Originally published on Energy & Policy Institute. Las Vegas isn’t exactly a familiar haunt for me, but I’ve been here several times for conferences (and one wedding). I had seen the wine angel in the Mandalay Bay floating up in her harness beside the several story wine cellar a few … [continued]
Originally published on Energy & Policy Institute. Wind farms reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the overall electrical grid on close to a 1:1 basis. Typical grids produce 800 g of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per KWh generated by their mixes of fossil, nuclear and renewable generation, and wind energy displaces virtually all of … [continued]
Originally published on Energy & Policy Institute. WINDPOWER 2014 is upon me, and I’m revved up to learn more and make excellent contacts. I’ll be live-Tweeting from @barnardwind and live-FB updating from /barnardonwind, both using the hashtag #WINDPOWER2014, so look for that too. Daily blogs will be posted on the E&PI … [continued]
UGE has taken an excellent and necessary step, one most small wind turbine manufacturers never do: they have had independent certification of one of their devices performed. A wholly praising article was published in CleanTechnica on April 22, 2014, just a couple of days before this article. The article, as with … [continued]
Wind energy is a tremendous success story world wide, with staggering amounts of innovation. It isn’t given sufficient credit for that and is even unfairly attacked by those opposed to it as old technology. Every aspect of construction, operation, and the business of horizontal axis wind turbines has been subject … [continued]
Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) continue to get attention, press and R&D funding. Antagonists of mainstream wind generation continually point at them as if they were a superior technology. People perpetually re-invent them and believe that they have found something new and exciting. However, they are undeserving of any significant … [continued]
Sky Windpower is an airborne wind generation system that is often given glowing reviews in the inadequately critical popular and technical press. In 2008, they were listed in TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year. In 2011, they were featured on the front cover of Popular Mechanics. They continue to … [continued]
One of the persistent myths of wind energy is that vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) are better than the iconic three-bladed horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWTs). A wrinkle on this myth has surfaced over the past couple of years, that the balance of engineering compromises favours VAWTs for offshore applications. … [continued]
Wind farm setbacks are an unnecessarily controversial issue in many parts of the world. While public health organizations, major utilities, the government, and the wind industry have worked closely together to find a good balance, to establish guidelines and laws, and to put in place modelling software to assist in … [continued]
Nine major and statistically reliable studies covering roughly 270,000 property transactions by different respected and independent organizations in three different countries spread over fifteen years have found no correlation between operating wind turbines and negative property values (in fact, three found slight but statistically insignificant improvements). Another low reliability study … [continued]
