Jan

18

Sensing the Wind Is Getting Better Results

January 18, 2012 | 1 Comment

Wind speed primarily determines the power generated by a wind turbine. On a wind farm in which the turbines experience the same wind speeds but different “shapes”, most easily seen as turbulence affecting the wind profile, the turbines will produce different amounts of power. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Sonia Wharton and colleague Julie Lundquist [...]

Dec

22

Wind Turbine Technology Can Improve

December 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Syracuse University and University of Minnesota researchers have come up with two new ideas to enhance efficiency of wind turbines. With funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy through the University of Minnesota Wind Energy Consortium, the Syracuse University’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science (LCS) research team is testing new intelligent-systems-based [...]

Dec

21

Catch The Wind Way Up High

December 21, 2010 | 1 Comment

NASA’s Mark Moore is developing methods the government can use to fairly evaluate competing ideas on tethering a turbine-vehicle flying and how to capture and use the wind aloft energy efficiently. Moore’s “turf” starts at about 2,000 feet and runs to over 30,000 feet or just over 500 meters to beyond 9,000. Moore is an [...]

Nov

5

The Wind Turbine For Everyone

November 5, 2010 | 7 Comments

The Honeywell Wind Turbine needs only 33 feet of above ground clearance and just a claimed one half mile per hour wind to start up.  If that proves out in the real world Canada’s WindTronics, Inc. would have a sure hit on its hands. The company says its turbine has “higher performance output and lower [...]

Oct

29

A Ten Fold Increase In Wind Energy From the Same Land Area

October 29, 2010 | 13 Comments

John O. Dabiri at the California Institute of Technology’s Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories & Bioengineering makes the assertion that an order of magnitude increase in the energy harvest can be made with wind turbine density increases and wind turbine design.  The full paper is available at arXiv.org > physics > arXiv:10103656. (Direct pdf download link here.) [...]

Aug

4

Impossible But Done

August 4, 2010 | 3 Comments

This writer thinks with others that the “laws” of science and other notions have useful purposes when they work to our advantage.  But the laws need challenged now and one must suppose forever.  So when the impossible, flaunts the law, or whatever gets crashed, there’s cause for some celebration – not for the breaking, but [...]

Jun

21

They Say The Wind Can Provide Reliable Power

June 21, 2010 | 15 Comments

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) asserts in a study released last month that the power grid for five western states – Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming – the WestConnect territory – could operate on as much as 30 percent wind and 5 percent solar without the construction of extensive [...]

Apr

1

Saving the Wind

April 1, 2010 | 2 Comments

Integrated Compressed Air Renewable Energy Systems (ICARES) research in development since early in 2006 is a technology centered on a simple premise – using giant wind turbines to compress and pump air into huge undersea Energy Bags™ anchored to the seabed – or geological formations where deep water is not available. The high-pressure air would [...]

keep looking »