Archive for the ‘Wind Things’ Category
Saturday, October 6th, 2007
I picked up these crayons at the GE Wind stand at CanWEA:
Yes, those really are the colour names - Purification Purple, Evolution Orange, Mother Earth Brown, Cleaner Coal Black, Solar Yellow, Revitalized Red, Hybrid Green, Clear Water Blue.
Is there a connection between wind power and crayons? Wait until I don my polyester leisure jacket, James Burke-style, until I tell you: Edwin Binney, inventor of Crayola, had a daughter (Dorothy) who married George P. Putnam. Putnam went on (with only a short detour into promoting then marrying the person for whom the word “aviatrix” is most often used, Amelia Earhart) to help create the Smith-Putnam wind turbine (itself perhaps the most heroically unsuccessful story in the history of wind energy).Wind turbines; crayons: it’s all connected, see?
Maybe I should’ve picked up a bunch of these at the show, as even a ratty package of them is going for over $30 on eBay. I’m glad that mine are already on their way to a 4 year old in Ohio, where they will be appreciated more than by any collector.
Tags: connections, crayons, ebay, wind
Posted in Wind Things, goatee-stroking musing, or something | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
Tags: canwea, director, election, quebec, vote
Posted in Wind Things | 1 Comment »
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
I’m a big fan of Thomas Dolby, and I don’t even mind admitting that it was one of his songs that initially got me thinking about what to do with my life (“… etch out a future of your own design”, and all that) . I got Thomas’s Live in Chicago DVD, and was a bit shocked by the visuals he used for wind power:
Those are some old wind turbines. This would be a bit like going for some modern computer imagery, and plunking for a picture of a VIC-20.
I mean, eww - those blades are filthy!
Tags: archaic, career, dolby, eww, wind
Posted in Wind Things, choons | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
I’m at a Hydro One seminar on distributed generation connection issues. The speaker just said that the breakeven for vanadium flow battery power storage is $280/MWh. Ouch!
Tags: battery, no-go, wind
Posted in Wind Things | 2 Comments »
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
I visited the Wind Energy Institute of Canada in North Cape yesterday. They have some neat machines there - I’ll show you them once I get a proper network connection.
Tags: pei, wind
Posted in Wind Things | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007
Ontario getting 2000MW more renewables is undoubtedly good news. But we’ve got some other concerns that need dealt with - lack of transmission, our woeful energy efficiency, consumers paying less than the true cost of power, amongst others - that make make this announcement less joyful than one might at first think.
Tags: ontario, wind
Posted in Wind Things | No Comments »
Saturday, August 11th, 2007
Tags: cape_wind, daily_show, youtube
Posted in Wind Things | No Comments »
Friday, August 10th, 2007
Tags: aaer, dunnville, hamilton, ppc, wind
Posted in Wind Things | No Comments »
Friday, August 10th, 2007
I drove through Suncor/Acciona’s Ripley wind farm the other night. They’re just constructing, but this summer has been almost perfect weather for building (dry, still — which kind of sucks for farmers and those of us with wind farms nearby, but it’s an ill calm …).
I don’t usually take pictures of parked or machines under construction, but these Enercons are quite something.
Tags: acciona, enercon, lx2, ripley, suncor, wind
Posted in Wind Things, photo | No Comments »
Monday, July 30th, 2007
The OMB’s decision on this project is here. It’s good reading.
Tags: enbridge, kincardine, wind
Posted in Wind Things | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
Two new small wind turbines have appeared along Highway 8. Both are near Clinton.
The first is an 80kW WES. I’m not really a huge fan of two-bladed wind turbines, but at least the old Lagerwey design is well proven.
The second is a bit more of a mystery. Apparently installed by a local trucking company, it reminds me of design from the 1980s, but I can’t remember which. This one’s nearer Vanastra.
Tags: clinton, lagerwey, lx2, vanastra, wind
Posted in Wind Things, photo | No Comments »
Sunday, June 24th, 2007
Catherine & I are just back from visiting our friends in Kent, OH. On the way there, I knew we’d pass the new Steelwinds wind farm in Lackawanna, but I didn’t realise just how striking it would be from the Buffalo border crossing. We drove into Lackawanna, and parked on the lake shore. Steelwinds looks like this:
The Clipper turbines turn extremely slowly, and are some of the most graceful ones I’ve seen. Good work!
Tags: clipper, lackawanna, lx2, steelwinds, wind
Posted in Wind Things | 2 Comments »
Thursday, June 14th, 2007
… it’s time for the CREST Wind Energy Summer School.
It’s about the best way to start out in the wind industry. I went there back when it was at Imperial College. So many of my friends and colleagues in the industry have attended.
I wish the same course were run in several locations. Loughborough isn’t on most people’s travel plans.
Tags: course, crest, loughborough, wind
Posted in Wind Things | No Comments »
Saturday, May 26th, 2007
From Real Goods, who’ve been doing the sustainability thing for almost 30 years:
We generally advise that a good year-round wind turbine site isn’t a place that you’d want to live. It takes average wind speeds of 8 to 9 mph [3.6-4 m/s, or 12.9-14.5 km/h] and up, to make a really good site. That’s honestly more wind than most folks are comfortable living with.
— Solar Living Sourcebook, 12th ed., p.80
Tags: real-goods, sustainability, wind, wind-turbine, windsave
Posted in Wind Things | No Comments »
Monday, May 21st, 2007
We stayed over in St Thomas the other night, and on the way back came through Erie Shores Wind Farm. I spent a lot of time working on the layout design for this project, but up until now I’ve never seen it built. Sure, I saw some holes in the ground, but nothing higher. Here’s my gallery of mediocre photos: Erie Shores Wind Farm (and man, I must clean my D70’s sensor).
There’s clearly good local acceptance of the project. The beach washrooms have been repainted with a mural that includes a wind turbine, Bayham’s building an interpretive centre, and in downtown Port Burwell, there were cars with Support Wind Energy stickers. It made me happy.
Tags: erie_shores, photo, port_burwell, wind
Posted in Wind Things, photo | No Comments »
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
The conference was good (learnt a lot about wind integration and forecasting), but I was most taken with the little Richardson’s Ground Squirrels that lived in burrows around the hotel.
Tags: calgary, squirrel
Posted in Wind Things, o canada | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
I’m attending the CanWEA / AWEA Wind Integration & Forecasting seminar in Calgary. While the hotel is very nice, I should’ve pegged there might be trouble when the room next door to mine is marked Crew Lounge. And yep, between 0100 and 0300, the crew was there. And they lounged loudly.
Tags: awea, calgary, canwea, hotel
Posted in Wind Things, o canada | No Comments »
Friday, April 13th, 2007
Tags: denmark, history, pioneer, wind
Posted in Wind Things | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007
I took this a while back (June 2004), but forgot about it.
Tags: donut, tim-hortons, tims, turbine, wind
Posted in Wind Things, o canada | No Comments »
