Archive for the ‘Wind’ Category
US Passes Germany in Overall Wind Energy MW Production
July 29th, 2008 | 
Author: The US and Germany are in a new, silent arms race that will actually benefit society this time around. The Daily Times reported the very closely watched statistics of 2008 world wind energy generation. For the first time ever, the US has finally surpassed Germany in terms of megawatts of wind energy produced because of the faster US wind speeds, even though Germany has more capacity and turbines. This feat wasn’t expected to have occurred yet, so the American wind association is pretty pleased.
While this is a small battle one, it should be expected considering the US’s much larger size, population, wind speeds, and need for alternative renewable energy sources. Here’s a simple comparison between the two countries.
| Germany | US | |
| Population | 80 million | 300 million |
| Carbon Emissions | 800,000 thousand metric tons | 6,000,000 thousand metric tons |
| Electricity Consumed | 546 million megawatts | 3.8 billion megawatts |
| Wind energy capacity | 23,000 MW | 18,000 MW |
| Percentage of energy from wind | 7% | 1.2% |
As the numbers show, the US’s gains really aren’t too special considering the per capita use of wind electricity versus normal electricity consumption. The US does have some plans in place to raise that meager 1.2% wind energy to 20% though. The Department of Energy has a program 20% wind by 2030 which, as its titles suggests, is a PR push towards making wind energy a very much more serious contributor to US energy consumption.
So, if we’re lucky, public policy will be put in place to let us reach Denmark’s current 20% wind energy by the year 2030.
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Wind Turbines Big and Small at WINDPOWER 2008
This is a guest post provided by Maria Surma Manka direct from WINDPOWER 2008. Maria writes about renewable energy policy, innovation, and private sector leadership at Maria Energia.
Greetings from Houston, site of the American Wind Energy Association’s WINDPOWER 2008 conference. I am a guest of AWEA and have spent the last few days meeting several of the 12,000 attendees and visiting many of the nearly 800 exhibitors. Below are some of the interesting small wind turbine designs I found.
BROADSTAR WINDSYSTEMS
Dallas-based Broadstar Windsystems makes the AeroCam turbine that can
be used in urban areas and even to infill rural wind farms (in other
words, put these shorter, smaller turbines in between the big ones).
What’s more, Broadstar made the bold claim that this turbine could
achieve $1 per watt installed.
IR WINDPOWER
The three following photos are small turbines from IR Windpower.
They currently manufacture both large and small designs throughout
Asia, but they’re eying the European and U.S. markets next.
KR WINDPOWER
This turbine from KR Windpower stands only about 4-5 feet off the ground. The company is based in Korea, with offices in China and California:
BERGEY WINDPOWER
Small wind from Bergey Windpower:
PROVEN ENERGY
From Proven Energy:
HI ENERGY
This vertical turbine is from Hi Energy. The poster in the photo
shows examples of how the turbine can be used. I couldn’t find a this is a video of the turbine in action.
website for the company but
