Sunday, March 11th, 2007
Go With the Wind
Here’s the Thing:
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The view from 32,000 feet — |
The Earth from above — there’s almost no more amazing sight. I’ve been flying back and forth between NY and Colorado fairly frequently over the past few years, and despite my long legs, I always take a window seat and generally keep my face pressed to the pane the whole time. Across those 1,800 miles of farmland, hills, dales, small towns, and big cities, Friday was the first time I ever saw a windfarm. A sign of the changing times, I’d say.
I saw a few windmills from below once when driving in West Virginia. You can’t imagine how big these suckers are until you stand below one. Most are about 10 stories or more these days. Once you understand their size, the sight of 50 of them from 32,000 feet is all the more impressive.
Over the last ten years (through the end of 2005), wind energy-generating capacity grew by an average of 29 percent worldwide each year, says the venerable Earth Policy Institute (a great organization led by Lester Brown, an ecological visionary). Comparatively, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and oil use all grew by less than 3 percent per year over the same time period. Wind energy has only been widely available for the last few years, but as you can see, it’s quickly catching up with its elders.
And with all that new supply has come a much more reasonable price for wind-generated home energy. According to the Earth Policy Institute,
“Overall, the cost of wind power has decreased by nearly 90 percent since the 1980s to 4¢ or less per kilowatt-hour in prime wind sites (See Figure). In some markets wind-generated electricity is cheaper than electricity from conventional energy sources. The cost of wind power has fallen due to advances in technology, declines in the costs of financing wind projects, and the economies of scale of turbine and component manufacturing and construction.”
Why wind?
So what’s so great about wind energy? In addition to providing clean energy (which allows us to go about our daily lives normally without adding pollution to the atmosphere or contributing to climate change), “the prices of wind-generated electricity are stable and not subject to the price volatility of fossil fuels,” the Institute explains. Plus, “wind power supports local economic development since the jobs, royalties, and tax revenues from wind-generated electricity production tend to stay in the community. And since wind is inexhaustible it offers long-term energy security that electricity derived from nonrenewable fossil fuels cannot.” Check out the Network for New Energy Choices’ wind energy fact sheet to learn more.
Where do I sign up?
Aye, there’s the rub. It’s a little hard to track down exactly who to speak to about what’s available in your area. In many places, you can simply tell your regular electric company that you want to use wind energy (or renewable energy in general). They’ll start charging you a small premium and you’re done. For example, in New York, Con Edison delivers the energy to most homes, but it allows customers to choose the supplier they want through its “Power Your Way” program. Then, in my local health food store I came across a flyer for ConEdison Solutions, a subsidiary of ConEd that apparently allows you to sign up to get green power through them.
If you’re interested, I would first try calling your local energy distributor (the company that sends you the electric bills) and asking about green power. If that doesn’t work, you might want to try tracking down an option in your area through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Green Power Network Web site.
For good measure, the Renewable Energy Access Web site gives a nice explanation of wind energy — what it is and how it works:
We have been harnessing the wind’s energy for hundreds of years. From old Holland to farms in the United States, windmills have been used for pumping water or grinding grain. Today, the windmill’s modern equivalent — a wind turbine — can use the wind’s energy to generate electricity.
Wind turbines, like windmills, are mounted on a tower to capture the most energy. At 100 feet (30 meters) or more aboveground, they can take advantage of the faster and less turbulent wind. Turbines catch the wind’s energy with their propeller-like blades. Usually, two or three blades are mounted on a shaft to form a rotor.
A blade acts much like an airplane wing. When the wind blows, a pocket of low-pressure air forms on the downwind side of the blade. The low-pressure air pocket then pulls the blade toward it, causing the rotor to turn. This is called lift. The force of the lift is actually much stronger than the wind’s force against the front side of the blade, which is called drag. The combination of lift and drag causes the rotor to spin like a propeller, and the turning shaft spins a generator to make electricity.
Wind turbines can be used as stand-alone applications, or they can be connected to a utility power grid or even combined with a photovoltaic (solar cell) system. For utility-scale sources of wind energy, a large number of wind turbines are usually built close together to form a wind plant. Several electricity providers today use wind plants to supply power to their customers.
Stand-alone wind turbines are typically used for water pumping or communications. However, homeowners, farmers, and ranchers in windy areas can also use wind turbines as a way to cut their electric bills.
Small wind systems also have potential as distributed energy resources. Distributed energy resources refer to a variety of small, modular power-generating technologies that can be combined to improve the operation of the electricity delivery system.
on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 6:23 pm:
In Massachusetts we have the GreenUp program that allows us to pay an extra 2.4 cents per kWh (about 14% for us) that goes to help fund renewable energy projects and education both statewide and in our town and is partially tax deductible. And it is totally easy, after signing up, all we do is pay our electric bill each month.
This is part of the New England GreenStart program funded by Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.