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It’s official: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave the go-ahead to America’s first offshore wind farm. The decision was long-awaited by supporters, who hope that this project will finally spur other offshore wind farms. The 130-turbine, 400-MW power plant will be located in the Nantucket Sound about five miles off the Massachusetts coast. Because it’s visible low on the horizon from Cape Cod, the project has aptly come to be known as Cape Wind.

Anyone who’s followed renewable energy news in recent years has no doubt heard mention of Cape Wind, for it has stirred up a decade-long controversy, despite its ability to create enough wind energy to power 400,000 homes. Supporters call it a major breakthrough for the US wind industry and our collective drive toward cleaner electricity, but powerful detractors have persisted, including late Senator Ted Kennedy, who didn’t like the idea of gazing at wind turbines from his Hyannis Port home, which overlooks Nantucket Sound.

Two Wampanoag Indian tribes delayed a ruling last year by claiming the turbines would disrupt spiritual sun ceremonies and potentially even artifacts on the seabed. Other reasons for controversy have included possible damage to historic sites, birds, fishing, aviation and those who simply see the turbines as an eyesore.

So there’s no doubt that Secretary Salazar’s decision is a big one. One that even he admits will likely have further legal battles to fight, although he is confident that Cape Wind will go forward. It most certainly has the support of other governors on the eastern seaboard. Following a letter to Salazar in opposition by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, six regional governors replied with their own letter insisting the project move on, fearing that Cape Wind’s failure would signal doom for other offshore projects up and down the east coast.

The turbines will stand 400 feet high and dot 24 square miles of ocean. For the wind industry, which grew by 27 percent last year without a single offshore project, this is a major victory. There is high potential for wind power out at sea. Several European countries have proven that, including Germany, Denmark, Spain and Portugal.

German company Siemens AG will supply the turbines for Cape Wind.

Via Reuters

Photo Credit: WindDose & SB Composites

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You may be wondering where a wind turbine fits into a residential solar blog since it’s, well, wind-powered… or is it?  Fact is, wind is created by convection currents caused by the warming and cooling of the earth’s crust.  So, technically, wind generation is an indirect form of solar power. The difference is that with wind, you don’t have to re-ignite the stored sunlight.  Anyway, these new GE behemoths, dubbed the Next-Gen Wind Turbine, actually have the capacity to power 1,000 homes each!  That’s some solar — I mean wind — power.

By increasing blade length by 40 percent to 176 feet, along with making the blades more aerodynamic, this vastly larger windmill can still turn in winds that are 7 to 70 miles per hour, comparable to most standard wind turbines.  Also, by simplifying the generator and drive-train to cut down on offshore maintenance from failing gear boxes (a major problem in wind turbines), GE has brought wind harvesting into the offshore arena and revolutionized the design at the same time.  Take that, oil rigs!  Just kidding.  Seriously though, there is enough wind blowing along the coastlines to power the entire American nation four times!

The blades are one of two crowning glories on this piece of renewable energy masterwork.  They are both curved and bent backwards, allowing them to handle gusts by twisting with their natural curve, rather than bending like most turbine blades do.  The bending in standard blades renders them inefficient in a gust of wind and can break or damage them severely.

The next massive improvement is the 90-ton generator with a 20-foot ring of magnets.  This massive wonder allows the turbine to keep turning without having to maintain gears or change their oil, a boon to the offshore maintenance crew.  Traditionally, the gearbox is used to speed up the drive-train to generate larger amounts of electricity at lower wind speeds.

A few other neat things: the pitch controllers can rotate the blades automatically out of harm’s way in major gusts, or adjust the blades by fractions of degrees to maximize output.  The blades are not solely fiberglass; there is carbon fiber at critical points, which adds strength and drops pounds.  Converters and transformers stabilize and boost the generated electricity from 690 volts to 22,000 for traveling well over long distance power lines.

Pretty dang cool and it doesn’t take up one inch of usable landmass.  This is just another in a growing list of  smart innovations for renewable energy (and solar power).

FYI:  Solar Power is any power source that originates in the sun (everything known to man but fission) and Solar Photovoltaic is the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity.

Source: PopularScience.com

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Wind energy is one of the biggest source of renewable energy. In order to understand the working of the wind turbines, it is important to know about the different components of the wind turbine.

Although there are different types of wind turbines that operate, but the simplest possible wind-energy turbine consists of three major parts:

1. Rotor blades

The blades are the main part of the system. The blades act as barriers to the wind, although recent blade designs do more than just act as a barrier. As the wind forces the blades to move, the energy gets transferred to the rotor.

2. Shaft

The shaft of the wind-turbine is connected to the center of the rotor. As the rotor spins, the shaft spins together with it. This allows the rotor to transfer its mechanical, rotational energy to the shaft, which enters an electrical generator on the other end.

3. Generator

Basically, a generator is quite a simple device. The generator uses electromagnetic induction to produce an electrical voltage, which is a difference in electrical charge. Voltage is the force that moves electricity, or electrical current, from one point to another. Thus the generating voltage is actually generating current. A simple generator is made up of magnets and a conductor. The conductor is simply a coiled wire. The shaft is connected to an assembly of permanent magnets that goes around the coil of wire. When the rotor spins the shaft, the shaft spins the assembly of magnets, generating voltage in the coil of wire. That voltage drives electrical current out through power lines for distribution.

This makes up the essential parts of the wind turbines. A number of wind turbines are then planted together in a particular area to formulate a wind farm, which will be explained in the upcoming articles.

Technorati Tags: Wind,Turbine,energy,generator,voltage,conductor,turbines,electrical

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