Wind Power

A Cleaner Way to Keep the City Running

Submitted by Charles Frost on Mon, 01/05/2009 - 14:10.

Small Wind Turbines On An Apartment Building

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FAQ's about Renewable Energy for Homes <-Moebius Nature Center---<

Submitted by Zebra Mussel on Thu, 12/18/2008 - 22:06.
02/28/2009 - 22:00
02/28/2009 - 23:00
Etc/GMT-5
Moebius Nature Center Fungus Amoungus

Yes, Solar Erica aka Erika Weliczko of REpower Solutions will discuss renewable energy applications for homes and common questions. Learn some in's and out's about ways that you can make your house less dependent on outside energy sources at a nature center that has its own natural gas well! Ironic no?

Location

929 East Mennonite Road
Aurora, OH 44202
United States

Wind turbine studied by Middleburg - Plan for wind turbine at fairgrounds causes concern

Submitted by Charles Frost on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 20:36.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
By Dustin Brady dbrady [at] sunnews [dot] com
The News Sun

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13 Minute Video Promoting Lake Erie Wind Development

Submitted by Charles Frost on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 20:17.

This was just listed as a small note on the side of the front page of the PD business section the other day...

Click on the "Wind Energy Video" link in the green box on the right hand side of this page:

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The China Problem!?

Submitted by Zebra Mussel on Thu, 05/01/2008 - 23:19.

So I am just back from 14 days in Japan.  Interesting to be on the sidelines as 3,000 Japanese police protect the olympic toarch from what I thought would be a calm, reserved crowd.  Dont get me wrong, I was not in Nagano, I was in Shibuya / Tokyo.. but it got a lot of attention.  Pro and anti China student groups and observers literally throwing punches, 70 year old Japanese men going to jail for throwing tomatoes in the face of the police protecting the toarch... etc.  It was akin to what I saw in the USA when the toarch came thru California.

CLIPPER TURBINES GO BACK TOGETHER AT STEELWINDS IN LACKAWANNA

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Mon, 03/31/2008 - 17:57.

Clipper's Steelwinds project in Lackawanna, New York is passing through a dark and uncertain repair/redesign.  This photo taken on March 28, 2008 shows 6 of the 8 turbine towers without their blades.  Earlier in the week only the tower on the right hand (north) had blades, so it appears that the lattice boom crane  in the center of the photo is installing, not removing, the turbine hub and blades - presumably after the repair of the gear box.  

Earth Day

Submitted by lmcshane on Sun, 03/23/2008 - 16:21.
04/20/2008 - 21:00
Etc/GMT-5
Wear BLUE for Earth Day 2008 to Vote for NO COAL

Location

Great Lakes Wind Collaborative 1st Annual Meeting

Submitted by lmcshane on Mon, 03/10/2008 - 20:52.
05/06/2008 - 09:00
05/07/2008 - 20:00
Etc/GMT-5

Great Lakes Wind Collaborative 1st Annual Meeting

  May 6-7, 2008
Hyatt Regency - Two Fountain Plaza
Buffalo, New York 14202

Location

Buffalo, NY
United States
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50 YEARS OF AMP COAL - PHONY PUBLIC "HEARINGS" SUPPORT IGNORANT ORDINANCES IN CLEVELAND COUNCIL

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 02/27/2008 - 17:42.
 

The Cleveland City Council Chamber is a grand room, with wood paneling, curved seating and a colorful mural above President Sweeney’s high backed seat. 

PETER GRIESINGER WRITES CLEVELAND COUNCIL RE: AMP COAL PLAN

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Mon, 02/25/2008 - 14:30.
Dear Cleveland City Council Members:
This is an urgent plea to exercise your right to cancel the 50 YEAR obligation by Cleveland Public Power to purchase 100MW of electricity from American Municipal Power’s proposed $3.4 billion power plant in Meigs County, OH.

The AMP Contract is The Wrong Deal for Cleveland

Submitted by Kevin Cronin on Sun, 02/24/2008 - 20:07.

Cleveland City Council should rescind its involvement in AMP-Ohio's proposed coal-fired utility in southern Ohio. A fifty year commitment to coal is the wrong direction, for Cleveland Public Power (CPP), its customers and the environment. Instead, CPP should develop a comprehensive plan for energy need and energy sources, that includes efforts to reduce demand through conservation, insulation, wind, solar and other alternative sources.

AMP OHIO NEGOTIATES IN BAD FAITH WITH CLEVELAND

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sat, 02/23/2008 - 16:24.

 
Committing to American Municipal Power's proposed Meigs County pulverized coal generator for 50 years is a death trap for the City of Cleveland - and AMP knows it. 
 

Attending the Cleveland City Council subcommittee on CPP all day yesterday brought things to my mind that wouldn’t have aligned in my head if I hadn’t sat and listened to the back and forth for hours.       AMP OHIO is negotiating with Cleveland in BAD FAITH.    

Cleveland City Council and AMP-Ohio Hearing Friday Morning

Submitted by Kevin Cronin on Thu, 02/21/2008 - 19:57.

is timing really everything? Maybe to a utility company.

Ships on legs

Submitted by Charles Frost on Sun, 02/03/2008 - 21:39.

A Ship With Legs, Used For Erecting Wind Turbines

 

Rising from stormy seas, the giant turbine towers of an offshore wind farm seem almost miraculous to the untrained eye. But how do you put them there?

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10,000 little ideas Feb. 5 - MY IDEA? NEW GOVERNMENT IN NEO

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Fri, 02/01/2008 - 16:32.
02/05/2008 - 17:15
02/05/2008 - 20:00
Etc/GMT-4

Cleveland365.com (what persons/names/$ are behind this anyway?) is sponsoring what they call a 10,000 little ideas convo

Location

Sammy's Metropolitan Ballroom
925 Euclid Avenue 21st Floor, Huntington Bank Build
Cleveland, OH
United States

A Snapshot of the U. S. Wind Industry

Submitted by Charles Frost on Thu, 01/17/2008 - 20:54.

A Wind Cost Chart

By Daniel M. Kammen 12/11/07

 

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The First Lake Erie Crib Wind Monitoring Report Is Out

Submitted by Charles Frost on Sun, 01/13/2008 - 21:43.

Graph Of Lake Erie Winds At The Crib

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CLIPPER WIND TURBINE GEAR FAILURES STOP "STEELWINDS" IN LACKAWANNA , NEW YORK

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Thu, 01/03/2008 - 13:35.

The Buffalo News reports today that the complicated gearboxes on the Clipper wind turbines in Lackawanna, New York have caused the facility to shut down.   The photo above was taken in September of 2007 and shows the eight Clipper turbines on the old Bethlehem slag heaps with Buffalo in the left hand background.

A Very Amazing and Inspiring Young Man!!!!

Submitted by Charles Frost on Thu, 12/13/2007 - 19:54.

20-year-old William Kamkwamba

A Young Tinkerer Builds a Windmill, Electrifying a Nation
Mr. Kamkwamba's Creation Spurs Hope in Malawi; Entrepreneurs Pay Heed
By SARAH CHILDRESS
December 12, 2007; Page A1
MASITALA, Malawi -- On a continent woefully short of electricity, 20-year-old William Kamkwamba has a dream: to power up his country one windmill at a time.
So far, he has built three windmills in his yard here, using blue-gum trees and bicycle parts. His tallest, at 39 feet, towers over this windswept village, clattering away as it powers his family's few electrical appliances: 10 six-watt light bulbs, a TV set and a radio. The machine draws in visitors from miles around.
 Self-taught, Mr. Kamkwamba took up windmill building after seeing a picture of one in an old textbook. He's currently working on a design for a windmill powerful enough to pump water from wells and provide lighting for Masitala, a cluster of buildings where about 60 families live.
Then, he wants to build more windmills for other villages across the country. Betting he can do it, a group of investors are putting him through school.
"I was thinking about electricity," says Mr. Kamkwamba, explaining how he got hooked on wind. "I was thinking about what I'd like to have at home, and I was thinking, 'What can I do?' "
To meet his family's growing power needs, he recently hammered in a shiny store-bought windmill next to the big one at his home and installed solar panels. He has another windmill still in its box that he'll put up at a house 70 miles away in the capital, Lilongwe, where he now goes to school.
A few years ago, he built a windmill for the primary school in Masitala. He used it to teach an informal windmill-building course. Lately, he has offered to help the village handyman down the road build his own machine.
"Energy poverty" -- the scarcity of modern fuels and electrical supplies in poor parts of the world -- is a subject of great interest to development economists. The windmill at the Kamkwamba family compound, a few brick buildings perched on a hill overlooking the village, has turned it into a stop for the curious: People trekking across Malawi's arid plains drop by. Villagers now regularly make the dusty walk up the hill to charge their cellphones.
The contraption causing all the fuss is a tower made from lashed-together blue-gum tree trunks. From a distance, it resembles an old oil derrick. For blades, Mr. Kamkwamba used flattened plastic pipes. He built a turbine from spare bicycle parts. When the wind kicks up, the blades spin so fast they rock the tower violently back and forth.
Mr. Kamkwamba's wind obsession started six years ago. He wasn't going to school anymore because his family couldn't afford the $80-a-year tuition.
When he wasn't helping his family farm groundnuts and soybeans, he was reading. He stumbled onto a photograph of a windmill in a text donated to the local library and started to build one himself. The project seemed a waste of time to his parents and the rest of Masitala.
"At first, we were laughing at him," says Agnes Kamkwamba, his mother. "We thought he was doing something useless."
The laughter ended when he hooked up his windmill to a thin copper wire, a car battery and a light bulb for each room of the family's main house.
The family soon started enjoying the trappings of modern life: a radio and, more recently, a TV. They no longer have to buy paraffin for lantern light. Two of Mr. Kamkwamba's six sisters stay up late studying for school.
"Our lives are much happier now," Mrs. Kamkwamba says.
The new power also attracted a swarm of admirers. Last November, Hartford Mchazime, a Malawian educator, heard about the windmill and drove out to the Kamkwamba house with some reporters. After the news hit the blogosphere, a group of entrepreneurs scouting for ideas in Africa located Mr. Kamkwamba. Called TED, the group, which invites the likes of Al Gore and Bono to share ideas at conferences, invited him to a brainstorming session earlier this year.
In June, Mr. Kamkwamba was onstage at a TED conference in Tanzania. (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/153) (TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design). "I got information about a windmill, and I try and I made it," he said in halting English to a big ovation. After the conference, a group of entrepreneurs, African bloggers and venture capitalists -- some teary-eyed at the speech -- pledged to finance his education.
His backers have also showered him with new gadgets, including a cellphone with a hip-hop ringtone, a laptop and an iPod. (Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" is his current favorite tune.) They rewired his family's house, replacing the homemade switches he made out of flip-flop parts.
They're paying for him to attend an expensive international academy in the capital, Lilongwe, for children of expatriate missionaries and aid workers. But his teacher, Lorilee MacLean, sometimes worries about his one-track mind and about all the attention he's getting.
"I don't want him to be seen as William the windmill maker," said Mrs. MacLean one day recently. While Mr. Kamkwamba quietly plowed through homework, his classmates were busy gossiping and checking their Facebook profiles.
Mr. Kamkwamba has taught his family to maintain the windmill when he's away at school. His sister Dolice and cousin Geoffrey can quickly scamper up the tower, as it sways and clatters in the wind, to make repairs.
A steady stream of curiosity seekers make the trip to the Kamkwamba compound -- mostly unannounced. The visits are unsettling for the reserved family.
One afternoon, a pair of Malawian health workers came by to get a closer look and meet Mr. Kamkwamba. The family scattered, leaving the pair -- dressed in shirts and ties for the occasion -- standing awkwardly in the yard.
"We have heard about this windmill, and so we wanted to see it for ourselves," one finally spoke up. Mr. Kamkwamba came around to shake hands, then quickly moved away to show another visitor around.
Jealousy is a social taboo in these parts, but Fred Mwale, an educator who works in Wimbe, the area that includes Masitala, says the family's new prosperity is causing some tensions.
"People do desire what is happening here. They come, and admire," he says. "They think that they might get the same support if they build a windmill."
Down the hill, the village handyman started building his own windmill after secretly studying Mr. Kamkwamba's. A gust of wind blew the blades off the man's first few attempts. Mr. Kamkwamba offered to help him rebuild, but got no reply.
"I'm waiting to see if he's serious," Mr. Kamkwamba says.
 

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As wind turbines multiply, so do bird concerns

Submitted by Zebra Mussel on Sat, 11/17/2007 - 11:29.

Pacific Northwest is example of energy boom — and worried biologists

PORTLAND, Ore. - Wind energy may be emerging as an important alternative power source for the Northwest, but there are concerns about the danger to hawks and eagles as turbines expand to wild areas of the Columbia River Gorge.

By year's end, more than 1,500 turbines will be churning out electricity in the windy gorge. Until now, most of the projects have gone up in wheat fields — cultivated land that long ago drove away the rodents that raptors hunt. But as wind energy developers move into wilder areas along the ridge of the gorge, near canyons and shrub-covered rangeland, birds could be at risk from the 150-foot blades of giant turbines.

World's Largest Windfarm Gets Approval

Submitted by Charles Frost on Mon, 10/08/2007 - 19:40.
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The Wind

Submitted by Charles Frost on Sun, 09/30/2007 - 20:11.

 

The Wind - a cute short two minute video from Germany (in English).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mTLO2F_ERY

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