The Fastest-Growing Wind Power Market in the World
22 August 2009 | Wind Power | No Comments
U.S. Department of Energy recently announced that wind power market has grown very fast in the last 4 years. The use of wind power increased by 60% in United States in 2008 which means that Americans invested $16 billion in wind projects. “At this pace, wind is on a path to becoming a significant contributor to the U.S. power mix…” Ryan Wiser from Berkeley Lab said. The electricity produced from wind energy currently represent 2% of the whole energy in U.S. This thing has an explanation: the need to reduce the cost of electricity production and electricity consumption has led to intense use of alternative energy sources.
540 MW Shetland Islands Wind Farm Could be Closed due to Disappearance of Local Bird Populations
24 July 2009 | Wind Power | No Comments
Alternative Energy Sources represent the energetic future of our planet. People realized this, so they try to create more and more wind farms or solar power plants, to produce electricity from the sun or wind. Few months ago was opened a 540 MW wind farm in the Shetland Islands but now it faces several problems that could close it.
Choose the Best Wind Turbine Rotor System
16 June 2009 | Wind Power | No Comments
Rotor is the most important part of a wind turbine. The rotor recives the kinetic energy from the wind stream and transforms it into mechanical shaft power. Components of a wind turbine rotor are blades, hub, shaft, bearings and other internals. Blades of the wind turbine have airfoil sections and through it is possible to design the rotor with a single blade, balancing of such rotors would be a real engineering challenge.Rotors with a single blade run faster and thus create undue vibration and noise. Further, such rotors are not visually acceptable. (more…)
Wind Turbines-Blade Element Theory
16 June 2009 | Wind Power | 1 Comment
Growing energy demand and environmental consciousness have revoked human interest in wind energy.As a result, wind is the fastest growing energy source in the world today.Policy frame works and action plans have already been formulated at various corners for meeting at least 20 per cent of the global energy demand with new-renewables by 2010, among which wind is going to be the major player. (more…)
Vertical Axis Wind Turbine ,Insensitive to Wind Direction
10 May 2009 | Wind Power | 1 Comment
“It has been estimated that the total wind power in the atmosphere averages about 3.6 × 1012 kW, which is an annual energy of about 107,000 quads (1 quad = 2.931 × 1011 kWh). Only a fraction of this wind energy can be extracted, estimated to be a maximum of 4000 quads per year. According to what is commonly known as the Betz limit, a maximum of 59% of this power can be extracted by a wind machine. Practical machines actually extract from 5 to 45% of the available power. Because the available wind power varies with the cube of wind speed, it is very important to find areas with high average wind speeds to locate wind machines.” – http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Wind+energy