Wind is to "Aericulture" as crops and livestock are to agriculture. And "aerinomics" is to "aericulture" as agronomics is to agriculture. Putin this perspective, wind farming is (or should be, here in South Dakota) just another agricultural practice. Installing and operating a small wind turbine is "wind gardening" while community wind is "commons wind" (but probably stretches the farming lingo into "left field." OK, I'll leave it there.)
Over here in South Dakota we have the nation's fourth-best potential wind power- 1,030 billion kW hours annually. One-third of that (343 billion kW hours) could be harvested by wind turbines to meet the power requirements of 36,645,299 homes (each home uses 9,360 kW hours per year). But the variable nature (speed, duration, direction) of wind demand a concurrent constant source of electricity to sustain "the life we've grown accustomed to."
So even here, you can't be a wild-eyed get off the grid now person without radically changing your lifestyle. However these definitions and posts will serve as your "roadmap" to reducing electricity bills or diversifying income.
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C-BED- Minnesota’s Community-Based Energy Development legislation offers some important benefits to community wind projects.
An overview is through this link.
Community wind- small wind turbines are installed by a community or individuals to generate wind power for municipal or local use. Selling excess wind power is a secondary concern for community wind operators.
Condition monitoring- the use of sensors to measure and telecommunications to inform operators of the "wear and tear" of equipment. Vibration analysis.tribology, and thermography are all examples of Condition Monitoring techniques.
Maintenance Resources, an online dictionary, is the source for this definition.
Cut-in wind speed- the wind speed at which a wind turbine starts to generate electricity. With higher wind speed the turbine approaches its rated power and maximum electricity generation.
Dispatchable- power generation that can be immediately increased to meet demand above baseline power or immediately decreased once demand falls to baseline. Fossil-fueled power and nuclear-fired power are dispatchable power. Wind power is non-dispatchable because it is
variable. A variable source of power causes some degree of instability in a power grid.
Distribution- information about the distributions of wind speeds and the frequency of the varying wind directions, can be shown by drawing a wind rose using meteorological tower measurements. Wind roses vary from one location to the next.
Electricity wheeling- an energy consumer is able to select her/his own energy supplier, or "wheel in" energy from one of two or more different suppliers. When a utility on one region sells energy to a customer in another utility's territory, the energy is said to be wheeled to the
customer.
A handful of South Dakota wind-
3 PM Jun 03, N at 24 mph
1 PM Jun 03, N at 18 mph
11 AM Jun 03, N at 16 mph
3 AM Jun 03, N at 5 mph
5 PM Jun 02, N at 20 mph light rain; mist.
Do contact me if you want to buy any of this blog's content or would like to have other specific wind power-related content uncovered.
'Til next time. Best Wind.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
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