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Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

U.S. Poised for Wind and Solar Power Boom

Author:     Tina Casey
Source:    
Publication Date:     21-Jan-11
 Link: U.S. Poised for Wind and Solar Power Boom
Stephan:   This is generally good news, and I am glad to see it. However, I am concerned about the situation described in the section on the turbines pulling winds down from higher elevations. That sounds like an alarm bell, to me, going off. Disrupting natural cycles is rarely a good idea. I hope we are not going to recreate the ethanol debacle, where our biomass fuel got locked to corn. Not only is it a much less effective way to create ethanol, it sets up a competition between food and energy, and we can already see what that is doing to food prices. The wind power system that looks the best, in my view, is the one with the non-mechanical wands that can be used either on land or under the sea, and that have no moving parts, just the flex of the wand creates the energy (see SR archive for the story). The Green Transition is not a sure thing, and it is going to take a while to work out how to do it. Science moves from the mechanical to the electro-mechanical-to the electrical-and then, I think, to the biological.

Some of the news buzzing around this week concerns China’s progress in the clean energy marketplace, but a couple of new developments in the U.S. shows that the race for clean energy is just starting to heat up. First, the Department of Energy has just announced that a massive solar array is moving forward in Arizona with a $976 million federal loan guarantee. And second, a new wind power study suggests that a way to boost the cost-effectiveness of America’s wind resources in the near term.

A New Boost for Wind Power Efficiency

Let’s get to that wind power study first, because it demonstrates that there is an enormous potential for significant improvements in the cost effectiveness of renewable energy over the short run, while next-generation technology develops over the long run. The study indicates that the efficiency of wind farms can be increased significantly simply by siting the turbines farther apart than is the current norm. The research team found that wind farms depend more on strong winds pulled down from higher altitudes, than on winds closer to the surface. When spaced farther apart, the turbines create additional turbulence that helps draw more wind from higher up.
Green Jobs and Wind […]

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