Learning About Dirt

Today we divvied up a list of topics for further research and I chose Alternative Forms of Energy and how said forms are harnessed. I was so fascinated with the info I posted about earlier this morning that I opted to continue on that path. So, I am delving into Wind power first. Wind power has been harnessed for quite some time now…think of the Windmills in Holland.

There are actually “wind farms” all over the US, one of the largest is located in upstate NY. How do I know this, you ask? Well, I worked at the country’s first Brewery that operates on electricity from a Wind Farm, the Brooklyn Brewery. http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=59

I have discovered some interesting facts from researching this on the web. Wikipedia, Andrew’s favorite site, had quite a bit of info to share: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

To sum it up quickly, a few of the more interesting facts were the following:

Although wind currently produces just over 1% of world-wide electricity use,^[2] it accounts for approximately 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain and Portugal, and 6% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland (2007 data). Globally, wind power generation increased more than fivefold between 2000 and 2007.

Wind power is produced in large scale wind farms connected to electrical grids, as well as in individual turbines for providing electricity to isolated locations.

Wind energy is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions when it displaces fossil-fuel-derived electricity. The intermittency of wind seldom creates insurmountable problems when using wind power to supply a low proportion of total demand, but it presents extra costs when wind is to be used for a large fraction of demand.

Wind farms are located in places that tend to be windy (duh) on a constant basis. Unfortunately, La. is not one of those places and ranks very low in regards to how windy it is overall as a state. Personally, I find La. to be somewhat windy because there is nothing to prevent the wind such as mountains and buildings but it ranks as one of the least windy states. Go figure. It does, however, have plenty of highway as well as ocean to utilize for harnessing wind. Wind farms are often out at sea, this is a popular place to start Wind Farms, especially in Europe. Seems to me like a perfect thing to do as the state has no issue with having Oil Rigs everywhere you look out along the coast. I wish the Oil companies were not so dominant and that could become a reality but something tells me they will not even consider such a move until every last drop of oil has been pulled from the earth.

The highways seem to be a perfect alternative to this though. The idea of the New Jersey barrier with wind turbines built into them as seen in the post below is, as stated, an amazing one. Imagine if they were to build the proposed light rail system from Baton Rouge to New Orleans along the highway and powered it with the wind created by traffic? That would be a huge step in the right direction for this state to enter the 21st century regarding the “Green” revolution currently taking place.

Other forms of turbines look like this:

This is a wind turbine called the “Quiet Revolution” which is popular in the UK. The only objection I have about this format is that it must really shred birds on a regular basis. The best part about this turbine is that the wind can come from any direction as opposed to the turbine that we are familiar with which needs to rotate towards the direction of the wind for optimal harvest:

There is also the Vertical Axis wind turbine (the one Brad mentioned) which looks like this:

Above is a horizontal Wind turbine which, I am assuming, could be placed alongside highways to capture wind.

Finally, I had to post this picture as well. This baddy can power 5,000 homes. It is rather large:

Frickin’ huge, even.