The Fuller Wind Turbine was developed about 5 years ago with an investment of £215,000. It harnesses the viscosity of air over the rims of thin discs to generate energy. This way, a housing is able to swivel in a silent way, as it was designed with urban rooftops in mind.
“This enclosed turbine should produce significant power at half the life-cycle cost of the windmills” says Howard Fuller, its inventor.
By rebalancing the blades of conventional wind turbines, the inventor was able to eliminate the up-tower maintenance.
A proof of concept model exists and a prototype is expected to generate 10kW, with production units ranging from 5 to 100kW. An insignificant amount, perhaps, compared to a 3MW windmill, but – argues Fuller – power generation can be scaled up by grouping arrays more densely, with blade clearance no longer a concern.
“The fact that people are coming up with such a variety of solutions testifies to the vibrancy and viability of the wind energy market, and shows that there is a lot of potential”, said Nick Medic of Renewable UK
Whether the Fuller can boost micro-wind for the home remains to be seen.
Via: World Changing
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On June 15th 2009, European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), in cooperation with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), created the Global Wind Day, to be celebrated from then on on that day.
Across the globe numerous public events will be organized simultaneously, this day is an awareness campaign for the promotion of wind energy worldwide, stressing that clean energy tackles climate change and boosts energy independence.
Vestas is the No. 1 company in providing wind energy, they handle everything from project planning, construction, and operation of wind-powered power plants. They state: “As energy consumption soars, where are the fuels that will meet the demand? Fossil fuels are a finite resource that will gradually disappear. But already, their natural replacement is sweeping freely around the earth. Wind. Renewable, predictable, fast to install, clean . . . and commercially viable.”
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Sweden has for years been working to lower its dependence on fossil fuels for energy, while investing and developing renewable energies. Last week, the Enterprise and Energy Minister Maud Olofsson announced that 2,000 new wind turbines will be built during the next decade. This will help Sweden reach its goal of being supplied by renewable energies 50% by 2020.
The project to build 2,000 wind turbines is intended to add 10 terawatt hours (TWh) a year. One terawatt is one trillion watts.
"This would be the highest share in the world," Olofsson said. No other country has such a high share of renewable energies. Actually, Sweden is already one of the most advanced countries in terms of usage of renewable energy. “Renewable energy makes up 40 percent of our energy consumption”.
Oil accounts for one third of Sweden’s energy system. In the 70s, oil represented more than 70% of the total energy supply. Thanks to diversification of fuels and an increasingly efficient use of energy, this percentage keeps going down.
Nowadays, around half of the electricity comes from hydropower, and nuclear power also plays an important role.
Among the renewable energies that have been growing in Sweden are biomass and wind energy. Biomass is very much used for heating. In fact, bio-energy has been growing very much in the last decades. In the 80s, it accounted for around 10% of the total energy supply; in 2004 that share had risen to 16% or 100 TWh. Some of the biofuels used include wood fuels, black liquors and tall oil pitches, and ethanol.
An interesting tool which is used by the Swedish government is the green electricity certificate system. Energy suppliers need to have a quota of renewable energy. The goal of this Renewable electricity with green certificates Bill is to foster the development of renewable electricity production. There are established targets of renewable energy growth rates which help determine quotas. Renewable energy producers are given certificates for every MWh of electricity produced, which can be bought by electricity suppliers, who need to complete their quota obligation.
VIA: Treehugger
We’ve seen in a couple of previous posts how Denmark is making great progress in advancing towards a more sustainable future. Today we’ll analyze the case of Lolland, a Danish island that is combining wind power with fuel cells to come closer to a complete renewable energy system.
A consortium of nine companies called Dansk Microvarme is carrying out a 6-year project to develop the necessary technology and deploy it in the village of Vestenskov. The island generates 50% more wind power than it uses. The problem is that pure wind energy cannot be stored. So, when the wind doesn’t blow, there is a lack of energy, and the village might be forced to resort to fossil fuels. That’s when the idea of hydrogen and fuel cells comes in. The project being developed in Lolland consists of using excess wind power to obtain hydrogen, which is then used in fuel cells to generate electricity and heat.
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It seems like a school project, or a game, too perfect to be real. Yet it does exist; Samso Island, in Denmark, uses nearly 100% renewable energy. In 1997, it won a competition launched by the Ministry of Energy of Denmark, in which participants had to design a plan to make a specific location energy independent, by using only renewable sources. Since then, the island has been investing and developing wind, biomass and solar energy.
The population being around 4,300, it is more feasible to achieve such a demanding goal there than in larger cities.
The main business sectors of the island are agriculture, followed by tourism. Thanks to the renewable energy projects, which brought about 57 million euros in investment, between 1998 and 2007, each year hundreds of jobs were created. In one year the equivalent to 20 years of employment.
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A small ISP (Internet Service Provider) and hosting company in Illinois has become the first data center operator to be powered entirely by wind energy. The company is called Other World Computing (OWC) and is located in Woodstock, Illinois. It has installed a wind turbine on its premises, that supplies all of its energy needs.
The turbine is 131 foot high and it can generate 500 kilowatts of power. Per year, it generates 1.2 million kW, more than twice what OWC needs. The surplus power will be sold to the local power provider. When the wind blows stronger, the wind turbine can produce in one week more energy than what OWC needs for a whole month. On the other hand, the company knows that the wind may not always blow; in those cases, energy is taken from the local provider.
When wind power is transformed into energy, the energy goes to the company’s metering device; OWC uses the amount it needs, and the rest is sold to the local provider.
Further, the company’s facility was rated LEED Platinum. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a rating system that provides a set of standards for environmental construction. Also, thanks to its different green initiatives, OWC was ranked N 9 on a list of green-IT vendors, by computerworld, in 2008.
The turbine was designed to function and produce energy at low speeds, given that the area’s average wind speed is of 10-15 mph. Even at 9 mph, the turbine can generate power.
The whole installation of the turbine cost $1.25 million, an investment that OWC expects to recover within 10-14 years. This period can be reduced considering the rising energy costs.
VIA: DataCenterKnowledge
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