The Highland Wind Project: Adding 25 Turbines to Southwetern PA
The Highland Wind Project is located in Adams Township in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Electronic transmission passes through the site and will provide a convenient point for interconnection.
Location: Cambria County, Pennsylvania
Project size: 62.5 megawatts
Turbines: 25 Nordex N90 Turbines (each rated at a capacity of 2.5 megawatts)
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania News Release: A former Cambria County strip (coal) mine in Southwestern PA will soon be home to 25 wind turbines generating enough power to meet the needs of 16,000 homes, according to PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
The $140 million Highland wind project in Southwestern PA is expected to be online later this year (2008) and may produce more than 164,000 megawatt hours of power annually. And, because wind power is free of emissions, the project will prevent 400 million pounds of carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change—from reaching the atmosphere.
Building a 1000 Watt Wind Turbine (part 1)
This post kicks off a new category of entries on energy self-sufficiency and “homebrew” projects. Nothing is more inspiring than do-it-yourself stories. This entry includes the first set of photos of a windmill construction project sent to me by my fiance’s freind’s brother-in-law, who is building a 1000 Watt wind turbine in his backyard. The plans for his wind turbine come from www.otherpower.com — which is actually a very interesting site for anyone interested in installing or building a wind turbine, or anyone who wants to read about Options for Getting Started in Wind Power. A few pictures of the stator windings, spindle, yaw bearing and tail pivot are shown below. I will definitely try to follow this project and post any additional pictures provided by the wind turbine builder!
Remote, off-grid dwellers have found wind power to be an excellent complement to solar power because the wind often blows at night and during cloudy weather. Even on-grid folks may install wind turbines to offset the rising cost of electric power from the grid. You can find the average wind speed at your geographic location using average wind speed map from NREL, which will show you how much wind power you might be able to harness before you consider building a wind turbine.
According to the Small Wind Turbine Basics series, statistical wind speed distribution in most locations worldwide is typically represented by a Weibull or simplified Rayleigh distribution curve. The Weibul distribution of wind speeds image on the left is fairly common.
Wind power is directly proportional to turbine diameter squared x wind speed cubed.
The Small Wind Turbine Basics series explains what kind of power you can expect from common small turbine diameters and wind speeds.
In a 10 mph wind (very common), there are 100 Watts of power available with a 5 foot diameter wind turbine. Betz lowers this to 59.26 Watts, and with Klemen’s “good” turbine losses we are down to at most 35 watts of output. That’s only enough power to fire up a couple of efficient CF light bulbs. By comparison, a 10 foot turbine has 401 Watts available, 238 W with a “perfect” turbine, and 140W output in an excellent turbine design. Much better, but not anything that’s going to make your electric meter run backwards! A “good” 20-foot turbine could possibly give 740W at 10 mph.
When we double the wind speed to 20 mph, the exponential increase in power available becomes apparent 280 possible Watts from a “good” 5-footer, 1,100W from a 10-footer, and 5,900W from a 20-footer. Now we are talking some real power for a sailboat or cabin (the 5-foot machine), an off-grid home (the 10-foot machine), or an on-grid house trying to offset the power bill (the 20-foot machine). Of course it varies by location, but on a good wind power day that most people would call breezy, the wind will usually be between 10 and 20 mph.
Advertised wind turbine ratings in terms of Watts are commonly based on peak output in high winds of 28-30 mph, which are relatively rare.
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NYMEX: Light, Sweet Crude Oil (CL)
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NYMEX: Natural Gas (NG)
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NYMEX: Heating Oil (HO)
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EIA: Retail Prices
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Bloomberg: Wind Energy Index
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MAC: Global Solar Energy Index