Category: Wind Things

WindShare Barbecue last night

WindShare Barbecue, 6 July 2004
We had the WindShare barbecue last night at the foot of the turbine. We had a decent turnout, and it was fun.

Stuart Schoenfeld (centre left, with guitar, shaking hands with Paul Gipe) even composed a song for the turbine, which we sang round the barbecue. I recorded it, and the recording may even make it onto this site …

Oops …

I think a CN freight train has just derailed on the spur behind our house. Last time that happened, Kennedy Road was closed all day.

Nice day for it, tho’.

Update, 11:20: Nah, it was just having a wee sleep on the tracks. It was making noises that a train shouldn’t make, though. Let’s see if the tracks make it through this summer.

Getting (Not Very) Political

Canada goes to the polls soon. For the last month, the papers have been filled with the minutiae of the candidates and their policies. As a Canadian Without A Vote™, I feel strangely detached from this. Having an opinion on the candidates would be like me judging a beauty contest for slugs.

But people keep asking for my opinion, so here it is: Anyone but Harper. Stephen Harper reminds me a lot of George W. Bush, minus the intelligence and charisma of the southern leader. I’ve seen sharper hockey pucks than Harper, who always seems to be photographed with that glaikit (see extended entry for definition) open-mouthed expression on his face.

Martin looks like he’s got terrible halitosis, and is permanently worried that we’re on the verge of finding him out for some nefarious act. Layton’s a bit full-on for a successful leader. And that green party guy just looks uncomfortable in a suit.

None of the parties have innovative sustainable agendas, so I can’t recommend any of them. But if Harper wins in June, all those friends of ours in the US who want to inhabit our basement should Bush win in November might as well stay home.

Continue reading Getting (Not Very) Political

My letter to The Guardian

Re: An ill wind?, article by John Vidal.

Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 22:05:44 -0400
To: weekly.letters@…
Subject: An Ill Wind to Dr Bellamy’s Wallet

Further to John Vidal’s article on wind energy in the UK, I am astounded by David Bellamy’s gall in denouncing wind energy. He must think we have extremely short memories indeed.

Back in the early 1990s, when I was a neophyte windsmith, I remember seeing a CEGB-sponsored film about wind energy. It was narrated by Dr B., and he was effusing about how wind turbines would be a familiar part of the future landscape, about how beneficial they are, and all the good things that mindful wind energy development will bring.

One wonders what caused the good doctor’s volte-face against green electricity. It would be a shame if such a familiar public face would say anything that it were paid to say. One wonders if David Bellamy now has a backer with an agenda different from that of the old CEGB?

Stewart C. Russell

busy busy weekend

logscale.png
This weekend was so busy, I’ll need the whole week to recover …

Friday night was baseball. We saw the Bluejays beat the Texas Rangers.

Saturday was speaking about wind energy at the Ontario Association of Physics Teachers annual conference. There were some great talks, including one by Jim Hunt called “Can Physics Experiments be Inexpensive and Accurate?“.

Sunday daytime was attacking the garden. Being away in Missouri last weekend meant that it got a bit overgrown. Sunday evening was going to hear Shahid Ali Khan with Mast Mast Qawwal Party. Who would have thought that Sufi devotional music could be so much fun?

I also finally got the Beta Band‘s newest CD, Heroes To Zeros. Annoyingly, it’s copy controlled (read: deliberately broken for your lack of listening pleasure). Why, then, did I pay the Canadian levy on my MP3 player to exercise my right to make a personal copy for my MP3 player? Thankfully, the “copy control” is extremely poor, resulting in a slightly slower rip. EMI Canada sucks, but you knew that.

If you are wondering why there’s a strange logarithmic scale at the top of the page, it’s because I found my old Make your own slide rule source code. Until I get round to posting instructions on how to multiply, divide and estimate square roots with it, print out the PDF that’s linked from the image, cut along the line, and enjoy having two pieces of paper to play with.

Windsave, again

Anent my previous rant about Windsave claiming impossible efficiencies, they’ve made some changes to their website. The machines now have larger diameters (1250 and 1750 mm — up from 1000 and 1400mm), and much lower rated power (500W and 1000W at 27mph — down from 750 and 1200).

Plugging in those numbers to Cp = P / ( 0.48106 d2 v3 ), we get more realistic efficiencies of 0.378 and 0.386 (for the small and large machines, respectively).

The Lakota turbine we installed last week has a nominal rated power of 900W at 28.8 mph for a 2.09m diameter rotor. It has a very conservative Cp = 0.20, although David Cooke says that typically they see 1,000 Watts at around 25mph (a Cp of around 0.34).

At the other end of the scale, the Lagerwey LW52 is a 51.5m diameter machine rated at 750kW at 12ms-1. This advanced utility scale, variable pitch machine has a Cp = 0.34.

Windsave’s revised figures are much more credible, but until we have real figures backed by a few years of installations, there’s little more we can say about them. I’m a little concerned that, although there are claims that 1000s of these machines have been sold, there’s not a single real photo of one on the web.

I’m going to enjoy putting up an anemometer and logging system alongside the urbine downtown. We’ll see how it runs.

The Cyborg’s Windmill

Steve Mann's Wind Turbine
We spent the day helping wearable computing guru Steve Mann put a wind turbine on top of his Existential Technologies Research Lab (a.k.a. 330 Dundas St. West), smack-dab downtown in Toronto.

We installed a True North Power Lakota turbine. We had David Cooke and Doug of TNP guiding us, and the installation went without a hitch.

The picture above links to more pictures of the day’s activities. There are also Steve Mann’s Urbine pictures (and, if you really want bigger versions of my pictures, they are on scruss at eyetap).

them vertical-axis thingies

Popular Science readers: Please note that I have nothing to do with these companies, and so I can’t send you information about them. Please visit their websites instead.

Windside: http://www.windside.com (Finland) and Windaus Energy: http://windausenergy.com (Canada; site doesn’t render properly in Mozilla): both with near-identical twisted-savonius designs. Oh yeah, and a nice line in carping at the rest of the wind energy industry: There are no flying ice blocks, leaking oil or cutting blades. (Windaus); Most turbines don`t simply work. There is one turbine, which works. (Windside).

It should be pointed out that Savonius designs, being drag devices, are much less efficient than standard three-bladed horizontal-axis machines, which use lift. If you need a design without guywires, take a look at the Proven Energy machine. It’s very solid, and Scottish, too.

One has to wonder about lone voices in the wilderness. Once they start to drown each other out, it gets hard to tell which are the real deal, and which are not.

Continue reading them vertical-axis thingies

Cathkin gets a wind farm

A Glasgow housing scheme could become the site of the UK’s first community-owned urban wind farm, reports the BBC.

This is rather cool. Cathkin Braes is a windy place. Castlemilk needs money. Everyone’s happy.

Except, of course, for the dismal anti-windfarm people, Views of Scotland, who the BBC have to quote in order to appear fair and balanced. How can people who claim to be so concerned be so uninformed? F’rinstance, this from SWiM’s Bob Graham, in an anti-wind petition to the Scottish Parliament: Turbines from the current generation have a mean output of 2MW. However, because of their inefficiency and the random nature of the wind, no turbine has produced more than 27 per cent of its production capacity. That equates to just 0.25MW.

Notwithstanding that 27% of 2MW is 560kW, we can manage better capacity factors than that here in Toronto. Maybe I’ll phone Bob Graham every time we’re over his so-called production limit …

Sustainable Energy Fair

I survived the University of Toronto First Sustainable Energy Fair. The weather was pretty grim, despite the cold and the rain. Maybe some of the solar cooking events didn’t happen, but that didn’t dampen the spirits of all involved.

There was a good crowd, and I talked myself hoarse on the WindShare stand. There were some interesting people there, including the irrepressible Tom Karmo, and UofT‘s own cyborg, Steve Mann. And yes, I am really responsible for getting Winton Dahlström into wind energy; mea maxima culpa.

I have pictures of the sustainable energy fair here.

Sustainable Energy Fair at University of Toronto on April 1st!

I will be there, on a rather small WindShare stand. Here’s the full blurb:

Where you can you eat a free veggie burger, meet the student,
academic and industrial leaders of the sustainable energy
revolution, and win cool prizes for guessing your environmental
footprint?

Only at U of T’s First Annual Sustainable Energy Fair, which is
happening on April 1st, from 10am to 4pm, just south of front
campus at the intersection of King’s College Circle and King’s
College Road!

Companies representing every major sustainable energy related
industry – wind, solar, geothermal, biofuel, and hydrogen – as well
as representatives of community power co-ops, will have booths at
the fair. U of T research projects related to sustainable energy
will be on display, and student groups concerned with these issues
such as Engineers without Borders, the Energy Sustainability
Community, Science for Peace, the Blue Sky Solar Racing Team, and
the Hydrogen Fueling Station Design Team will host exhibits.

In addition to this, there will be free food cooked on a solar
powered barbeque, informative contests, construction activities
(building mini-turbines and assembling a hydrogen fuel cell model
car), and prizes (CFL bulbs, low, flow showerheads, fair trade
coffee and chocolate).

Come on out, join the fun and learn more about the future of
energy!

For more information, please visit us at:
http://www.ele.utoronto.ca/gradunion/sefair/

wind at my back

From early April, I will be a contracting engineer for Zephyr North, a wind consultancy in Burlington. It’s taken me 7 years to get back into wind energy, but it’ll be good to be back.

Oh yeah, I’ll be working in Fortran again. Strange to think that my dad was also a Fortran programmer…

And back home again

Coo, nearly all the snow has gone!

We did many wonderful things, and caught up with a whole load of old friends. Much will follow when I’ve unpacked my brain.

Scottish Coincidence #2: Sheldon asked if I knew of Dougie MacLean. I’ve seen him play live in Glasgow, and also been in his music pub in Dunkeld. Just as we were pulling into the car park at Glasgow Airport to fly back to Toronto, who should cross the road in front of us with a guitar in a flight case but …Dougie MacLean!