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Wind Power
In 1987, Renner and Renner wrote, "One year after the dramatic collapse of world oil prices, any initial enthusiasm about it has yielded to a more sober assessment of the inter- national energy market. The predicted benefits of the oil price drop have turned out to be grossly overstated: cheap, abundant oil is clearly not the solution to the world economy's deep structural problems. Moreover, oil does not seem likely to remain cheap and abundant. Last year's turmoil is part of a larger boom-bust cycle that will almost certainly usher in a new energy crisis sometime in the 1990's."
Now it is 2005, and the price of gasoline seems to rise every day. Just as Renner and Renner saw in the 80's, once again we are reminded, every time we fill our gas tanks, that over-reliance on oil for energy is a poor energy plan. While many options exist to create energy from non-petroleum sources, one showing increased success is the use of wind.
Wind generates electricity when its force on windmills creates electrical current. While the United States is using some wind energy, across the world, wind turbines generated over 14,000 megawatts in 1999. Its use is expanding faster than any other alternate source for energy. India produced 1,167 megawatts in 1999 from their "wind farms." Denmark, the country that pioneered the use of modern windmills to generate electricity, used the source to produce...
Its production does not contribute to global warning in any way. It does not require building dams or flooding land to create the force needed. It creates neither contamination nor by-product wastes that must be disposed of. They are easy to erect, easy to remove, and work well where the traditional electronic grid is not easily accessed. As of 2000, the cost of electricity generated by wind was about the same as the cost of electricity generated by more traditional methods (Pasqualetti, 2000).
Wind energy is what is called a "renewable" energy source, a description not quite accurate. There is no need to replace the wind; its renewal is generated by the Earth's atmosphere. Wind installations can be small are large and custom-tailored for the area they will serve.
All these advantages force the question: if wind power has so many advantages, why isn't it used more? Like all energy sources, wind power has some drawbacks. One of the major ones is based on the nature of modern life. Our cities have become huge. In the Los Angeles area, one has to drive 150 miles to get to open land. Because so much of our living areas have become so congested, people value the spaces still left open and often resist the idea of erecting windmills (Pasqualetti, 2000).…
Sources for Development." Environmental Law, 32:2.
Pasqualetti, Martin J. 2000. "Morality, Space and the Power of Wind-Energy Landscapes." The Geographical Review, 90:3.
Renner, Michael G., and Renner, Michael R. 1987. "Shaping America's Energy Future." World Policy Journal, 4:3.
University of Tennessee. 2000. "Technology for the 21st Century." Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, 15:2.
Wind Power The greatest challenge of the 21st century is filling the gap between energy demand and supply with clean, reliable and green source of energy. Energy is very essential and it is in material form in everything that is around us. The opportunity cost of obtaining the energy that we require is the impact that is made on our environment. Some energy sources have greater impacts while others have relatively
Figures 3 and 4. Vertical Axis and Home Wind Turbine Configurations. Sources: http://www.symscape.com/files/images/flowind_darrieus.img_assist_custom.jpg, and http://techlime.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/home-wind-turbines.jpg. Current and Future Trends in Wind Power Applications. While the foregoing wind power initiatives would indicate that wind farms are already contributing a large percentage of the nation's energy needs, the research shows that this is far from the case. In this regard, the current total respective renewable energy consumption rates based on source in the United States
While I could lose on this particular investment, if I made this investment several times, I would come out ahead with a 146.5% payoff. It should be noted that a key step in this process is to evaluate the quality of the estimates. The expected value of future cash flows is only as valuable at the information that goes into deriving them. It is a situation of garbage in, garbage
In fact, during 2007 alone, the installed capacity of "on grid" small-wind residential generators almost tripled, from 1,300 kilowatts nationwide in 2006 to 3,000 kilowatts in 2007 (Clayton). According to Clayton, the number of residential installations increased from 400 to 1,200 units during 2007 as well. In response to this growing demand, a number of companies have started producing various wind turbine configurations in smaller versions for this market
But wind production is costly and India needs to find ways to produce wind energy at economical rates. For this reason, skilled technicians and designers are looking into the possibility of cost reduction "by increasing the size, tailoring of turbines for specific sites, exploring new structural dynamic concepts, developing custom generators, and power electronics, in addition to implementing modern control-system strategies." (Orosa, 2010) It has been found that in order to
This is capable of maintaining 10 megawatt-hours of energy to deliver power in peak periods. The expenses are estimated in the range of $130 million. There have been other projects going on in the country which utilize storage batteries. The Beacon Power project near Albany with 200 flywheels of a ton each, two projects run by PSEG Global in New Jersey and the Texas-based four-megawatt battery system project completed