News & Articles on Wind Energy
This is an archive of articles and news on both large and small wind turbines, wind energy & the environment, and links to topics on the history of wind energy.
I’ve been working with wind energy since 1976 and my professional experience in the subject runs the gamut from wind resource assessment to installing and testing small wind turbines. I continue to follow the industry and analyze its growth and increasing contribution to renewable electricity generation worldwide.
The Howden Wind Turbine Theme Song—“Turn em On, Let em Run”
By
Paul Gipe
The Great California Wind Rush was the Wild West of wind energy. So it’s fitting that one of the songs …
A new wind farm in Kansas trailblazes with light-mitigating technology
By
Michelle Lewis
Sunflower Wind is the first in the state to feature an Aircraft Detection Lighting System (ADLS) that uses radar to scan for aircraft. When ADLS is installed on a wind farm, the nighttime lights on the turbines blink only when aircraft are detected, thus reducing light pollution for residents who live close enough to be able to see them. Approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is required to install ADLS, and the FAA reviews every turbine individually. The FAA requires that the ADLS activate and flash if an aircraft is at or below 1,000 feet above the tallest wind turbine and is approaching a three-nautical mile (3.45-mile) perimeter around the wind farm.
Denmark’s Energy Museum Loses Funding—Will Close
By
Paul Gipe
Denmark’s Energimuseet (the Energy Museum), a “must see” for anyone working in the energy field, especially those of us in …
Betz’s “Wind-Energy and its use by Windmills” 1926
By
Paul Gipe
Down the rabbit hole again. I got a request for a paper by German physicist Albert Betz that I didn’t …
Instead of tilting at turbines we should see them for what they are: beautiful
By
External Source
But I would ask country dwellers still inclined to block them to see that they are in fact beautiful. They are prettier than power stations, less destructive than fracking, certainly lovelier than floods, fires, droughts and other effects of climate change. They enrich the nation with the help of its abundant wind, and make us less dependent on fossil-fuel despots. Wind turbines are in a long rural tradition of robust practical structures that also includes barns, mills, viaducts, canals and others that have become beloved and protected. On those same drives I was always happy to see an old windmill. It shouldn’t be too hard to love their modern equivalents.
Rishi Sunak ‘poised to revoke ban on onshore windfarms’
By
External Source
Ministers are preparing to introduce changes to planning rules that will allow councils to give the go-ahead to turbine proposals where there is broad public support, according to the Telegraph. The amendment to scrap the ban on new offshore wind was put forward by the former Cop26 president Alok Sharma and has since drawn support from a group of Tories including Liz Truss, who are “confident” that it will pass.
