Wind Turbine Energy: How It Works and Stocks to Watch 15 comments
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In particular, the U.S. small wind turbine market grew over 20% and deployed over 9.7 megawatts (MW) of new capacity in 2008. Numerous new start-up manufacturers entered the market and small wind media inquiries were at an all-time high, reflecting this growth. Federal small wind energy, tax-credits are available at 30% of the cost, with no upper limit through 2016 (for existing homes and new construction).
Based on research data analysis, we project small residential wind turbines and solar PV are examples of technologies moving the U.S. toward realizing the new administration’s vision for a renewable energy future combined with creating thousands of new manufacturing and dealer jobs across the country.
click to enlarge images
This past fall, Congress passed a small-wind tax credit that gives an average $4,000 investment tax credit for the purchase of turbines. President Obama's economic stimulus package could breathe new life into the emerging industry: small wind turbines. Specifically the bill provides a 30 percent investment tax credit to consumers who buy wind turbines, which are typically used to help power homes or small businesses.
The U.S. small wind industry projects that the enactment of the tax credit, combined with a forthcoming equipment certification program, will provide thousands of new green collar jobs and contribute to an estimated 40%-50% annual growth for the industry.
Wind Energy Companies To Watch
Companies leading the high growth wind energy industry include; VESTA Wind Systems (VWSYF.PK - Copenhagen, Denmark) with a 23% global market share, GE Energy Financial Services (NYSE: GE), StatoilHydro (NYSE:STO), Siemens Wind Power (NYSE: SI), Danotek Motion Technologies - turbine generators, Owens Corning composite turbine blades (NYSE: OC), Dewind - Composite Technologies Corporation (CPTC.OB), and Kaydon Corporation (NYSE: KDN) and BP Alternative Energy (NYSE: BP).
Emerging market small turbine wind energy companies to watch include; Mariah Power - Windspire , Tangarie Alternative Power LLC, , Urban Green Energy , Wind Energy 7 , Windmax Green Energy , Bergey Windpower Company , Wind Turbine Industries Corporation , Abundant Renewable Energy , Atlantic Orient Corporation , TechnoSpin , Swift Wind Turbines , Qingdao Zicheng Wind Power Generator Co , Aerofortis Energy Solutions , and Wind Energy Solutions BV among many rapidly growing companies.
The U.S. still leads worldwide in small wind production, but global market opportunities, and the resulting clean, renewable energy production, may also involve foreign states where favorable policies exist specifically Europe, South America and Asian countries.
Industry challenges to meeting its full potential continue to be political, financial, and regulatory in nature, not technological. A continued progression of favorable domestic policies will help maintain the United States’ long-standing dominance in the global small wind market. U.S. manufacturers still claim a domestic stronghold, but foreign markets, expanded by a host of incentive policies, have also become fertile and new opportunities abroad being filled by U.S. and foreign manufacturers alike.
The industry has made steady progress toward overcoming market barriers by challenging unfavorable zoning regulations, pursuing certification programs for equipment and installers, and securing private external investment. It is expected that political leaders at the local, state, and federal levels will take a greater role and further encourage growth in this segment of the U.S. economy.
Micro Turbine’s Visual Appearance
Many types of turbines exist but the traditional horizontal micro wind turbine typically consists of a tail, a body housing the generator, and a number of aerodynamic blades.
How does a Micro Wind Turbine operate? A wind turbines aerodynamic blades are turned by the wind’s lift forces. This in turn rotates, what is effectively a copper coil through a magnetic field, generating an electrical current. In a micro wind turbine scenario, DC current is then transported away from the generator, with it’s destination either being a bank of storage batteries or an inverter , so that the power can be imported into a mains electricity circuit (such as a House’s power grid). These two usage options are explored later in this document.
Micro Wind Turbines Output
Micro wind turbines are typically rated by their power output at a wind speed of 12.5 m/s. This has fast become the industry standard. However there can still be massive differences in performance between two turbines rated at 1kw. For example, some models of turbine will have to ‘cut out’ when the wind speeds are slightly above the 12.5 m/s mark. The reason being that they will have been produced to only be able to reliably cope with the rotational speed, and power output that a wind of 12.5 m/s produces. A cut out on such a unit will typically mean the unit brakes itself to a standstill for a period of time, before allowing itself to start rotating once more. This puts a turbine that cut itself out at slightly above it’s rated power at a disadvantage to a turbine, which whilst also rated at 1 kw at 12.5 m/s, can also continue to produce 2kw at 20 m/s, 2.5 at 23 m/s etc. Turbines with a capacity to do this are often more expensive and therefore wisely utilized in areas of higher average wind speed. An alternative solution is to incorporate electromagnetic braking into the turbine, so that once it exceeds it’s capacity, it uses any excess to slow itself down slightly. Thus ensuring that at no point does it need to stop generating power.
Reliability - Although the wind industry has achieved high levels of wind turbine availability and reliability, any potential unpredictable or unreliable performance would threaten the credibility of this emerging technology in the eyes of financial institutions. The consequences of real or perceived reliability problems would extend beyond the direct cost to the plant owners. The public’s confidence in the technology is crucial. Without public support, partnerships working toward a new wind industry future cannot be successful.
Basic Principles Wind energy is still a largely untapped renewable energy resource, particularly in the United States. For example, the UK receives 40% of Europe’s total wind energy (1), and yet only 0.5% of our electricity requirements are generated by wind turbines. The most basic principle of capturing Wind power is the conversion of the wind’s kinetic energy into mechanical energy. This mechanical energy can then be utilized in two possible ways; it can be used to create electricity in applications that are called Wind Turbines, or it is used directly to pump or grind, which falls under the generic bracket of ‘Windmills’. This briefing notes document will concentrate on ‘Micro Wind Turbines’, in particular turbines which have a full load output of under 4 kilo watts. These are turbines which will practical for domestic property and small industrial installations.
As a nation, the United States has made much progress recently in developing its wind resources. However, advancements in wind technologies and the projected increasing demand for electricity will provide significant opportunities to further develop this domestic renewable resource. Actions toward this goal, offer residents and businesses in the rural and urban United States potential for economic development opportunities and potential for employment.
The United States is a prime location for developing wind resources and new wind manufacturing facilities. At the same time, relocating or expanding existing industries can give businesses opportunities to meet many of the material needs associated with wind technology manufacturing, installation, and facility operation.
In many areas of the country, renewable resources provide an opportunity to boost the local economy significantly. Wind plants offer employment during construction and continue to support permanent jobs during operation. Today, tax revenues from wind plants help to fund local schools, hospitals, and government services.
Conclusion / Summary Analysis
Based on the research data contained in this report, a new and expanding wind manufacturing industry can meet 25% of U.S. domestic electricity needs through 2030 with a steady 30% annual industry growth rate thru 2016. The complete Wind Energy Report is available for purchase.
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This article has 15 comments:
Since I live near Denmark and Germany, and occasionally am in the mood to read these languages, I know that wind is often seriously overrated. (In Germany, for instance, the average capacity factor is only about 20-21%.) Yes, we need more wind and solar, but not if it means an escalation of the electricity price. I know that it's selfish, but I for one feel that I am already paying a great deal for electricity.
But neither wind nor solar power can be used to meet surging energy demands. And, while wind may be a low-cost resource when it is blowing, no renewable resources will provide for the large "base load" resources that Colorado needs the most.
An economic analyst claims he's done the numbers and wind energy is costing the Victorian Government far more money than any wind turbines could generate.
In addition wind is very unreliable, it cuts in and cuts out, so you have to have backup for it, so the costs are somewhat in excess of that crude depiction of the premium price you have to pay for wind.
"Oh, well they just cut in and cut out. Windfarms on average operate for 25 per cent of the time, but they only operate when the wind is blowing, so when the wind isn't blowing they're not available. I think it was well publicised in South Australia a wek or so ago when they had a heatwave of 42 or so degrees and suddenly none of the windfarms were operating, or only operating at very low level and one of them caught fire. Wind is not and cannot be reliable. You can rely on it to be there when you need it only 10 per cent of the time," he says."
Links to articles found here.
www.prosefights.org/wi...
On Mar 22 10:40 AM billp37 wrote:
> "The reason is that in Texas, and most of the United States, the
> hottest days are the least windy. As a result, wind turns out to
> be a good way to save fuel, but not a good way to avoid building
> plants that burn coal. A wind machine is a bit like a bicycle that
> a commuter keeps in the garage for sunny days. It saves gasoline,
> but the commuter has to own a car anyway.
>
> But neither wind nor solar power can be used to meet surging energy
> demands. And, while wind may be a low-cost resource when it is blowing,
> no renewable resources will provide for the large "base load" resources
> that Colorado needs the most.
>
> An economic analyst claims he's done the numbers and wind energy
> is costing the Victorian Government far more money than any wind
> turbines could generate.
>
> In addition wind is very unreliable, it cuts in and cuts out, so
> you have to have backup for it, so the costs are somewhat in excess
> of that crude depiction of the premium price you have to pay for
> wind.
>
> "Oh, well they just cut in and cut out. Windfarms on average operate
> for 25 per cent of the time, but they only operate when the wind
> is blowing, so when the wind isn't blowing they're not available.
> I think it was well publicised in South Australia a wek or so ago
> when they had a heatwave of 42 or so degrees and suddenly none of
> the windfarms were operating, or only operating at very low level
> and one of them caught fire. Wind is not and cannot be reliable.
> You can rely on it to be there when you need it only 10 per cent
> of the time," he says."
>
> Links to articles found here.
>
> www.prosefights.org/wi...
>
>
>
This is the future!
Disclosure : long : Ormat, Nevada Power , Western Wind, Clipper,World Water and Solar , Suntech , Cree, ZBB .
Algae can be grown year-round, providing a stable source of energy, unlike wind and solar. Lastly, it is more land-efficient than either wind or solar, based upon prototype plants created by a handful of startup algae farm companies.
I don't hear people contending that wind replaces coal power or nuclear. Most people who are paying attention understand that one is base load and one isn't.
There are undoubtedly some areas of the world that don't have sufficient wind or solar potential and will likely need to rely more on nuclear, but that is by no means universal. The U.S. has plenty of both wind and solar potential for instance.
Wind is not expensive power. I don't know what makes you think so.
And as usual in these conversations, it is assumed that there are no additional or hidden costs with fossil fuels. The hidden or externalized costs are in fact huge. We can no longer pretend that they don't exist. The days of pretending that environmental costs can be ignored are over.
For instance, the hidden costs of oil would double the cost of gasoline if included at the pump. And that is probably an understatement.
The hidden costs would probably add $4 /gallon based on studies, one of which showed twice that amount.
And even considering all that, you can't really measure the environmental costs in dollars and cents. What is the cost of a dead ocean from warming and acidification for instance? Immeasurable!
Solar will continue to decline in cost as fossil fuels go up. Solar thermal can already match the electricity prices from any new nuclear plants that are built, and will be at half their price in ten years, when the first new reactors are likely to go online.
Grid parity for PV solar is also within ten years of becoming a reality across the entire U.S. and in five years for 40% of the U.S.
climateprogress.org/20.../
billp37
"But neither wind nor solar power can be used to meet surging energy demands. And, while wind may be a low-cost resource when it is blowing, no renewable resources will provide for the large 'base load' resources that Colorado needs the most."
No wind is not dispatchable, but your sweeping generalization is patently false. Solar thermal with heat storage can indeed provide 'base load' power and is DISPATCHABLE. Stop spreading misleading ideas. And Colorado is conveniently close to the southwest areas will solar thermal will be built. Solar that doesn't have heat storage still provides power when it is most needed, during peak demand.
A study by the Western Governors Association found that there is sufficient suitable land near existing power lines to build 300 GW of solar thermal. By building HVDC transmission, this potential can be vastly increased.
We now have 313 GW nameplate coal generating capacity for comparison.
climateprogress.org/20.../
climateprogress.org/20.../
And wind is not just low cost (when the wind is blowing), it is straight up low cost energy.
Period. Including the words in parenthesis is misleading.
"You can rely on it to be there when you need it only 10 per cent of the time," he says."
Huh?
Another misleading statement. You just cut the capacity factor by two thirds with this pretzel logic. We already know it is intermittent. That's why we need energy storage and a smart grid.
And wind power at night can help charge EVs or PHEVs during non peak demand hours.
If there is excess power at night, you can cut back some of the gas fired energy and use the wind. When the wind isn't blowing, you fire up the gas plants. There are many ways to balance the grid. This includes shuttling power from areas of low demand to areas of high demand during the day, from one time zone to the next for instance. We already do this. HVDC will help lower the cost of sending power over long distances.
We can also make those gas plants much more efficient by turning them into combined heat and power. Fuel cells are applicable here also.
They can work in conjuction with normal firing of gas, or ultimately replace the firing of gas, with cleaner combined heat and power energy.
FCEL is in this business, and while still small, has scored contracts .
Generally accepted capacity factor for wind is anywhere from 25-40%. Are some areas experiencing lower results than this? That could be true, but doesn't necessarily mean it is generally true.
There is another solution for replacing coal -biomass. Burning biomass instead of coal, or along with coal, can save operators of coal plants from having to write down existing coal plants, while making them much greener.
This can be done sustainably using renewable sources. See here:
climateprogress.org/20.../
climateprogress.org/20.../
As far as an economist's analysis saying that wind cost Victoria more than wind can generate, I would take that with about 2 pounds of salt.
There are economists who want you to think that moving to clean energy will be too expensive.
A good example of such misleading and faulted economic analysis is the study done by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital.
It has been roundly debunked.
climateprogress.org/20.../
climateprogress.org/20.../
Their study was heavily biased and flawed, as well as being non transparant. They assume no cost from climate change with a business as usual scenario, for one thing.
There have been 25 peer reviewed studies showing that the cost of switching to renewables and efficiency will be minimal over the next 20 years.
Growing wind energy in the U.S. to 20% by 2030:
"This would require 300,000 MW of wind, delivering electricity for about 6 to 8.5 cents per kilowatt hour, unsubsidized (i.e. no federal tax credit) and including the cost of transmission to access existing power lines within 500 miles of wind resource [new nuclear is currently about 15 cents/kwh ].
The 20% Wind Scenario could require an incremental investment of as little as $43 billion NPV [net present value] more than the base-case no new Wind Scenario. This would represent less than 0.06 cent (6 one-hundredths of 1 cent) per kilowatt-hour of total generation by 2030, or roughly 50 cents per month per household
The benefits are:
"Reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent in 2030.
Reduce natural gas use by 11%;
Reduce water consumption associated with electricity generation by 4 trillion gallons by 2030;
Increase annual revenues to local communities to more than $1.5 billion by 2030;
Support roughly 500,000 jobs in the U.S., with an average of more than 150,000 workers directly employed by the wind industry."
Joseph Romm at Climate Progress
more on wind energy at these links:
climateprogress.org/20.../
climateprogress.org/20.../
"Wind power is coming of age. In 2007, some 20,000 megawatts of wind were installed globally, enough to power 6 million homes. Sadly, most wind power manufacturers are no longer American, thanks to decades of funding cuts by conservatives. Still, new wind is poised to be a bigger contributor to U.S. (and global) electricity generation than new nuclear power in the coming decades. As I have written earlier, concentrated solar power could be an even bigger power source, and it can even share power lines with wind."
www.salon.com/news/fea...
Wind power only uses about 2 1/2% of the land it is sited on, allowing it to co-exist with agriculture. Turbines are spread out for even air flow. Each 2-3 MW turbine has a footprint about the size of a parking space for a car.
Wind's lowest carbon footprint and land footprint.
solveclimate.com/blog/...
"Wind power's ecological footprint is so small — a million times smaller than ethanol's — that if all the cars driven in the United States were battery-electric, they could be fueled by wind turbines whose total land footprint, not counting spacing in between, takes up less than 1.2 square miles, Stanford University environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobson found."
"To fuel the same number of battery-electric vehicles with cellulose ethanol would require an amount of land equivalent to eight Californias – literally a million times more land and equivalent to the amount of land harvested in the U.S. in 2003."
I've written about wind at my blog quite a bit, including on March 16th - "A Rushing Mighty Wind."
On Mar 22 12:38 PM James Rickman wrote:
> excellent ideas and interest, particulary insightful response by
> Shafer comment above; " Technical innovation will create "smart
> grids" and "smart real estate" where peak usage will be managed down.
> Wind, solar, nuclear and yes even coal, gas and oil will still be
> needed, but will be interacting with each other, maintained by a
> smart grid. The holy grail is not 100% renewables, but to lower dependence
> on fossil fuels and to become more efficient users of energy. Eventually,
> we will learn how to store energy efficiently [perhaps well down
> the line] and then we can start to totally get rid of fossil fuel
> technology. This is the future! "
>
> -- great comments, dialogue and ideas here - wind energy is already
> realizing very solid financial market growth worlwide particularly
> in comparision with other potential investments in a tough economy
> -- wind energy investments (both large & micro turbine) are and
> will generate solid returns for years - author !
On Mar 22 03:53 PM connorport wrote:
> Try this company on for size. XDSL or MPHASE Technolgies. They
> have just released a developed GREEN battery that can last 10 times
> longer than traditional batteries and an unknown shelf life which
> they call 20-30 years. It appears they laid this in front of congress
> march 17-19 and the volume on this stock double all of these days
> which would point to someone telling someone to get on board with
> this idea. They also claim to be the CLEAN energy storage of the
> future. Somehow i think they are on to something. Any ideas on
> this technology?
news.cnet.com/8301-111...
Found your article by archival search on wind. What do you think/know of this micro-turbine company: Mass Megawatts Wind Power, Inc. based in Worcester, Mass. (Over the Counter Bulletin Board: MMGW; www.massmegawatts.com/). They have patented a structure with multiple vertical turbines each with its own generator(s) that feed to a power collector panel, a "Multi-Axis Turbosystem (MAT)." Each MAT consists of a rectangular fabricated steel frame 80' high x 80' long and 40' wide, elevated 50' above ground level for improved wind velocity, and secured to footings at ground level. Each stack is connected to two generators mounted on the ground level footing. No custom-made parts and maintenance is mostly at ground level. Can generate power at 10 mph and withstand winds up to 120. Can't find specific power ratings on their web site. Like to know your opinion.