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.