Yahoo! News reports:

“The legislation would extend for one year the production tax credit for wind energy, with an eight-year extension for investment tax credits for solar energy projects.

Buyers of plug-in electric cars would receive tax credits ranging from $2,500 to $7,500.

The bill also provides incentives for the use of biodiesel. However…it promotes…a loophole where companies mix foreign biofuels with U.S. biodiesel to receive the U.S. subsidy, then sell the fuel at a discount to European markets.”

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The building has been named after Cérifo, the Greek god of the winds because it can get power form the sea wind thanks to a windmill placed on the flat roof. The turbine can generate 4,5 kilowatts of wind power, more than enough to cover the needs of the share spaces.

Besides the wind generator, the tower makes the most of the sunlight, because 80% of the facade is pure glass. The building also has intelligent lights that automatically turn off  when they aren’t needed.

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Swedish company Home Energy recently unveiled a new look for a home-based wind turbine. Opting away from the traditional rotor style, the Energy Ball funnels wind within the turbine’s blades. This innovation is hailed for its increased efficiency and lower noise levels and vibration, making it more appealing for small-scale, personal, home use.

Source: Inhabitat

Barotrauma is a condition resulting from drastic changes in air pressure occurring, for example, when the bats fly through an area where the pressure drops dramatically, such as it does near a spinning turbine blade.

Historically, less than one bat fatality per turbine per year is considered normal, according to scientists. At this particular wind farm, the numbers were closer to 18 bats per turbine. But researchers found that the vast majority of dead bats had no visible trauma, as if they were being struck by a blade tip moving at 250 km/hr.

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Doesn’t it seem fitting that Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, should be the maker of the world’s largest wind turbine?  Well, they’re not - at least not yet. Today, Vestas revealed plans (pdf) for a new research and development center on the Isle of Wight (UK) that will test what company officials are calling “the world’s longest turbine” blades.

While Vestas did not say exactly how long the new prototype turbine blade will be, their largest turbine currently in production, the V-90, has blades that measure 44 meters in length. The largest wind turbine currently in operation is the 6MW Enercon E-126, which has a rotor diameter of 126 meters (413 ft).

The new development center will accompany an existing Vestas plant on the Isle of Wight that has produced turbine blades since 2000. The new facility is expected to become operational in 2010.

Vestas‘ second quarter net profit rose 27% to 65 million euros ($96 million) as revenue rose 2.5% to 1.09 billion euros.

Other Posts on the Wind Energy Industry:

• A Big Week for Vestas Wind Systems
• World’s Largest Wind Farm Planned for Oregon
  
• Vestas to Create 1,350 Jobs at New Wind Turbine Plant in Colorado

Photo: Hurst

Apparently, community colleges in North Dakota, among other states, are beginning to train wind turbine technicians; those who are trained in maintaining and repairing those giant wind turbines that make us all that lovely energy.

“The demand (for wind technicians) is such that some (colleges) have been trying to keep companies away from the program because they want everybody to graduate first,” said Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association. “In some cases, students are being picked up after only a couple of months.”

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Argentina will produce massive wind power turbines. This country of South America is using some of the biggest generators with de Eolis-15, that has 1,5 megawatts of power and almost 80 meters tall.

Río Negro and Neuquén, two of the southeast provinces in Argentina, along with the Science and Technology Department from Cutral-Có and Plaza Huincul-both municipalities with oil royalties- have joined each other to develop the wind turbine Eolis-15, designed by Invap to make the most of high speed winds.

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Despite the ubiquity of the three-bladed turbine, the oft-overlooked vertical-axes turbines are making quite a splash in the world of wind energy, especially in small and micro-applications. So what’s all the fuss about? Vertical-axis turbines apparently do not suffer from some of the same problems that plague small wind applications in urban settings including, aesthetic concerns, space requirements and sound levels.

Other advantages of vertical-axis turbines:

• Can produce up to 50% more electricity per year than conventional turbines with the same swept area
• Generate electricity at much lower wind speeds, as low as 4 mph (1.5 m/s)
• Will continue to generate power in high wind speeds, up to 130 mph (60m/s) depending on the mode
• Direct-drive units have no gearbox. No gearbox means a more efficient transfer of energy and no leaking oil
• Will not harm wildlife, in terms of bird and bat strikes

Below, I’ll cover some more basic differences and show you a few photos and short videos of some of these turbines I saw down in Houston at WINDPOWER 2008.

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StatoilHydro, a state-run oil company in Norway, recently announced a 2 year test of a floating 2.3 MW wind turbine off the coast of Norway.

Cables will be used to transmit the power to shore for this $80 million pilot project. The turbine has a height of 65 meters above the sea surface and a weighs 138 tons and will be mounted on a buoy 6 miles off shore.

This technology is unique because the turbine will not be stationary. Three anchors will secure the turbine to the sea floor and can be used at depths ranging from 120 to 700 meters.

“We have drawn on our offshore expertise from the oil and gas industry to develop wind power offshore,” says Alexandra Bech Gjørv, head of New Energy for StatoilHydro.

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See also: Top 5 Micro Wind Turbines

This weekend, a few months after my trip to Chicago, I was returning some books to my local library. They have a “free magazine” rack near the door so I stopped and grabbed a gardening magazine and a few National Geographics from 2007. When I got home I began flipping through the October 2007 National Geographic which highlights the pros and cons of ethanol (for more read this post from Gas 2.0), and there on the page right after the table of contents was an Ameriprise Financial article about the place I walked past in Bucktown a few months earlier. It is the home of Frank and Lisa Mauceri and their record company Smog Veil Records.

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This wind turbine in Denmark went out of control when it’s safety mechanism failed to operate. And the blades went round, and round, and round…until…..

It took developers almost 20 years since the “Wind of Change”, a 1990 power ballad written by Klaus Meine, vocalist of Scorpions, to come up with maglev wind turbines. The new type of wind turbine uses full-permanent magnets to eliminate friction and claims to be 1000x more efficient than the windmill next door. The new wind turbines can produce electricity with wind speed as low as 5Km/h or 3 miles per hour. The technology is scalable and can be used to build turbines in capacities from 400 to 5,000 watts with 500 years life span and lower cost than today’s windmills.

Sounds too good to be true, but it looks like the Chinese power company Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology is currently building a $5 million factory to produce those maglev wind turbines and save humanity from thousands tons of CO2.

An Associated Press article tells of a farmer from Creston, Iowa, who has finally found a use for the strong winds that have always swept across his open farm land. Joe Weisshaar is the farmer, and he is one of many farmers taking the initiative to help stem the tide of rising prices.

"It’s always been windy here," says Brian Zachary, Weisshaar’s son-in-law and next-door neighbor. "It’s a resource that’s just been slipping away."

The energy prices which are beginning to rise planetwide have begun to affect the farmers, long before it will get to crunch time for the rest of us. Many of those small farms, the first to be affected, are trying to cut their requirements by turning to biodiesel fuel, wind turbines and more efficient tilling practices.

This not only helps the farmers cut their costs, but it reduces their environmental impact as well. And while not a set of new practices, they are now becoming more and more necessary.

But for Joe, he only managed to step through the murky world of paperwork and federal funding, with the help of his son in law, Brian, who has skill in grant writing. Once again, the government is simply not making it easy enough for people to cut costs and environmental imprint.

"I started going to a bunch of seminars, trying to figure out how to do this. But I was going no place," said Weisshaar Snr.

Erecting a wind turbine halfway between his house and his daughter’s house next door has elevated Joe to status of local hero. Passers-by randomly drop in, having noticed the giant construction from the road, to congratulate and investigate.

"They see it and they’re excited about it," said Mary Jane Weisshaar, Joe’s wife. "A lot of people pull into the driveway and they say ‘I’ve wanted to do something like that.’ But they don’t have a clue."

The best thing for the Weisshaar’s is that the turbine produces enough energy at times that they are able to bank up the excess for the less windy months of the year. If necessary, they would also be able to sell their energy back to the electricity company, but Weisshar, it’s more economically feasible to hold on to the excess.

The other way I mentioned that these farmers are helping cut the cost and helping the environment is their fuels. Biodiesel fuel is cheaper to acquire and burns more cleanly than gas. In addition, the fact that they can make it themselves reduces the stress of having to worry about tomorrow’s gas prices.

"We all know we’re on a razor’s edge with oil supply and refining capacity," said Steve Fugate, an Iowa-based energy consultant. "It won’t take a lot, something catastrophic happening, and then it’s not crazy to suggest oil prices might double."

Fugate, among other duties, helps run the Yoderville Co-op in Iowa, which allows farmers in the region to pool their resources and share equipment in the making of biodiesel fuel. Other methods, much less extravagant methods, of saving fuel and environmental impact is simply minimizing the amount of trips one needs to make to plow a field.

Sadly, at the moment, the government is simply not doing enough to help. The Weisshaars’ turbine set them back $140,000, of which only $29,000 was covered by their approved U.S. Department of Agriculture grant.

They don’t expect to see a full pay off for another 10 to 15 years, but with ballooning energy costs, they wouldn’t be surprised to see that number drop as well.

MSNBC - More farmers harvesting wind, biodiesel

photo by Dirk Ingo Franke.
licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 1.0

Home Power magazine has collected information about a wide range of different wind turbines that are available for home or small business use. The 2007 Wind Turbine Buyer’s Guide is a small but information-packed article with a wealth of information about available turbines for small wind systems.

The review has information on 19 different small wind turbines ranging from 7 feet to 56 feet in diameter, including systems for battery charging, as well as batteryless grid-tie systems. The list concentrates on some of the more widely available turbines, though many other manufacturers are selling turbines these days. Models from Abundant Renewable Energy, Bergey Windpower, Eoltec Wind Turbines, Kestrel Wind Turbines, Proven Energy, Southwest Windpower, Vestas, and Wind Turbine Industries are included on the list.

"Small wind," in our definition, starts with turbines with rotors (turbine blades and hub) that are about 8 feet in diameter (50 square feet of swept area). These turbines may peak at about 1,000 watts (1 kilowatt; KW), and generate about 75 kilowatt-hours (KWH) per month with a 10 mph average wind speed. Turbines smaller than this may be appropriate for sailboats, cabins, or other applications that require only a small amount of electricity. But if you want a significant amount of energy, you need a rotor with significant swept area—it is, after all, the wind turbine’s "collector."

In addition to the comparisons, there is good information about what the various components of a wind turbine system are, explanations about how the rating information was gathered, and a short section on wind turbine basics, that briefly covers the internal workings of a wind turbine (like what a ‘yaw bearing’ does).

This guide certainly doesn’t substitute for more comprehensive guides about installing a wind turbine, but it provides the best comparative data on different models of wind turbines that I have found to date. The guide lists several comparative pieces of information about each model covered. A background graphic for each model shows the comparative size of its rotor area. In addition to providing the rotor diameter and the swept area, the guide lists the predicted energy output at average wind speeds for 8, 10, and 12 mph. This makes it very easy to do direct comparisons between two models.

Even more useful to many people who are wondering about whether or not to invest in a wind power system are the costs for these turbines (as well as an indication of what each system includes). These range from $1,995 for the 7-foot diameter Kestrel 800 (without controller or inverter) to $180,000 for the 56-foot diameter Vestas V-17 installed on a 132-foot tower. More than half the models included are under $10,000, and several of these are in the range of $3,000.

Application and warranty information for each model is also included. Some models designed for battery charging are suited for more different voltages than others are. A few models are suitable for either battery charging or batteryless grid-tied connection.

In addition to the information in this guide, you will need to collect a lot more information before going ahead and taking the plunge with a wind turbine for your own home or business. Knowing local regulations and requirements, as well as the wind profile for the property where you are considering putting a turbine, is also essential before spending thousands of dollars to put one up. But, since the turbine is the core element in a wind power system, an evaluation of the different models available is a good place to begin figuring out the right system for your own needs.

Links:
Wind Power Buyer’s Guide

Home Power Magazine