The Canadian fabricator, DAF-Indal, installed a second generation 50 kW Darrieus turbine in 1981 at the the Romero Overlook Visitor … Read more
News on Large Wind
NREL’s Owen Roberts reports that FloWind’s prototype 100 kW Darrieus wind turbine installed in early 1982 is still standing inoperative … Read more
Even in not-always-sunny UK solar pv could provide up to 40 per-cent of annual electricity production. That is without a significant amount of curtailment of production or even the need to convert the electricity into stored energy such as hydrogen. Of course this is dependent on there being enough provision of batteries. Solar plus batteries will be the dominant energy system in the world in future decades, but they will also be centrally important in UK.
On paper the composite bearingless rotor seemed too good to be true: a wind turbine rotor that enabled the blades to change pitch without bearings in the hub. And the wind turbine would passively use aerodynamic forces to orient the rotor downwind of the tower. It was the height of simplicity and would be cheap to build. What could go wrong? The short answer: everything. Eventually the nearly 400 wind turbines using the concept in California during the Great California Wind Rush of the early to mid 1980s were scraped off the face of the earth for scrap. And therein lays a sprawling tale.
For details on development of the Composite Bearingless Rotor and its derivatives see my accompanying article Failed Dream: the Bearingless … Read more
The hollowing out of these once great American industrial giants is a sad story, and unfortunately that story has repercussions that will be felt for years to come as the country tries to come to grips with its intractable emissions problem. Although not the only root cause, a remarkable amount of the culpability rests on Jack Welch and his destructive take on capitalism.
The Ford government spent $231 million to cancel the green energy contracts it tore up after taking office, but said the move would save ratepayers some $790 million by not paying for power the province didn’t need.
The government currently spends about $6 billion of taxpayer money each year to subsidize Ontario’s electricity rates. About half of the province’s electricity supply is generated by nuclear plants, roughly one-quarter by hydro dams, and the rest by a mix of gas plants, wind and solar.
While interviewing Brian Smith about his early career during the Great California Wind Rush, he mentioned that NREL had done a retrospective on the history of the lab. Specifically, he suggested I take a look at the chapter titled the Wild West of Wind.
Yee ha! Brian was right. He and Walt Musial have some great tales in that chapter. If you weren’t working in California’s wind industry then and you want a flavor of what it was like, take a look. The title is a pretty accurate summary of the times.
While editing an article I stumbled across some photos of a Windane turbine on Pajeula Peak in the Tehachapi Pass. … Read more
Another article on the history of wind turbine development has been published in the academic publication Wind Engineering, an imprint … Read more
