Thursday, July 17, 2008

Wind Power - It is not the quaint Dutch tourist windmills kept as historic preservation.

When wind power is discussed, at the utility scale where economies of scale are such that unsubsidized fully grid-connected units are feasible, and away from urban areas where noise is a worry, the scale of things should be realized.

Not that the unit Anoka shall be acquiring, if all things work out as reproted, will equal this image, from the Danes who have been leading innovators, online here but without the image in the English language version, there is this:


There is a lot of aerodynamic engineering that goes into a blade design, and manufacturing methods, involving performance and cost effective constraints, are still evolving. The standard design because of mechanical stresses is three blades in a roter rather than two, and the power varies as the swept area, so longer blades on higher platforms allow larger generators to be driven. The trick is to ramp up to optimal output and then to control the blade pitch, its angular positioning relative to the direction of the wind, to get a long flat power output without overloading and damaging the generator or gearbox. Storm resiliency is an engineering necessity. It is highly sophitiscated optimized design and manufacturing at the utility scale, not quaint and rustic in any historically preserved sense. It is state of art technology.

And it is an area that will offer skilled and decent paying jobs in the near term future, onward, depending on the rate of deployment. And that depends on the varying market dynamics in oil. If long term pricing holds as now at the pump, wind will be exploited sooner, if there is a drop-back to forestall energy alternative development as has happened in the past, full realization of the potential of wind power will grow more slowly. But it will grow. There will be jobs in the sector.