Recently in wind Category

The best information sources are often your readers.

I received an e-mail last week from Jim McGilligan, who has a degree in engineering from the University of Delware, who just came across this article on water and energy titled: "What is your water footprint?" published in the (Lafourche Parish, La.) Daily Comet. Written by Tom Rooney, president and CEO of SPG Solar in Novato, Calif the article is "the best I've ever seen" on this topic, Jim tells me.

The article raises the key points that we should consider water consumption and concern ourselves with the amounts of energy required to heat and cool water when looking at shrinking our carbon footprints i.e. 'water footprints'.

For most types of commercial electric power the story says you need water: to turn into steam i.e. coal, gas, nuclear, oil or to push turbines i.e. hydro. In the former grouping this water which must be cooled and reused rather than dumped into lakes, ponds, and streams, harming aquatic life. 

While the articles doesn't mention this in the latter example i.e. hydro, water must be dammed, interfering with fish runs and turning farms and forests into eerie liquid landscapes, whose remains can be seen during low levels. There has been and continues to be costly efforts to provide for or restore salmon on rivers blocked by hydro projects.

The story says that it takes at least a gallon of water to create one kilowatt hour of power: enough to run your air conditioner for one hour.

It cites estimates from Rachelle Hill and Dr. Tamim Younos of Virginia Tech University that "fossil fuel thermoelectric plants use between ... 8 to 16 gallons of water to burn one 60-watt light bulb for 12 hours per day. Over the duration of one year this one incandescent light bulb would consume about 3,000 to 6,300 gallons of water."

"So we use water to create energy, and we use energy to create water -- to create more energy to create more water," says Rooney. "And on and on and on it goes in a downward spiral that completely distorts the way we think and act about water and power."

Rooney, perhaps not surprisingly given his company recommends using photovoltaic cells. While these solutions will not replace water-based power sources (not in my part of the world i.e. the Pacific Northwest where in winter the sun is that weird object we know is out there) he does call attention to the need to cut down on water use and on the energy consumption in turning water into energy. Not when we have other uses for that water i.e. drinking, to sustain life forms that we eat. 

With growing populations and global warming that has led to droughts--and the Moon a little far away for a pipeline--we can't afford to waste that ultimately life-given commodity.

Thanks Jim!
 

The Friday Oct.30 edition of the Peace Arch News that is distributed in South Surrey and White Rock, British Columbia in Metro Vancouver that borders on the U.S. contained a thought-provoking snippet on wind power by Dr. Roy Strang who covers the environment for the publication.

In it he writes: "Europeans are beginning to find that installing windmills to generate electricity has not led to any significant reduction in CO2 emissions--despite all the early hopes and promises. Because wind power blows only fitfully, backup conventional generators are needed, at full capital costs, for intermittent use."

"Denmark's costs are 15 cents per kilowatt hour while Ontario's cost is six cents. In the U.S., wind-powered generation is subsidized to the tune of $23.34/kwh; compare this to gas at 25 cents, coal at 44 cents, hydro at 67 cents and nuclear at $1.59. The wind itself costs nothing; harnessing it obviously is not free."

The study Dr. Strang appears to be referring to is titled "Wind Energy The Case For Denmark" published in September 2009 by the Center for Politske Studier. Among the findings are:

--"The wind power that is exported from Denmark saves neither fossil fuel consumption nor CO2 emissions in Denmark, where it is all paid for. By necessity, wind power exported to Norway and Sweden supplants largely carbon neutral electricity in the Nordic countries. No coal is used nor are there power-related CO2 emissions in Sweden and Norway."

--"Notwithstanding its many disadvantages wind power's one striking advantage is that, like nuclear, its marginal costs of operation are very small once the capital has been paid. However, unlike nuclear, many ten to fifteen year-old turbines are past their useful life. By contrast, most conventional rotating power plant can enjoy a working life of 40 to 60 years, as evidenced by most power plants in Europe today. This puts into question the strategic, economic and environmental benefits of a power plant that may have to be scrapped, replaced and resubsidized every ten to fifteen years."

Hmmm...do we have another case of well-intentioned greenwashing (with taxpayers' green) a la ethanol on our hands where the net benefits do not exceed the total costs? Wind energy, like solar, cannot effectively be used to shave the most critical need--namely coping with peak-power demands unless you want to invest huge sums in electricity storage schemes like batteries, capacitors, and flywheels; hydro has long used pumped storage that sucks up a lot of land.

Or is this an example where, like solar, wind can be harnessed only in rare and site specific cases in close implementation with other tools such as LEED-designed buildings as in the case of Other World Computing's corporate HQ in Illinois, that, as reported on TMCnet.com has become first U.S. technology manufacturer/distributor to become 100 percent on-site wind powered. OWC also installed the wind power plant and made other energy-saving and environmental-footprint-reducing investments like heat pumps and water conservation at the facility without subsidies.
 

For this particular show we will be using electricity in our registration system. We are thinking however that at the next event we may get a bank of Inveneo bicycle-powered PCs to handle this task. We are of course evaluating the carbon output of a human breathing hard versus just getting the juice from a wall socket. More to come later.

• Opening Keynote Address by Rick Snyder, President, TANDBERG
• Top Ten Ways to be GREEN through Better Networking Presented by Cisco
• Maximizing Benefits of a Virtual Workforce Presented by Arise Virtual Solutions
• Empowering Teleworking with IP Telephony and Web Services Presented by BlueNote Networks, Inc.
• Virtual Meetings: A Faster Path to Lowered Emissions Presented by Polycom, Inc.
• Alleviating the Carbon Footprint of Corporate Travel though Conferencing, Collaboration and Video Conferencing Presented by IP Unity Glenayre
• Green Case Study: Pat Lobb Toyota Presented by Pat Lobb Toyota
• The Greening of the Data Center Presented by Digital Realty Trust, AMD, and Foundry Networks

• Keynote Address by Joan Vandermate, VP of Marketing, Polycom
• Paving the Way for a Greener Approach to Deploying Telecom
• Networks Presented by RadiSys
• Advanced TCA -- Green Conferencing in Data Centers Presented by Polycom, Inc.
• Truly Green Application Specific Computer Design Presented by Arlinx, Inc.
• The Future of Green Technology Presented by Ericsson, BT Conferencing USA, and Cincom Systems, Inc.