Liming Zhou led a team of researchers at the State University of New York-Albany looking at the effects of wind turbines on global warming.  The report was published on 30 April in the journal Nature Climate Change. Because the report has been misrepresented in some sections of the US and British press, Zhou has had to release a statement condemning the misleading reports and setting the record straight. The usual anti-wind lobby, both in the UK and in the States jumped onto a ... Read More

As part of EU-wide action to increase the use of renewable energy, the UK is committed to generating 15% of energy from green sources by 2020.  At an International Clean Energy Conference in London, the UK Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron said the growth in renewables in the UK was not just good for the environment, but “good business” too. The Prime Minister stressed fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas – including shale gas – and carbon capture and storage were ... Read More

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, once called a windfarm "a blot on the landscape".  However it'll be interested to see if he changes his tune because he looks set to benefit from the erection of onshore windfarms in England and Wales. His Father, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, is also not known for his tolerance of renewable energies- in November last year when referring to wind power technology  he said it was "absolutley useless, completely reliant on subsidies and ... Read More

3TIER are an international company that uses weather science to help clients manage the risk of weather-driven variability. It's not just data, it's practical and actionable intelligence. The company started in 1999 with the philosophy that their clients' financial success will propagate a sustainable future powered by renewable energy. They boast a world-class team of atmospheric scientists with expertise in wind, solar, and hydro power generation.  They have offices servicing North America, Europe, India, Latin America and the Pacific Rim. They rank among ... Read More

It never ceases to amaze me what rubbish I hear from people when the subject of windpower comes up in conversation.  I do my best to correct them when they are espousing a view that is clearly based on incorrect information. The other day I was told that windpower is becoming "increasingly unpopular"  all across the UK.  This was based on no statistics or surveys, just an article in a newspaper which said that there was some opposition to a proposed wind ... Read More

Campaigners against a plan to build  wind turbines on moors associated with the Bronte sisters are making their final attempt to coerce councillors and planners to give a thumbs down to the proposal. People living close to Thornton Moor, west of Bradford, are hoping to prevent the siting of a number of wind turbines on the moor. The moor is a couple of miles from the famous parsonage at Haworth where the Bronte sisters and their family lived, and which is now preserved ... Read More

Could we soon be seeing semi-sentient Wind Turbines, that are able to learn and use that learning? One of the problems of most conventional wind turbines is that they have only a limited set of automatic reactions to changes in wind speed.  That’s powering down when the wind speed is too low or too high and adjusting the blade angles and/or the electromagnetic torque of the generator. These relatively simple adjustments are designed to harvest the maximum allowable power once winds have attained ... Read More

If you have an area that you think may be suitable for the establishment of a wind turbine, but have no historical data on average wind velocities, arboreal help may be at hand! Just for reference, we all remember from school the (rather quaint) Beaufort scale of wind speed. The following chart gives Beaufort scale type descriptions but with wind speeds in Mph 0 - 1   Smoke rises vertically. 2 - 3   Direction of wind shown by smoke drift, but not by wind ... Read More

In New Zealand, wind power generates a small but rapidly growing proportion of the country's electricity, as the country makes increasing use of its outstanding wind resources. Currently, wind supplies around 4% of New Zealand's electricity needs, but the predictions are that this will reach 20%  by 2030. The Windflow 500 (photo above and below) is New Zealand's only locally designed and manufactured wind turbine sited at Brooklyn. [caption id="attachment_4592" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Brooklyn Wind Turbine"][/caption] New Zealand had an installed wind generation capacity of over ... Read More

Thailand's commitment to modernizing its electrical network with a nationwide smart grid took another step forward in the last weeks with its order for 90 Siemens Energy wind turbines to be installed at two plants in the northeastern part of the country. While Thailand's smart grid efforts haven't been the stuff of industry media headlines, the country's state electric utility,  Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA), announced in April 2011 that it would invest $13 billion to develop a nationwide intelligent power network over the ... Read More