If you are unemployed, are PMP certified, and have an engineering degree in either Mechanical, Electrical or Aerospace Engineering, you may be eligible for a scholarship for the Project Energy Professional Level 1 Certificate. Call 1-877-70-Cheetah for more information.
My graphics design team and I came up with this conceptual drawing of a wind farm in Haines Alaska. Depending on the size of the wind turbines, this wind farm can create from 9 to 18 mw of power. The town right now only uses 3 to 4 MW of power. The extra power could be used to create a hydrogen refueling station for a fleet of fuel cell powered fishing boats at the small boat harbor.
I got the second anemenoter fully operational and recording on the internet - go to www.weatherlink.com and zoom in on Haines Alaska. The two anemoneters are about a mile apart but the wind direction and velocity could be hundreds of miles apart. Right now, the wind is gusting at the Mud Bay weather station in excess of 60 MPH from the south. The weather station up on the hill is actually reading “calm” with a gust of 40 MPH from two hours ago. Maybe the solution out here is to use both as when it’s very windy up on the hill, it might be quite a bit calmer at the sea level location. Time will tell what is the best approach.
If you think you have an area that would offer sufficient wind to create energy from wind power, you need to do a wind feasibility study. A wind feasibility study gives you measured data so you know the direction, and speed of the wind at various times of the year. Without the measured data, you are making an uneducated guess about the viability of the site for creating wind power.
Right now I am doing two wind feasibility studies on two different locations. The first wind study, it took about a month to get all the equipment working correctly to accurately log the wind speed and direction over the internet.
Weather Station Standing Tall
The first problem I ran into was location. I had a large pole already on my property that I thought I could mount the weather station. The location of the pole was in a wind shadow on the property - so while it was in a convenient location for me to capture the wireless data and be able to view it via the internet, it was not in the location where there was sufficient wind to create power from a wind turbine. So I had to move the weather station to the windier location on the property. I needed mounting equipment to do this. It took several attempts to get the weather station to stay upright, especially in high winds. I finally got the weather station pole to stay up right in high winds by attaching three 75 foot twisted wire cables to the pole anchored into the ground by three foot long steel posts (the type used in pouring concrete).
Weather Console connected to DSL
The new location of the weather station was not close to the house with the internet connection. I tried a signal booster from the wireless transponder on the weather station - but there were large boulders in between where the weather station was and the weather station receiver. So I had to get a DSL connection into a small house by the weather station. After about two weeks of collecting data, we noticed that there was a stand of trees about 50 feet in front of the weather station that was blocking most of the winds from the south from reaching the weather station. You guessed it, down they came (they were on my property). It didn’t make any sense to block the wind from the proposed wind turbine site or the weather station collecting data to assess the speed and direction of the wind.
The second weather station is up on a hill where I have another piece of property. The neighbors had a large telephone pole I could use to mount the anemometer (measures wind speed and direction). They also had electricity and an internet DSL connection. We mounted the anemometer on their pole, hooked up the weather station inside their house and connected it to the internet. IT WORKED. For a day. Then they disconnected it claiming it was messing up their internet connection. Not sure how this could be - but regardless, it required that I have a temporary power pole connected on my property and the phone company connect DSL and a phone line on my empty lot so that I could continue the wind feasibility study.
Having set up two of these wind feasibility studies now, I’m learning. Here is what is required to set up a wind feasibility study:
1. Figure out where the wind blows the strongest and the most consistently on the property where you want to put up a wind turbine. You might need to clear some trees, or remove structures obstructing the flow of wind through your area.
2. Determine how you are going to mount your weather station or anemometer- make sure you mount it about the same height as your wind turbine will be. The higher you go, the stronger the wind gets and the more you will need to take measures to keep the equipment upright.
3. Get the equipment - some states have weather station loaning programs. You will still have to get the mounting equipment as this varies based on location. If you want your own weather station long term, I recommend the Davis Vantage Pro 2 Wireless Weather Station. It comes with a solar powered transponder that sends all the weather station data to the Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station console. Get it with the internet connectivity equipment. You can get the USB connector to just download the information from the weather console onto your computer - HOWEVER, it is far easier to connect the weather station console to the internet and see the data from wherever you are.
I found it easiest to purchase it directly from Davis Instruments. They are very prompt and I got my equipment within three days up in rural Alaska. You do not need to get the entire weather station, but it costs as much as the anemometer, solar transponder and weather console. The ONLY reason I would NOT get the entire weather station is because the large rain bucket from the weather station puts too much weight on the weather station pole. If you can securely anchor the weather station pole and the weight isn’t a problem, just get the entire weather station. It provides a much more comprehensive picture of the weather where you would want to put a wind turbine.
4. When you get the equipment, set it all up indoors to make sure it works BEFORE you mount it outside. This means assembling all the parts, hooking up the solar transponder, and making sure the weather station console is picking up the data. Once you get that working, then you can connect your weather station to the internet. This is extremely simple as you just plug the internet adapter into the weather console and connect it to your DSL modem. You may need to get an ethernet hub so you can plug in multiple devices to your DSL (computer, weather station, etc). The weatherlink software explains how to set up the weather station on www.weatherlink.com. It also explains how to download the weather data onto your system with their weatherlink software. You can also track your weather data on the Weather Underground station. This takes a bit more work. But it is fairly simple if you are technically oriented. If using the internet in anyway confuses you, hire someone to help you set this up as you will save yourself a lot of headaches.
5. Once the system is working inside the house, now it’s time to mount the system outside. If you have a clear line of site from where you are mounting your weather station to your house where the weather console is, you are done. If not, you have to get power and an internet connection to within line of site at your weather station location.
How much does this cost?
That depends on your mounting requirements, site prep requirements, availability of power and internet.
Basic costs could include:
1. Clear trees - one day of labor - I had the tractor and the guys already working for me. Land clearing estimates would apply - $100 per hour for the equipment and $25 per hour for each laborer. Four hours of work - $600.
2. Mounting the hardware - three days of experimenting and the mounting hardware. Cost for my labor - I’m free (for my projects) but you could expect to pay someone who knows what they are doing $150 an hour. Cost for the hardware - $350. Cost for the installation - estimate $600.
3. Cost of the weather station equipment - $1100. I still have to return the signal repeater I purchased that did not work, that was an extra $300.
4. Cost of temporary power - $250 to install. Estimating $25 per month (on the high side)
5. Cost of the phone line and dsl - $50 per month.
6. Cost to monitor the wind study - again my time is “free” on my projects - I spend about an hour a week looking at the reports. If you have to pay someone, estimate $500 per month.
Total Cost for a Year Long Wind Study (if you’re paying someone else to do it) = $9800. This does not include their travel costs. If you can “borrow” the equipment, use existing poles, and tie into existing power and internet, hypothetically, you can do this for no cost. The more you can do yourself, obviously the less it will cost. If you’re doing this for someone else, they should pay you as they are going to get a payback from your efforts.
How long does it take?
That depends on where the wind feasibility site is. If you don’t have power and dsl - it could take up to a month to get the whole system installed. If the site for the weather station is ready, estimate a week to get the equipment and a couple hours to set it up and install it. If you’ve never done this before, estimate a month for the first one to work out all the bugs.
A note here - if you are doing a wind study in a remote location - you really need to think about how you are going to use the power that you are creating in this remote location. If you are going to create the power for use by a small community - you will need transmissions lines out to the site. You can get remote data loggers for the anemometers - and pull the information off the data loggers when you visit the site. This will add to the cost and complexity of doing the wind study.
Servidyne was awarded a $3.1 million dollar contract to retrofit all the lighting fixtures at the Naval Base in Guam. They were selected in part because of their exceptional project management skills. The Navy expects the project to save them $825k in electrical costs per year for a 3 million KWH per year reduction in energy usage.
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS164599+02-Sep-2009+BW20090902
WASHINGTON, ALA. — Auburn University has been selected to receive up to $4.9 million of federal grant money for a biofuel project.
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced Monday that up to $21 million will be available for the selection of five projects that will develop supply systems to handle and deliver biomass feedstocks for cellulosic biofuels production.
The awards are part of the department’s efforts to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil and provide new jobs in many rural areas. Auburn will work with leading producers of forest biomass for energy in Alabama.
The university will help design a high productivity system to harvest, process and transport woody biomass from southern pine plantations.
This is a resource link to the large Wind Farms in the U.S. Amazing how many there are now!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_United_States
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP
Wind Power in Rural Alaska
I have been doing a wind feasibility study on a property in Alaska since April for a small 5kw wind mill I want to install for basic home use. I have another piece of property that could be a potential location for small community wind farm. After studying what else is going on in Alaska and talking with folks in the power industry up here, it appears the largest impediment to these small rural Alaskan wind farms is not the funding as the state has already approved $50 million in funding per year, but it is the land that needs to be set aside to create the wind farm. Well that problem is solved in my location, because I own it. So, now it’s onto evaluating the feasibility of that location for wind power.
Here are some links I’ve been studying to get smarter on a community wind farm in rural alaska:
1. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) Economics of Wind Power Report - Feb. 2005
2. The Annual Report on US Wind Power Installation, Cost, and Performance Trends, 2006.
It doesn’t appear there has been another “annual” report issued by the Department of Energy.
3. State of Alaska calls for more rural wind farms - Jan. 28, 2009 - Anchorage Daily News
Some key points:
All very fascinating The property I am evaluating is not in an arctic region and the temperature seldom gets below 0 for any length of time. But we do get a lot of snow at times and recalling my days as a consultant evaluating the environment’s impacts on aviation equipment, icing from snow fall might present a problem on the rotors. This will need to became part of my requirements document if the wind feasibility study proves this to be a worthwhile venture.
The power lines already go to this property, but we’d need a bit bigger transmission pipe. That level of pipe stops just five miles short of this property so the transmission problem will be fairly inexpensive to resolve (in comparison to some of these more remote operations).
The other benefit to my location, the main people who will see the wind turbines will be the cruise ships. Very few of the neighbors even look over at that hill and those that do - they already have their own windmills installed for generating electricity on their property. The neighborhood has been using wind power for electricity for over 20 years.
I’m working on the hook up of a solar energy system on a property in Connecticut and a wind power system in Alaska. In Connecticut, the utility company by law has to purchase back any excess power a consumer creates with an alternative energy system. The company GroSolar that is handling the installation, takes care of setting up the bi-directional metering as part of their installation. It truly is simple and a turn key system.
In Alaska, they are a bit behind with complying with federal laws. And it’s not nearly as simple (isn’t this why people choose to live in Alaska anyhow - because of the challenges of day to day life in the last frontier - I guess this includes bureaucratic challenges too). With my local utility company in Southeast Alaska to purchase back power, I was told I would have to set up my own utility company. The larger utility company in Alaska - Golden Valley Electric has an incentive program for renewable energy development. But it really doesn’t look like something anyone would want to do - for as they say on their website - “The producers of renewable power do not keep any of the power they produce.” Wow - where is the power to the people with that policy?
So just how does a utility company buy back power? According to the Department of Energy’s Website - http://www.energysavers.gov/your_home/electricity/index.cfm/mytopic=10600?print - they can either set up two meters with one that measures the energy you consume and the other one that measures the energy you produce. I think this is a very old post as most utility companies now use Bi-directional meters. Additionally this article references a 1978 law - The Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA) requires power providers to purchase excess power from grid-connected small renewable energy systems at a rate equal to what it costs the power provider to produce the power itself.
There was further national legislation passed in 2005 with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that Requires all public electric utilities to offer net metering on request to their customers. According to this law, ‘‘(11) NET METERING.—Each electric utility shall make available upon request net metering service to any electric consumer that the electric utility serves. For purposes of this paragraph, the term ‘net metering service’ means service to an electric consumer under which electric energy generated by that electric consumer from an eligible on-site generating facility and delivered to the local distribution facilities may be used to offset electric energy provided by the electric utility to the electric consumer during the applicable billing period.
I guess there are all types of ways to enact this legislation that is very unfavorable to the renewable energy producer as demonstrated by the State of Alaska. Furthermore, most of the net-metering laws are manipulated by the local utility companies to be in their favor ranging from the extreme policies of Golden Valley Electric where you cannot even use any of the power you create to the policy where the utility can company purchase the power from the renewable energy system at the lowest wholesale rate, but when you are using the power from their system, you are paying the prevailing retail rate all the way to Colorado’s policy that you get credited at the “avoided” cost rate - which is the prevailing retail rate for which you are avoiding. What is interesting is how these utility companies attempt to manipulate the end user. I was told by my local utility company at first that the reason that their utility could not do a bi-directional meter was because it would damage their grid. Upon further inquires, I was told that yes it was possible, and they were in fact now doing it with other people - but that if I wanted to get a rebate, I’d have to set up my own utility company.
Here is a website that explains the net metering policy by state - http://apps3.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/markets/netmetering.shtml. We summarized the policies in a previous post - http://www.cheetahpower.net/incentives/
Most states with more legislative power over the utility companies credit rates with renewable energy system at the retail rate or the “avoided cost” rate. But they do not rebate the cost savings. If at the end of the year, you have credits, the utility company absorbs those credits. Colorado is the exception and the cost savings are rebated to the consumer for the “avoided” cost rate. Kentucky does not have a end of the year credit grabbing policy like most other states. In Connecticut, the rates are credited at the retail rates, but if you have a credit at the end of the year, that credit is absorbed by the utility company.
Rather amazing.
So the moral of the story here - make sure that you have strong consumer advocates at the legislative level who understand the nuances of electric metering.
Wow - they have really spread out this AWARD for developing electric vehicle battery technology.
Check out their press release on this - rather impressive
CONTACT:
Betsaida Alcantara
alcantara.betsaida@epa.gov
202-564-1692
202-564-4355
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 5, 2009
EPA Administrator Announces $95 Million in Recovery Act Funds to Unleash American Innovation and Create Jobs in Florida
$95 Million will go to Saft America Inc. in Jacksonville, Fla. to manufacture battery technology for electric vehicles
Nationwide, President Obama announced $2.4 billion in recovery act funding for advanced battery and electric drive components manufacturing and electric drive vehicle deployment
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – To accelerate the manufacturing and deployment of electric vehicles, batteries, and components here in America, and create tens of thousands of new jobs, President Obama today announced 48 new advanced battery and electric drive projects, in more than 20 states, receiving a total of $2.4 billion in funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Vice President Joe Biden and four members of the Cabinet, fanned out to communities across the country to share the historic announcement.
EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson traveled to Florida to announce a $95 million grant for Saft America, Inc. to construct a new plant in Jacksonville, Fla. on the site of the former Cecil Field military base. The new plant will manufacture lithium-ion cells, modules and battery packs for military, industrial, and agricultural vehicles. These projects, selected through a highly competitive process by the Department of Energy, will significantly boost U.S. manufacturing capacity for batteries and electric drive components as well as the deployment of electric drive vehicles, helping to establish American leadership in creating the next generation of advanced vehicles.
“President Obama has called for us to unleash American innovators, engineers, workers and entrepreneurs. We need to get into the global clean energy race – and today we’re firing the starting gun,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “This recovery funding will propel America into global leadership in innovative battery manufacturing, position our auto industry to reclaim the lead in producing the cars of the 21st century, and lay a new foundation for prosperity with new jobs in clean energy.”
Administrator Jackson appeared with representatives of Saft America, Progress Energy, and Ford Motor Company at the event today held in St. Petersburg, Fla. Progress Energy plans to deploy Ford electric vehicles to help provide service to its electric utility customers in St. Petersburg and Lake Mary.
Thomas Alcide, President of Saft America, Inc. said, “This investment in America will allow Saft to build a state of the art factory for lithium ion batteries which will bring high technology jobs to Jacksonville rapidly and make us competitive on the world markets.”
Additional funds nationwide will speed deployment of American-made Ford plug in electric vehicles.
“Ford is committed to the commercialization of plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles within five years and we are pleased the Obama administration is supporting these efforts,” said Sue Cischke, group vice president, Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering, Ford Motor Company. “This grant represents the recognition that the move toward electrification requires a partnership of vehicle providers, utilities and the government. Ford is uniquely positioned to work with its existing and new utility partners to develop the smart vehicle to grid integration that will be required for mass market acceptance of electric transportation.”
“Progress Energy is proud to partner with the EPA and with Ford on this innovative technology,” said Bill Johnson, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Progress Energy and co-chair of the Edison Electric Institute’s CEO Taskforce on Electric Transportation. “We already have one of the nation’s largest utility plug-in hybrid electric vehicle programs because we believe that plug-in hybrids and other alternative energy technologies are critical parts of our balanced solution strategy for addressing the challenges of growing customer demand, high fuel costs and global climate change. We are also investing in aggressive energy efficiency and state-of-the-art power plants as part of our balanced solution strategy to meeting these new energy realities.”
For a full list of award winners: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/recovery/pdfs/battery_awardee_list.pdf
For a map of their locations: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/recovery/pdfs/battery_awardee_map.pdf
Cheetah Power is proudly powered by
WordPress
and the Simplicity theme.
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).