Category: Wind Things

giveaway: windshare turbine picture

WindShare / Toronto Hydro wind turbine

Decided to give away my favourite picture of the WindShare/Toronto Hydro wind turbine under an open licence.

Here are the file details:

File size    : 719263 bytes
File date    : 2003:02:23 16:25:10
Camera make  : NIKON
Camera model : E2500
Date/Time    : 2003:02:23 16:25:10
Resolution   : 1200 x 1600
Flash used   : No (auto)
Focal length :  8.9mm  (35mm equivalent: 58mm)
Exposure time: 0.0007 s  (1/1451)
Aperture     : f/3.4
ISO equiv.   : 100
Whitebalance : Auto
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure     : program (auto)
Jpeg process : Progressive
GPS Latitude : N 43d 37m 54.98s
GPS Longitude: W 79d 25m 32.4876s
Comment      : WindShare / Toronto Hydro wind turbine
Comment      : Exhibition Place, Toronto
Comment      : taken on opening day, 23 Feb 2003
Comment      : licensed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons by the
Comment      : creator, Stewart C. Russell / scruss.com - 23 March 2008

It’s also on flickr and Wikimedia Commons.

is this the same report?

A recent BBC news story from Scotland leads with:

Wind farms could hit tourist jobs

Wind farms could cost Scotland’s tourism industry millions of pounds and hundreds of jobs, a report has warned.

But the findings of the report are much milder:

This research has shown that even using a worst case scenario the impact of current applications would be very small  …

… Our  overall conclusion is that the effects are so small that, provided planning and  marketing are carried out effectively, there is no reason why the two are  incompatible.

So it looks, as usual, as if the BBC is trying to make wind turbines look far worse than they really are.

Ravenswood Opening

a V82

Yesterday — five years after the WindShare turbine started generating — Sky Generation‘s Ravenswood wind farm was officially opened. Ravenswood is the first wind farm built under the Ontario Standard Offer program, and four of its six 1.65MW turbines operate under that system. The other two turbines supply power to Bullfrog.

Tom, Glen & Martin
Tom Heintzman, Glen Estill and Martin Ince.

The Mayor, the Landowner and the Energy Minister

The Mayor, the Landowner and the Energy Minister cut the ribbon.

Glen shows the Energy Minister the SCADA

Glen explains the SCADA to Gerry Phillips, Ontario Energy Minister.

Here’s what Glen said about the opening: Grand Opening of Ravenswood.

Gallery: http://scruss.com/gallery/v/ravenswood/

go ripley!

I drove past Ripley Wind Farm today. Looks like most of the turbines are energised (they were yawed into the wind) and one was running.

something other than wind blows here

Dave Bidini‘s article in today’s Globe & Mail, An ill wind blows (now irritatingly hidden behind a paywall, but helpfully cached here) troubles me about what got through basic fact-checking:

  • “The turbines expected on the island are open-bladed, a style being replaced in Europe by closed-blade turbines, which do less damage to wildlife.” What are closed-blade turbines? I’m in weekly contact with colleagues in the European wind energy industry. If people were installing a radically different type of machine, I’d know about it.
  • The article cites the National Center for Policy Analysis as a source. Quoting the NCPA on wind energy and the environment is a little like quoting the NRA on gun control. Check out the NCPA’s E-Team: Providing Accurate Information on Energy & Environment Issues. Overall, I’d say that ExxonMobil are getting great VFM on their donations to NCPA [PDF] if they’re now being quoted as a credible, balanced source.

not-so-smart meter

We got our smart meter installed today. Unfortunately, Catherine didn’t quite understand why there was a knock on the door, then her computer went beeeeyyooooww … then all our clocks caught the <blink> tag.

While I like smart meters, this one isn’t quite as smart as it could be. To me, a smart meter needs to have a big display of your current demand, and needs to be inscribed with a suitable message like “Quit using so much juice, you cretin!” It also needs to hook into local time-of-use pricing, which me being  green and a Bullfrog customer and all, I don’t get to take part in. Boo.

But what could have really gone sideways was my own desktop, which was quietly chugging away installing Ubuntu 7.10. Since I started using Linux in 1995, I don’t think I’ve ever had a system upgrade go totally smoothly. This time, though, I was lucky – the system must have fully initialised before we lost power.

I can’t honestly say I see any difference between Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon; they both are fairly pretty, and just work.

the colour of

I picked up these crayons at the GE Wind stand at CanWEA:

ge ecomagination crayola

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.

ge ecomagination crayola

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.

but at least I didn’t jump up and down like Reese did in “Election”

Last night at the banquet and annual awards ceremony, I was elected onto the board of directors of The Canadian Wind Energy Association (L’Association canadienne de l’énergie éolienne). The other new directors are:

I’d like to thank everyone who helped me, and look forward to a busy three years on the board.

Mr Dolby — eww!

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:

still from Thomas Dolby “Live in Chicago” DVD

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.

still from Thomas Dolby “Live in Chicago” DVD

I mean, eww – those blades are filthy!

not there yet

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!

cautiously optimistic

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.

Ripley Wind Farm

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.

Ripley Wind Farm - under construction

Ripley Wind Farm - under construction

Ripley Wind Farm - under construction