Green Tech

Now you can test whether you're both techno-chic and an ecogeek by combining the iPhone with home wind turbines.

Small wind turbine maker Mariah Power has teamed up with software developer Create with Context to make an iPhone application designed to measure wind speed.

The application, which is due "any day," uses the iPhone's microphone to get a read on wind speed. It translates that into how much power a small wind turbine could offset. For example, a wind that averages 12 miles per hour is enough energy to run your refrigerator and freezer for a year, according to Create with Context.

The iPhone small wind application uses a microphone to get a read on wind speed.

(Credit: Create with Context)

The application was written to get people excited about wind power. But it strikes me that actually buying a turbine based on an iPhone application is a bit risky.

Small wind turbines do indeed work, but experienced wind installers will tell you that they only deliver on their stated performance when there is a sufficient wind. That means placing a turbine far above and away from obstructions, such as trees and rooftops, in addition to getting that 12-mph average wind speed.

Two studies--one in the U.K. and one in Massachusetts--found that early buyers of pole-mounted wind turbines and roof-mounted turbines did not get the electricity output they expected. The primary reason was that the turbines weren't getting enough wind in their locations.

So an iPhone wind speed application could be fun to play with and even give you a decent idea of wind speed. But if you're serious, I'd suggest consulting a wind map from 3Tier or others and gather more data with an anemometer.

There are at least two other iPhone applications for measuring wind speed, called Wind Meter and Wind Speed, the New York Times notes.

Lithium ion batteries used as energy storage for utilities will be a $1 billion industry by 2018, according to a report released Wednesday by Pike Research called "Energy Storage Technology Markets."

Much of the lithium ion battery development has been geared toward perfecting the batteries as power sources for electronics, and in recent years, cars. But the alternative energy industry is going to benefit from that research, too. Once that happens, there will be a surge in the sales of industrial-scale lithium ion batteries for power utilities, according to Pike research.

"Utilities will be the downstream beneficiaries of innovation and investment in lithium ion batteries for the transportation sector," Pike Research analyst David Link said in a statement.

The energy storage industry in general is poised to grow as more private and public organizations embrace wind and solar energy worldwide. Because wind and solar systems provide energy in bursts and their cycles are not usually in sync with local peak energy usage hours, power storage when using wind or solar will become an obvious necessity for utilities, according to Pike Research.

Out of eleven methods of energy storage, Pike Research found that lithium ion batteries for utility use will be the fastest growing segment of the storage industry.

Sodium Sulfur (NAS) batteries and kinetic storage systems like pumped hydro and Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) were seen as the next likely leading utility energy storage solutions.

A proposal to use superconducting cables to transport renewable energy across the United States will be unveiled Tuesday.

The Tres Amigas Project would act as a hub to connect the three major electricity grids in the U.S. and a conduit for solar and wind power, according to a press release. New Mexico governor and former energy secretary Bill Richardson is expected to lay out the details of the plan at a press event in Alburquerque, N.M.

The U.S. has substantial renewable energy potential, such as wind power from the Midwest and solar in the southwest, but the bulk of electricity demand is far away from those resources. To take full advantage of the available renewable energy, more transmission lines need to be built, said Tres Amigas CEO Phil Harris, who used to head PJM Interconnection, the largest grid operator in the U.S.

(Credit: American Superconductor)

The Tres Amigas Project would act as a high-speed control point for the electricity generated by solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal resources. For example, when the wind turbines at night are generating more electricity than can be used in one grid, it could be transferred to another region.

The plan calls for using direct current superconducting cables from American Superconductor to transfer the electricity among the different regional grids--known as the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection.

The idea of using high-temperature superconducting material in direct-current transmission lines was proposed more than a decade ago as a way to cut down on the loss of electricity that happens with traditional overhead alternating current cables. American Superconductor has used this technology with utilities in a handful of places over short distances.

The Tres Amigas plan calls for building a substation with three high-voltage converters able to connect up to five gigawatts, or 5,000 megawatts, worth of electricity from one grid to the others. Underground superconducting power cables would link the three terminals using direct current, rather than alternating current. Tres Amigas would act a broker, distributing and selling power among the three grids.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Jon Wellinghoff said that it is too early to endorse the project but added that FERC needs "more of these creative proposals to allow for more renewable-energy development." In addition to regulatory approval, the Tres Amigas plan needs financing to get off the ground. According to the Journal, the project could cost around $1 billion.

Wind turbines collectively offering a 781.5-megawatt capacity now dot the landscape around Roscoe, Texas.

(Credit: E.ON Climate & Renewables)

One of the world's largest wind farms is now operational in the area surrounding Roscoe, Texas, E.ON Climate & Renewables (EC&R) announced Thursday.

The series of 627 wind turbines providing a 781.5-megawatt capacity covers about 100,000 acres and four Texas counties. But it's not an isolated wind farm per se, nor a uniform series of turbines.

The wind complex is a collaborative wind project with the community that included negotiations with over 300 landowners, and a mix of different turbines made by several companies including Mitsubishi, General Electric, and Siemens.

"Texas continues to lead the nation in the development of renewable energy and has more wind generation capacity than any other state and all but four countries," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement.

The wind turbines of the Roscoe, Texas, wind complex span 100,000 acres.

(Credit: E.ON Climate & Renewables)

The project took approximately 500 workers, and an investment of over $1 billion dollars to be implemented, according to EC&R.

But the investment should pay off in the end. At 781.5 megawatts, the Roscoe wind complex has the capacity to power 230,000 residences, according to EC&R.

The company said in a statement that the Texas project is "the completion of the world's largest wind farm near Roscoe, Texas (sic)" and that once completed, its London offshore wind project will be "the largest offshore wind farm in the world."

The announcement follows Perry's Wednesday meeting with Texas business leaders to express his views against proposed federal carbon cap-and-trade legislation, which are in opposition to those who feel the bill would encourage green technology innovation.

"Texas has shown you don't need federal mandates to improve the environment or foster the next generation of energy technology," Perry said in a statement.

"Texans should be wary about a cap-and-trade bill that would not only impose the largest tax hike in the history of the United States, but also inject the federal government further into every Texas home, farm and workplace," he said.

General Electric filled out its offshore wind turbine portfolio by buying ScanWind, which makes direct-drive turbine components.

GE on Monday said that it has completed the acquisition, which was valued at a about $18.5 million. ScanWind, which is headquartered in Trondheim, Norway and has a design center in Karlstad, Sweden, is now testing 11 turbines off the Norwegian coast.

(Credit: General Electric)

ScanWind makes a drive train that eliminates the need for a gear box in a wind turbine. Direct drive turbines typically add cost to turbines but they are gaining use in small turbines and other places where low maintenance is required.

GE invested in the technology specifically for use in offshore wind turbines. "(Reliability) is particularly important for the growth of the offshore wind industry, where project economics are strongly affected by turbine design and reliability," Vic Abate, vice president of renewable energy at GE Energy, said in a statement.

With many of the best locations for land wind farms spoken for, offshore wind farms offer some of the best wind power potential. There are a handful of offshore wind farm proposals in the U.S. including the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts and a project off the coast of Delaware.

Citing industry estimates, GE said that offshore wind is projected to balloon from an installed base of 1.5 gigawatts in 2008 to 30 gigawatts by 2020, driven by European renewable energy mandates and falling wind power prices. A typical nuclear or coal power plant has a generating capacity of about one gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts.

BOSTON--Start-up FloDesign Wind, one of a number of companies looking to shake up the wind turbine business, said a prototype of its jet engine-inspired turbine was three times more efficient at converting wind to usable energy than traditional designs.

The Massachusetts-based company is seeking to raise a series B round of $25 million later this year to deploy and test the real-life performance of its 150-kilowatt turbines, said CEO Stanley Kowalski III at the Cleantech Forum conference here on Thursday.

FloDesign Wind last year was spun out of aerospace engineering company FloDesign, which has supplied components used in military helicopters and fighter planes. Using its expertise in aerodynamics, the company is developing a wind turbine that more resembles a jet engine than a typical three-blade turbine.

Its plan is to develop relatively small turbines and market them for use by businesses, communities, or wind farm developers. The company is now testing prototypes, a process that will take at least a year, Kowalski indicated.

"I think it's exciting that there's an oligopoly (among wind turbine suppliers)," he said during a panel on Thursday. "There is a resistance to change and that's how things disrupt and we hope to be one of the disruptors."

Utility-scale wind farms typically use giant wind turbines capable of turning out one or two megawatts of electricity--enough to supply hundreds of homes. By contrast, FloDesign wind--along with a other wind challengers--is developing its turbine for use in locations not well suited for large turbines, such as mountain ridge lines, or to customers that want to make power on site, such as municipalities or businesses, Kowalski said.

FloDesign Wind estimates that it can produce power at about 40 percent cheaper than traditional turbines, although the performance depends on the location. Part of the lower cost is from being able to extract more usable energy from the available wind--the company tested a prototype of its turbine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology earlier this year and found that it delivered a three times improvement over traditional designs, Kowalski said.

The turbine is built around a fan and a shroud that surrounds it. It's designed so that air passes through the fan blades and around the edges of the shroud. This creates a mix of two air speeds at the back of the unit, with fast air going around the edges of the shroud and slow air passing through the blades. When the two air flows meet, the rapid mixing causes air to be pulled through the turbine, Kowalski explained. The electricity is generated at the tips of blades rather than using a gear box.

The product, which has a 60-foot diameter, is being made so that it can be transported onto a standard truck bed, which should make installation cheaper and easier than large turbines. The company expects that it will be less dangerous to birds and bats because it will be easier to see, Kowalski said. He said it should be quieter than traditional turbines as well.

Taking on incumbents
FloDesign Wind is among a number of start-up wind companies trying to crack into the wind market by introducing different product designs and by targeting different customers than the large suppliers, such as Siemens, Vestas, and GE, which sell to large-scale wind farm developers.

Incumbents have made turbines larger and larger over the years to generate more power from an existing location and bring down the cost of delivered electricity. There have been attempts to make mid-size turbines big enough to supply a school or community using the traditional three-blade wind turbine design. But there have been technical problems and those projects which typically have a higher cost per kilowatt to install, according to a report from the National Renewable Energy published last year.

New companies, however, are entering the mid-size turbine field, including FloDesign Wind, OptiWind, and BroadStar Wind Systems. Developers envision that the machines could be deployed in existing wind farms among larger turbines, at a big-box stores, or for locations where there isn't enough land available.

"For the first time, we can build a turbine that can compete on price with big turbines at small scale--it's like the PC versus the mainframe," said Kowalski.

A more distributed model of wind generation addresses one of the biggest problems today in wind: having the transmission lines to bring megawatts worth of electricity to places where it is consumed. T. Boone Pickens, for example, had to delay its planned wind farm in Texas because a lack of transmission.

With its second round of funding, FloDesign Wind is seeking partnerships to help bring the product to market, Kowalski said. The company raised a series A round of $6 million from Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and is hoping to close its second round by the end of the year. It has also received funding from the Department of Energy.

The company has already gotten interest from at least one utility to use its turbine, Kowalski said, although he also said that he expects utilities overall will be slower to adopt new wind technologies.

Twister 300-T

Twister 1000-T

Vertikon H50

(Credit: Venco)

Helix Wind has signed a definitive purchase agreement to acquire Venco Power, a Germany-based manufacturer of vertical axis small wind turbines, for $3.9 million in cash and common stock, the company announced Thursday.

With Venco comes greater access to the small wind residential market in Europe, along with three new products the company plans to add to its small wind product line, according to Helix Wind CEO Ian Gardner.

While all three models are for the small wind market, each has a distinctive look and different capacities. The Venco Twister 300-T produces power at wind speeds as low as 3.5 meters per second (7.8 mph); it starts rotating at 3.0 meters per second, and its claim to fame is that it's "virtually quiet." The Twister 1000-T makes the same noise and power claims as the 300-T, but has a different look and begins to start rotating at a wind speed of 1.5 meters per second. The Vertikon H50 will begin generating power at speeds as low as 2.5 meters per second.

Venco also has an online calculator (for Java applet-friendly browsers) for estimating how much power one can expect each particular turbine product to generate. Potential customers input average wind speeds for each month of the year at their location, and can change which turbine the figures are applied to.

"We're also excited to bring German engineering talent and technology to the quest for alternative energy," Gardner said in a statement.

The news follows Helix Wind's August announcement offering a unique financial fix for the initial cash outlay that residential customers and dealers face when getting into wind power.

A day after the federal government awarded $500 million to renewable-energy projects, the American Wind Energy Association is pointing to a study that concludes that the investments will lead to "green collar jobs" as intended.

The U.S. Treasury and Energy departments on Tuesday said that 12 renewable-energy projects, 10 of them in wind, were awarded cash grants, a move meant to bring financiers back to the U.S. wind industry and create manufacturing and construction jobs.

Home on the plain: Wind power.

(Credit: GE)

On Wednesday, the AWEA said that a new study shows that the government stimulus on wind is money well-spent when it comes to job creation. Specifically, the industry association backed an analysis from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory that debunks a previous study which found that Spain's wind and solar policies actually resulted in fewer jobs.

That previous study dates back to March when researchers at Spain's King Juan Carlos University concluded that for every job created by Spain's aggressive renewable-energy policy, on average 2.2 jobs will be "destroyed." The study (click for PDF in English) has been cited by people opposed to using Spain as a model for U.S. energy policy.

The reasoning behind the analysis is that nonsubsidized investments would have created jobs at a lower cost. It calculates that a "green job" in Spain costs over twice the "average capital per worker" in the private sector.

The analysis of Spanish job creation doesn't quite add up, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's response which was published in August. (Click for PDF.) NREL found fault with how the King Juan Carlos University study calculated job loss, saying that more established methods found a net benefit to Europe's energy policies.

In addition, NREL researchers said that the Spanish study doesn't take into the account the value of creating industries with export potential. Many industrial areas of the U.S. with auto expertise, for example, are trying to move into wind turbine manufacturing. It also said that there are limits to applying the lessons of Spain's employment market to other countries.

But even in its rebuttal, NREL researchers concede that it's a fair to ask whether the net effect of boosting wind and solar power is more jobs. In the U.S., the Senate is considering whether to create a national mandate for renewable-energy production at utilities or to ratchet up the one passed by the House earlier this year.

Overall, NREL found that the price of conventional energy is the key point in determining whether government policies supporting renewable energy have a net positive effect on creating jobs. "With increased awareness of potential energy price scenarios, recent research has found that it is only when conventional energy prices are forecast to be very low that net employment impacts from (renewable energy) investments are negative," according to the study.

Despite all the talk about needed breakthroughs in batteries, Pacific Gas & Electric is pursuing a less high-tech approach to store wind power: underground compressed air.

The utility on Wednesday said that it is seeking $25 million in smart-grid stimulus funds to build an underground compressed-air storage facility that would be able to deliver as much electricity as a medium-size power plant for about 10 hours.

(Credit: PG&E)

PG&E said the project is part of its smart-grid initiative and would take about five years to develop and build but, in a company blog post, didn't offer any other details on the proposal.

With compressed-air energy storage (CAES), air is compressed and then pumped in natural underground reservoirs. The air is released later and converted into electricity.

There are currently two compressed-air energy storage facilities in operation--one in Alabama and one in Germany--but the technique has been getting more attention because it is a relatively cheap approach to storage.

Utilities are starting to use flywheels to smooth out fluctuations on the grid or truck-size batteries to provide backup power for a couple of hours for a single substation.

CAES is well-suited to an intermittent source of energy like wind because a large amount of energy can be stored for many hours. PG&E's proposal calls for storing 300 megawatts worth of power for 10 hours, while most utility storage batteries being tested are 1 or 2 megawatts for shorter periods.

PG&E said that it plans to use wind turbines to compress the air during off-peak times and then draw from the reservoir during peak times. Shifting the energy from off-peak to peak times, such as the middle of the day, makes it more valuable as utilities pay more for energy at peak times. A wind farm in Iowa has been working on CAES storage for a few years to take advantage of peak pricing for wind.

PG&E quoted a Princeton University study on CAES that concluded that "CAES appears to have many of the characteristics necessary to transform wind into a mainstay of global electricity generation."

Industry executives say that the most cost-effective utility storage is pumped hydro, where water is pumped uphill and released at peak times to make electricity.

This technique, which has been around for decades, is tough to beat on cost. But like compressed-air storage, it requires that utilities find the suitable geography.

Updated at 12:45 p.m. PT to clarify the capacity and energy storage of the facility.