other power plants and delivered to utility customers. Today (August 2005), turbines with capacities as large as 5,000 kW (5 MW) are being tested.

More reading:
Wind Energy—How Does It Work? is a fact sheet that gives additional basic information about wind energy in the U.S.

Wind Energy Technology .

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What are wind turbines made of?

The towers are mostly tubular and made of steel. The blades are made of fiberglass-reinforced polyester or wood-epoxy.

How big is a wind turbine?

Utility-scale wind turbines for land-based wind farms come in various sizes, with rotor diameters ranging from about 50 meters to about 90 meters, and with towers of roughly the same size. A 90-meter machine, definitely at the large end of the scale at this writing (2005), with a 90-meter tower would have a total height from the tower base to the tip of the rotor of approximately 135 meters (442 feet).

Offshore turbine designs now under development will have larger rotors—at the moment, the largest has a 110-meter rotor diameter—because it is easier to transport large rotor blades by ship than by land.

Small wind turbines intended for residential or small business use are much smaller. Most have rotor diameters of 8 meters or less and would be mounted on towers of 40 meters in height or less.

How much electricity can one wind turbine generate?

The ability to generate electricity is measured in watts. Watts are very small units, so the terms kilowatt (kW, 1,000 watts), megawatt (MW, 1 million watts), and gigawatt (pronounced "jig-a-watt," GW, 1 billion watts) are most commonly used to describe the capacity of generating units like wind turbines or other power plants.

Electricity production and consumption are most commonly measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). A kilowatt-hour means one kilowatt (1,000 watts) of electricity produced or consumed for one hour. One 50-watt light bulb left on for 20 hours consumes one kilowatt-hour of electricity (50 watts x 20 hours = 1,000 watt-hours = 1 kilowatt-hour).

The output of a wind turbine depends on the turbine's size and the wind's speed through the rotor. Wind turbines being manufactured now have power ratings ranging from 250 watts to 5 megawatts (MW).

Example: A 10-kW wind turbine can generate about 10,000 kWh annually at a site with wind speeds averaging 12 miles per hour, or about enough to power a typical household. A 5-MW turbine can produce more than 15 million kWh in a year--enough to power more than 1, 400 households. The average U.S. household consumes about 10,000 kWh of electricity each year.

Example: A 250-kW turbine installed at the elementary school in Spirit Lake, Iowa, provides an average of 350,000 kWh of electricity per year, more than is necessary for the 53,000-square-foot school. Excess electricity fed into the local utility system earned the school $25,000 in its first five years of operation. The school uses electricity from the utility at times when the wind does not blow. This project has been so successful that the Spirit Lake school district has since installed a second turbine with a capacity of 750 kW. (For further information on this project, see at the Web site of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.)

Wind speed is a crucial element in projecting turbine performance, and a site's wind speed is measured through wind resource assessment prior to a wind system's construction. Generally, an annual average wind speed greater than four meters per second (m/s) (9 mph) is required for small wind electric turbines (less wind is required for water-pumping operations). Utility-scale wind power plants require minimum average wind speeds of 6 m/s (13 mph).

The power available in the wind is proportional to the cube of its speed, which means that doubling the wind speed increases the available power by a factor of eight. Thus, a turbine operating at a site with an average wind speed of 12 mph could in theory generate about 33% more electricity than one at an 11-mph site, because the cube of 12 (1,768) is 33% larger than the cube of 11 (1,331). (In the real world, the turbine will not produce quite that much more electricity, but it will still generate much more than the 9% difference in wind speed.) The important thing to understand is that what seems like a small difference in wind speed can mean a large difference in available energy and in electricity produced, and therefore, a large difference in the cost of the electricity generated. Also, there is little energy to be harvested at very low wind speeds (6-mph winds contain less than one-eighth the energy of 12-mph winds).

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How many turbines does it take to make one megawatt (MW)?

Most manufacturers of utility-scale turbines offer machines in the 700-kW to 2.5-MW range. Ten 700-kW units would make a 7-MW wind plant, while 10 2.5-MW machines would make a 25-MW facility. In the future, machines of larger size will be available, although they will probably be installed offshore, where larger transportation and construction equipment can be used. Units up to 5 MW in capacity are now under development.

How many homes can one megawatt of wind energy supply?

An average U.S. household uses about 10,655 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity each year. One megawatt of wind energy can generate from 2.4 to more than 3 million kWh annually. Therefore, a megawatt of wind generates about as much electricity as 225 to 300 households use. It is important to note that since the wind does not blow all of the time, it cannot be the only power source for that many households without some form of storage system. The "number of homes served" is just a convenient way to translate a quantity of electricity into a familiar term that people can understand. (Typically, storage is not needed, because wind generators are only part of the power plants on a utility system, and other fuel sources are used when the wind is not blowing. According to the U.S. Department of Energy , "When wind is added to a utility system, no new backup is required to maintain system reliability." Wind Energy Myths, Wind Powering America Fact Sheet Series, http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37657.pdf .)

What is a wind power plant?

The most economical application of wind electric turbines is in groups of large machines (660 kW and up), called "wind power plants" or "wind farms." For example, a 107-MW wind farm near the community of Lake Benton, Minn., consists of turbines sited far apart on farmland along windy Buffalo Ridge. The wind farm generates electricity while agricultural use continues undisturbed.

Wind plants can range in size from a few megawatts to hundreds of megawatts in capacity. Wind power plants are "modular," which means they consist of small individual modules (the turbines) and can easily be made larger or smaller as needed. Turbines can be added as electricity demand grows. Today, a 50-MW wind farm can be completed in 18 months to two years. Most of that time is needed for measuring the wind and obtaining construction permits—the wind farm itself can be built in less than six months.

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What is "capacity factor"?

Capacity factor is one element in measuring the productivity of a wind turbine or any other power production facility. It compares the plant's actual production over a given period of time with the amount of power the plant would have produced if it had run at full capacity for the same amount of time.

	Actual amount of power produced over time
Capacity Factor =
	Power that would have been produced if turbine operated at maximum output 100% of the time

A conventional utility power plant uses fuel, so it will normally run much of the time unless it is idled by equipment problems or for maintenance. A capacity factor of 40% to 80% is typical for conventional plants.

A wind plant is "fueled" by the wind, which blows steadily at times and not at all at other times. Although modern utility-scale wind turbines typically operate 65% to 90% of the time, they often run at less than full capacity. Therefore, a capacity factor of 25% to 40% is common, although they may achieve higher capacity factors during windy weeks or months.

It is important to note that while capacity factor is almost entirely a matter of reliability for a fueled power plant, it is not for a wind plant—for a wind plant, it is a matter of economical turbine design. With a very large rotor and a very small generator, a wind turbine would run at full capacity whenever the wind blew and would have a 60-80% capacity factor—but it would produce very little electricity. The most electricity per dollar of investment is gained by using a larger generator and accepting the fact that the capacity factor will be lower as a result. Wind turbines are fundamentally different from fueled power plants in this respect.

If a wind turbine's capacity factor is 33%, doesn't that mean it is only running one-third of the time?

No. A wind turbine at a typical location in the Midwestern U.S. should run about 65-90% of the time. However, much of the time it will be generating at less than full capacity (see previous answer), making its capacity factor lower.

What is "availability" or "availability factor"?

Availability factor (or just "availability") is a measurement of the reliability of a wind turbine or other power plant. It refers to the percentage of time that a plant is ready to generate (that is, not out of service for maintenance or repairs). Modern wind turbines have an availability of more than 98%--higher than most other types of power plant. After more than two decades of constant engineering refinement, today's wind machines are highly reliable.