How High Should your Small Wind Turbine Be?

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Excerpt: A tall tower is the single most important factor in the economic viability of a small wind system. Tall towers enable turbines to access faster in better quality winds, and even small increases in wind speed translate to exponentially more energy the turbine can generate. In other words, a taller to …

Why YOU Should Install a Small or Community Wind System?

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Excerpt: Your family's electric bill has climbed to $400 per month and you expect it go higher. You are worried how global warming will affect your kids. And you don't want to wait around for others to fix these problems. Generating your own, clean power sounds like a great idea, and something you may …

What Are Small Wind Turbines?

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Excerpt: A small wind turbine is a device that produces electricity from wind. Moving air causes the turbine to rotate, which generates clean, emissions-free energy that can be used to power a home, farm, school, or small business. Though most small wind turbines look like a miniaturized, "back yard" version …

Vertical Axis Turbine Powers Cell Towers

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Excerpt: Cell phone towers may have a new friend here soon as Helix Wind Corporation gave an update today on its efforts to provide cost-effective renewable energy solutions to telecommunications companies. Specifically, Helix’s wind turbines are ideal ways to lower the costs of operating expenses associat …

Texas Instruments’ Smart Grid Solution

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Excerpt: Providing utility companies with a reliable, accurate and energy-efficient smart grid solution for electricity line monitoring, Optisense Network, Inc. has selected Texas Instruments Incorporated’s embedded processing and analog technology as the preferred solution for its primary measuring units …

No Shortage of Amusing Turbine Ideas

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Excerpt: Arizona State architectural student, identified only as Joe, says his idea is to retrofit horizontal steel structures that currently hold freeway signs with two horizontal-axis wind turbines powered by the turbulence from passing cars. (Joe admits borrowing the turbine design from U.K. based quietre …

Clever Bearing and Planetary Drive for Wind Turbines

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Excerpt: Uncontrollable and highly variable wind forces adversely affect the performance and reliability of planetary gears inside wind-turbine power transmissions. A couple developments from The Timken Co., Canton, Ohio, can lower maintenance on rolling elements and carry greater load in a planetary gearset …

Why Taller Modular Towers Make Sense

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Excerpt: A modular turbine tower is one way to get around the shortcomings of conventional solid section designs. Peder M. Hansen Executive Vice President Northstar Wind Towers Taller towers for wind turbines make sense in so many ways. For instance, an 80 m tower can let modern 2 to 3-MW wind …

Compact Weather Stations Help Measure the Wind

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Excerpt: Wind is a limited resource. As such, finding areas where one can harvest the most energy from this limited resource is becoming increasingly important in today's power generation market. Proper turbine selection, controls and siting are among the top of the important decisions list. Two years …

What Factor’s Lead to Wind Power Electricity Cost?

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Excerpt: The cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80% over the last 20 years. In the early 1980's, when the first utility-scale wind turbines were installed, wind power electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants  …