Tag Archives: energy

Gone to the Wind[mills]

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A visit to Washington’s other source of alternative energy.

Washington state is widely known for its cheap, reliable electric power. One reason it’s cheap is because it’s hydroelectric — the Columbia and other rivers in Washington have been dammed up with numerous hydroelectric plants, many of them built as part of the New Deal in the 1930s. (An interesting side note here: we visited the Grand Coulee Dam and learned on the tour that power wasn’t one of the reasons the dam was originally built. The two primary reasons were irrigation and flood control. I really ought to write about that tour in another post.)

Anyway, Washington is also on the leading edge of renewable power generation from wind generators or windmills. Puget Sound Energy (PSE) has two facilities, one of which is on a series of ridges in Kittitas County, 18 miles east of Ellensburg. This Wild Horse Wind Facility is clearly visible from my camp just south of Quincy, about 20 air miles away. It’s also open to the public for tours. So on Saturday afternoon, feeling a dire need to get away from the book project I’m working on, I headed out to see the place close up.

It’s easy to get to. From I-90, take the exit for Vantage, which is on the west side of the Columbia River. After stopping for a burger at Blustery’s, head up the old Vantage Highway. You’ll get to the turn for Wild Horse about 12 miles up the road. It’s hard to miss — the road is clearly marked and you can see lots of windmills from the main road.

Wild Horse Wind FacilityFollow the entrance road about three miles as it winds up a hill. You’ll pass a bunch of windmills along the way — the road actually passes quite close to a few of them. Eventually, you’ll see the Visitor Center at the top of the site. Behind it are a few windmills that, when seen with the building in front, look absolutely enormous.

When I arrived, an all-girls camp group was there. The girls were in their early teens. I managed to latch on to one of their tours, which included a walk up eight or so steps into the tower at the bottom of one of the windmills. Afterward, I wandered around a bit, got technical information about the facility, and took plenty of photos.

WindmillWant some stats? The facility is on a 9,000 acre site overlooking the Columbia River Basin. It was started up in December 2006 with 127 wind turbines. Each turbine is capable of producing up to 1.8 megawatts of power in 31 mph winds, for a total of 229 megawatts. The turbines start generating power at 9 mph of wind and are programmed to feather their blades and basically shut down when winds exceed 56 mph to avoid damage. Since the site is usually pretty windy, the facility does a pretty good job generating power.

Each turbine sits atop a 221-foot tall tower. (See the flight of steps at the very bottom of the tower in this photo? It has about 8 steps. That should give you an idea of scale.) The foundations go down 25 to 32 feet and each have 120 anchor bolts around the 13-foot wide tower base. The bolts are huge, as you might imagine.

The turbines, which are manufactured in Denmark, generate power at 690 volts. A transformer inside the turbine housing, steps up the power to 34.5 kilovolts. These turbines are atop the tower (of course) and are about the size of a typical RV or motorhome. They’re reached from a ladder inside the tower.

Windmill BladeThe blades are also huge. There was one on display outside the visitor center and I snapped a photo with my fisheye lens (which explains the distortion) of the girls gathered around it. Each of a windmill’s three blades is 129 feet long, 11.6 wide near the hub, and 1.6 feed wide at the tip. They’re made of composite materials, are hollow, and weigh 7 tons each. When you figure the length of the rotor blade into the total maximum height of the windmill, you get 351 feet.

It’s no wonder I can see them from 20 miles away.

We all know that the environmentalists are concerned about windmills and their impact on birds and bats. I asked about this. I was told that the facility averages 2 dead birds per turbine per year. I think more are killed being hit by cars. The folks at Wild Horse take the situation seriously and collect and bag all birds found. Bats are not an issue there.

For me, the most amazing part of visiting the windmills was the sound they made as they were spinning.

After my tour in the Visitor Center vicinity, I hopped on the truck and followed the dirt road around the facility. I was out to take photos and I got a few interesting ones.

If you’re in the area, I recommend a visit to the Wild Horse Wind Facility. Try calling 888-225-5773 if you need more info; I can’t seem to find the official Web site for the facility.

And if there’s a wind or other alternative energy facility open to the public for tours in your area, make it a point to visit with your kids. It’s a great way to learn about energy options.

Solar Power

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One solution for off-the-grid living in Arizona.

Our little off-the-grid vacation place has solar power. It’s an extremely simple system that consists of two 120-watt (I think) solar panels mounted on the roof and four deep cycle batteries in a little cabinet. The panels are attached to the batteries with a charger. Whenever there’s sun — which is just about every day in Arizona — the solar panels charge the batteries. All we do to maintain them is make sure there’s enough distilled water in the battery cells.

The building has both AC and DC power. That’s a weird thing that we decided on when we first set up the place. It’s a very small place with just one room, a loft, and a bathroom alcove. There are very few electrical appliances, and they’re split between AC and DC. On the AC side is an iHome clock radio (the kind you can put an iPod in), a 700-watt microwave, and a 600-watt single cup coffee maker. There are also outlets that can power a small ShopVac or laptop. Everything else is powered by DC power: 9 small light fixtures, the water pump, and a ceiling fan. (Do you know how hard it was to find a DC ceiling fan?) There are round DC power outlets everywhere there’s a standard AC power outlet. The fridge, stove, water heater, and furnace are all propane gas.

Theoretically, we can run the whole place on DC power with gas. On very short stays, we don’t even bother with the fridge. But since the batteries are hooked up to a 2000-watt AC inverter, we usually turn on the inverter so we can use those AC appliances and outlets when we want to. We have a little meter that plugs into a DC outlet to monitor the amount of juice in the batteries. At night, the power level gets low, but never too low to run lights or watch a movie on a laptop with power connected. And, in the morning, even before dawn, there’s always enough power to run my coffee maker.

It’s a great system. It cost about $2K for Mike to design and install and it meets all of our limited needs. I’m certain that if we built a house up here with more conveniences, a system just three or four times the size — perhaps supplemented with a small wind generator — would easily meet those needs. After all, it’s cool enough up here that air conditioning is not required in the summer — especially if the house had an energy efficient design that kept the hot air out. And if the sun isn’t shining, the wind is probably blowing.

Today, while relaxing with a book, the radio suddenly died. I checked the little DC meter and saw that we had plenty of juice — 15.4 volts, in fact. That’s the highest I’ve ever seen it. I went out to check the inverter and found lights blinking on it. Consulting the manual revealed that we had too much power for the inverter to use. The system is designed to shut down when available power exceeds 15 volts.

Oddly enough, to get the AC power to work, I had to come inside and turn on a bunch of lights and the ceiling fan and run the pump for a while. In other words, I had to throw away excess power. Once I got stored power down to 14.8 volts, I went outside and turned the inverter back on. Everything worked fine.

Keep in mind that this is a very small system and there’s no tracking on those solar panels. The panels are fixed to the roof, pointing southwest. (Imagine how much power we’d pull in if the panels were set up to track the sun?) It was about 2:30 PM when the problem occurred; it’s now almost two hours later and the sun is lower, so I don’t think the problem will reoccur.

My point is this: Arizona is a perfect environment for solar power, especially for small to moderate use. There’s no reason why solar can’t be set up to at least supplement power coming into an on-the-grid home. And for an off-the-grid home with modest needs, it seems to be a perfect solution.

So why aren’t more homes built with solar as part of the standard builder package?

WebCam Timelapse – July 16, 2007

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It’s getting closer!

My WebCam has been faithfully making timelapse movies every day. I’m trying not to bore you by showing you all of them.

Yesterday’s sky was extremely active. Cloudy then mostly sunny then cloudy with an approaching thunderstorm. This video shows an excellent example of a typical monsoon summer day here in Arizona. The storm was fast approaching and Mike and I really thought we’d get poured on. But when the sun sets, the storm’s main source of energy is removed. It dissipates quickly — usually within an hour of sunset. And although yesterday’s storm got close — probably within 20 miles — it died before it reached us.

Darn!

Here’s the video from the day. I’ve tweaked the settings to shoot a new frame every 8 minutes and create the video at the framrate of 5 frames per second. That stretches out the video to 20 seconds without making a major increase in the file size.

[qt:https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-071607.mov https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-071607-poster.mov 320 256]

Remember, after clicking this image, you may have to wait a few seconds for it to load before it starts playing. Be patient and click only once. It’ll play right in this window. QuickTime is required.