Forrest S. “Woody” Stoddard passed away last week. He was a pioneer of wind energy in the USA, first working on the UMass Wind Furnace, then dedicated his life to the industry.
Without people like Woody Stoddard, there wouldn’t be large scale wind energy today.
Tories announce $1.5-billion renewable energy plan. Which would have been nice if it hadn’t just been the old Liberal WPPI program (which the Tories cancelled) renamed, and claimed as a whole new thing. And there was highly qualified rejoicing.
Given that the UK had some horrible wind storms this week, I wonder how the wind farms stood up?
What are my pictures doing here: http://www.thewindpower.net/103-windfarms-canada.php?
Work has just moved to a sweet suite on the 13th floor of 200 University Avenue. I have a lake view from my office window!
Glen Estill tells it as it is about wind energy: Men’s Breakfast
Trendy roof turbines are not as green as they look says The Observer. <smugness/>
Paul Gipe has some thoughts on this:
The last one has a couple of pictures I took when we were in Scotland.
Windshare has a new website, which is nice. Unfortunately, the headline image shows a stopped turbine:
It’s kind of apt, given that the turbine’s been out of service for about a month. I liked the old days, when the turbine worked but the website was kinda crappy.
Congratulations are due to Glen Estill, who got his two Vestas V82s on the Bruce Peninsula running today. Glen is a pioneer of wind energy in Ontario, and we’re all grateful to him for his tireless work for the industry.
Update: further to my wind turbines from space obsession, I found Glen’s original V80 turbine at 44° 56′ 46.42″ N, 81° 15′ 47.12″ W.
I was busy making Möbius strips out of till roll, when I became aware of a little face watching me at the window. A very damp raccoon had one paw up on the window sill, and was looking at me as if to ask, “What are you doing making single-sided paper figures on a night like this?”
Strange to think that I’m on the east coast, but actually further west than home in Toronto. That whole curving away to the Gulf of Mexico thing will get you if you’re not careful.
The strange thing is, if you take my current longitude, and the latitude of our house, you get a point near Rte 16 near Brussels, ON that I’ve been through on the way back from the wind farm. That’s like, y’know, stuff, and some like other stuff too, whoah!
The presenter of this paper claimed that PowerPoint changed α, the wind shear coefficient, to ✂. We laughed, briefly.
I see that Americas Wind Energy updated their website to replace the site I wrote for them a couple of years back. It’s purty, but:
Oh wait, I get it – it’s a random turbine image for each page. Hmm.
WindShare‘s having a special general meeting tonight to discuss the following resolution:
Moved that the Board of WindShare recommends to the WindShare I membership at their general meeting of June 7, 2006, the merger of WindShare I and WindShare II for the purpose of entering into the activities necessary for the development of the proposed Lakewind Proposal.
This is quite an important step, and since I’m still in Pittsburgh, I’d hoped to vote by proxy. I was informed by the WindShare administrator that this wasn’t possible; the Cooperative Corporations Act does not allow proxy voting.
I’m annoyed by this, as it looks like WindShare is going to merge its capital with a 10MW project being built on a site with a 6.5 m/s mean wind speed. I wouldn’t develop a project on a site with this low a wind speed, so I asked the following of the board:
Can you clarify, please, that the vote can only be carried if a majority of WindShare members are present at the meeting? It would be grossly unfair if an important vote like this one was carried by a minority.
I would also like to have questions brought to the board, and if possible, the meeting itself. The LakeWind information package states that Bervie has “an average wind speed of 6.5m/s … making this an excellent site for Ontario”. I would not consider a site having this wind resource to be excellent, and it would certainly not be one that would attract a commercial developer. So my questions are:
- Is it in the membership’s best interests to develop a relatively low wind site? WindShare made their political point with the ExPlace turbine, and now we must show that community wind is economically viable.
- Would either of the potential sites be forced to curtail output when/if the extra Bruce units come online? While LakeWind would be connecting to local distribution, any generation in that area might be subject to queueing limitations.
So far, I’ve heard nothing, which makes me uneasy.
I didn’t go to the AWEA banquet last night, but did sneak into the GE Wind event (to which I was semi-invited) at the Andy Warhol Museum, and then on to the Clipper event (to which I definitely wasn’t) at the insanely ornate Heinz Hall. I guess you could say that place amounted to a hill of beans.
Caught up with Norman & David Surplus of B9, whom I last saw more than a decade ago. As there was free drink, I am slightly fragile this morning.
And so to pack …