Is community wind power full of hot air?
Call it wind power for the neighborhood.
Some companies are trying to stake out a middle ground in wind power by making mid-size turbines big enough for a school or big-box retailer to use, but not so big that they require a convoy of trucks to be delivered.
Distributed wind generation with medium-size turbines runs counter to the prevailing trends in the industry. In the past several years, turbines have gotten bigger and bigger to lower the cost of generated electricity. At the opposite extreme, there is rapid growth in sales of the small wind machines designed for a single home.
A new shape in wind?
(Credit: Optiwind)But mid-size turbine advocates say if the industry can produce an economically attractive product, there's a large potential market.
Optiwind, a company formed two years ago to make mid-size turbines, is designing a machine to work in places with only a fair, or "Class 2," wind resource found in places like its home state of Connecticut. Potential customers could be schools, wastewater treatment plants, or businesses.
"We've designed systems to work in Class 2 areas, which happens to be where most of us live and work," said David Hurwitt, vice president of marketing at Optiwind. "I'm guessing there (are also) a lot of Wal-Marts in more rural areas where there's lots of wind and land."
Placing wind turbines near people--be it in suburbs or even rural farms--is contentious in many communities as people worry about noise, aesthetics, or flickering light. At the same time, the growing interest in cleaner forms of energy for environmental, economic, or political reasons has more people exploring on-site wind power.
Optiwind is developing turbines--slightly less than 200-feet tall--rated at 150 kilowatt or 300 kilowatts, aimed at organizations that have an electricity bill of at least $100,000 a year. Tied to the grid, these turbines cut electricity bills and give the purchaser a predictable cost of electricity, which can be very attractive to an organization like a school, Hurwitt said.
A 150-kilowatt turbine would cover a portion of the electricity needs of an office building or school. By contrast, typical utility-scale turbines are rated at 2,500 kilowatts or 3,000 kilowatts, generating enough electricity at capacity to power hundreds of homes and stores.
Concentrating wind
Optiwind's turbine eschews the traditional three-blade design and uses a silo-like structure with fans on either side. When the wind hits the structure, it curls over the surface and enters the fans at a higher density to produce more power, Hurwitt explained.
FloDesign Wind Turbine is another company building a mid-size turbine using technology adapted from jet engines. The company, which is funded by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is in the process of working on a prototype turbine that also works on the principle of packing more power into available wind.
Like Optiwind's turbine, FloDesign seeks to manipulate air movements so that wind blows faster through turbines to make more power in a smaller space.
"A bunch of other companies are experimenting with different types of wind acceleration. The idea is to improve the concentration of wind, which is the fuel you're working with," Optiwind's Hurwitt said.
Optiwind, which raised a series A round of venture capital from Charles River Ventures last year, plans to build and test its first turbine this year and hopes to launch a commercial product in 2011.
Steel in the ground
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory late last year published a report that found that community-owned wind installations can bring advantages to municipalities and can ease the load on the power grid. But these types of installations--and the machines suited for them--face a number of technical and financial challenges.
When mid-size turbines use the traditional three-blade wind turbine design, they suffer from having a higher capital cost per kilowatt to install and higher maintenance costs, according to the NREL report.
Northern Power, based in Barre, Vt., is managing to sell a mid-size turbine using a three-blade design. Inside, though, it uses a different drivetrain technology than its larger, utility-scale counterparts.
Instead of the typical gear box, its Northwind 100, which is rated at 100 kilowatts, has a direct drivetrain and a generator that uses permanent magnets, which is quieter and more reliable than other designs, said Northern Power CEO John Danner. "Reliability is the name of the game when you are selling to school principals or town mayors--they don't have maintenance departments to keep things up and running," Danner said.
With good wind, high electricity costs, and good incentives, the payback on a 100-kilowatt turbine can be as little as five years, Danner said.
NIMBY or welcome?
Hyannis Country Gardens in Cape Cod went through the rigmarole of erecting a Northern Power wind turbine earlier this year.
One of the store's owners, Diana Duffley, spent almost three years getting the necessary permitting, paying for studies on light flickering and acoustics, and hosting town meetings. After about four months, the turbine produced more electricity than the garden center consumes, with the excess generating about $1,200 worth of electricity.
Neighbors were initially concerned about how the turbine, which has a 120-foot tower, would look and the noise (the turbine is quieter than the garden center's irrigation system). Over time, more people became interested and supportive, she said.
"People are scared of wind. People are trying to get the Cape Wind (offshore farm) project and it's an extremely controversial subject on the Cape. I feel by doing this I can reduce people's fear of wind," Duffley said. "Here, people can see wind power done right."
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
Problem is that all currently available systems are priced so only the rich can afford them. I can pay for coal made electricity for 30 years for the price of what I need to offset only 1/2 my cooling bill. That makes it silly to do. I'm not wealthy so money is far more important than the environment. I'd like to, but until the prices of this stuff comes down to a 5-7 year payoff it's not even a option for us normal people.
http://www.homepower.com
These guys give you all sorts of information about solar- electrical and thermal, wind, micro-hydro energy sources. They also include info and alternative buildings, conservation as well. All in all a great information resource.
This isn't really an article. It's a re-written press-release. I rather hope the author doesn't expect to get paid for this crap.
Depending on where you live and how DIY enabled you are there are some excellent projects for heating, cooling, lighting and other energy creation options that are more cost effective than the commercial offerings.
Even if all you do is change a few lights that are in limited use to being battery/solar powered it's a step in the right direction.
Show some real numbers like the cost of the tower and prep at Hyannis Gardens, then the cost to operate and maintain the tower, along with the lifespan of the tower. Then, run this against how much money is saved/generated by the power produced and does the solution go into the black ( and remain there) before the tower ages out? This is especially critical since they are claiming to handle Class 2 areas where production will be much less.
The other big issue is noise. The article says the tower at Hyannis Gardens is less noisy than their irrigation system, but irrigation systems don't run 24 hours a day. I have been around wind systems for over 20 years and they can be quite noisy. For most people, they eventually tune out (like the freeway next to your house), but visitors never fail to comment on the noise. One particular turbine could be heard from miles away when the wind blew in the right direction.
I am all for alternative solutions, but let them stand on their merits instead of debasing ourselves at the altar of Green. Ideals are great, but carried to extremes they do more harm than good.
The bottom line is that they're projecting a seven year payback, I suspect because this location has a very good wind resource. The person behind the install, though, had to put in a lot of time and thousands of dollars for studies to get the project off the ground.
In general, I agree that these wind installations should make financial sense, although people who fund them will tell you that there are other reasons to invest in renewable energy. And of course, noise is a factor. All of which means that choosing a proper site--notably one with good wind--is very important.
Study your wind conditions over several years (hopefully you have historical records).
Here's one community that found wind power was NOT the panacea they had hoped for.
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090603/GJNEWS_01/706039919
I agree with you on the wind coming across the planes, but several of the big wind farms here in California are on the hills. The one down near Palm Springs is on more level ground.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/wind/overview.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Pass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_Pass_Wind_Farm
http://www.palmsprings.com/services/wind.html
Now of course these are attached the big energy grid, but there is no reason a small town couldn't install a few.
We really should be putting our shrinking resources into projects like Toshiba's "micro" nuclear reactor.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/19/toshibas-building-a-micro-nuclear-reactor-for-your-garage/
One of the reasons we're in an energy "crisis" is because misguided politicians and environmental Luddites have prevented us from developing our own resources, oil, natural gas, and most importantly nuclear. Furthermore they've prevented expansion of power networks, which is critical as our current network is at capacity and needs to be renovated and expanded. Our government is going to be helping Dubai (which sits on a sea of oil) build nuclear reactors, but it won't let us build them, and we basically invented the technology!
Its out back of my house, payback is looking to be about 5 years. 2 years ago I was averaging $140, a month on my electric and about $90 on my natural gas. I switched first to geothermal, and of corse my gas price dropped to 0, my electrical bumped up to the $160 mark.
I put the turbine in, and yes I still need power from the grid at times, but over the year I ended up with a $31.46 credit on my Electrical account. So over the period of the year I pumped more power into the grid then I used. And it was a cold winter this year.
That is with 5 computers running a 52 and 50 inch plasma, and all electical appliances. Winter the house was set at 72f last summer at 75f.
So not to bad. And it does not make a lot of noise like some warned me about. I am hoping to go with an electric car for next year, keep the truck and camper for our vacations and long haul.
With gas already back over a buck a liter, I'm hoping the turbing with the addition of some solar panels will really cut down my fuel consumption. Would be nice to be 100% off grid but it just won't happen unless I can store lots of energy.
We have the ability to reduce demand by 50-70% with these methods. Once that's done, wind and solar have a chance to impact the remaining loads at a cost that can pay back.
- by Dango517 June 3, 2009 7:23 PM PDT
- Fail to make progress in whatever way you choose and that hot air you might be feeling will be that brought on by draught. Whether small or large these turbines must provide enough power to electrify our cities. The scale balances out the same. Bigger or smaller is irrelevant. The real issue being can electric be distributed too where it is needed and in time to avert a crisis. A slow economy has reduced the our use of gasoline, as we speak, the economy has begun to edge toward a rebound.
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(19 Comments)By -the way, America has used these before they were used to pump water. They were called Wind Mills.
http://www.grit.com/Energy/Using-Wind-for-Water-Pumping-Mills.aspx
The Dutch have been using a larger version for centuries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_mill