Windpower

Took me a moment to figure out which usage to go with in my title: Wind Power, ala Wikipedia, or Windpower, courtesy Thomas Dolby's song title on his 1982 album The Golden Age of Wireless. Since Mr. Dolby's usage is consistent with GE Energy's, and since I was a massive fan of this album back in the day, I decided on the later.

The point of my bringing up Mr. Dolby's music video is to point out that wind energy is nothing new. This was reinforced when Dr. Bharat Bagepalli, Principal Engineer at GE Wind Energy, provided a facility tour and seminar to the Capital Region engineering community at a March 25th event sponsored by both the Hudson-Mohawk (New York) sections of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

<-- Yale and MIT educated Dr. Bharat Bagepalli has fifty-five U.S. patents and has authored over twenty technical publications. His expertise is with wind-drive system design, optimized for reduced cost of production.

Hudson-Mohawk Engineers Tour Multiple Labs at GE's Energy Learning Center (ELC) Facility

A group I would estimate at fifty strong gathered at the Thursday after-work event on Balltown Road in Niskayuna, at a small complex separate but just down the road from the main GE Global Research campus. The event attracted many local college students and their professors - many already doing Wind Turbine related research - from RPI and Union colleges, early and mid career engineers like myself, as well as retirees and folks from local media (including this blogger). Because of the strong turnout, Dr. Bagepalli and his colleagues were forced to split the group into simultaneous tours of the two major laboratories.

The first laboratory I toured featured a GE-presenter who'd spent approximately twenty years as an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy, primarily servicing mechanical components on submarines. Surrounding his computer, where he was running an informative, GE-themed PowerPoint presentation on an extra-large wide screen monitor, were massive, snow-white in color interface components. Among them were a nosecone large enough for myself and two others to easily stand upright in, and a gear ratioing system allowing for matching between mechanical drive components and the generator. Interestingly, our presenter said that light-weight balsa wood is still a common internal structural material used for support inside composite-material blades. To demonstrate, my group was kindly shown a cross-sectional model.

At the end of the first laboratory tour, our Naval-veteran presenter took questions from my group. When this began, I had knowledge that many folks from CR4 had witnessed with interest Danish mechanical engineers at work on a program from National Geographic channel's Megastructures documentary series. The particular program we witnessed documented integration of wind turbines with a new, twin-tower skyscraper hotel structure in Bahrain. The wind turbine component hardware shown on NatGeo's program was from European-based manufacturers and designers, and not from GE.

With this in mind, while fielding questions from the group, I asked my first presenter if Nordex (Germany) and Vestas (Denmark) were major competitors of his, either in the U.S., Europe or globally. His response was that both Vestas and Siemens were major competitors, with Siemens being GE's primary competitor in Europe.

A separate presenter provided my group with a high-bay area (both labs were high-bay) tour of the second of the two laboratories, containing a wheeled demonstration Nacelle, ready for the highway and a visit to a State Fair near you, and a separate, stationary-controls display. This presenter was an expert in wind turbine controls, and had a deep knowledge of the evolution of GE's control technology dating back to at least the mid-1990's.

Included in that evolution was GE's acquisition of technology from another company that has been much in the news. Mid-career folks like myself in the audience were aware that GE Energy, in a very smart move for its future business, had acquired Wind Turbine assets and technology from, of all companies, Enron.

Believe it or not, Enron had been a pioneering American company in Wind Turbine technology during the 1990's, and installed wind turbines along the North Sea coasts of Holland and Germany that I'd seen with my own eyes in 1997. Recently, I've even had the great pleasure of meeting a former Enron Wind Turbine (mechanical) engineer, and indeed, he was one of the "smartest guys in the room". However, like many, he'd also been badly burned by the scandal at his former employer.

Seminar Begins with a Brief History of Wind Turbines

With tours of the two labs over, attendees gathered in an auditorium that looked much like what you'd see on your local college campus. Dr. Bagepalli began his formal presentation by honoring pioneering-engineers of ancient and modern wind turbine technology: Ancient Middle-Easterners, Chinese and Indians, A Croatian Engineer who was the first to introduce a practical windmill in Europe, Dane Poul la Cour, American Charles Brush (the "forgotten" wind turbine pioneer), and others.

Then began the meat of his presentation. Global wind current patterns and solar insolation were identified as the most important factors in siting a wind turbine field.

The sun's energy interacts with both the Earth's atmosphere and its axial rotational energy. Rotational force acting on the global atmosphere is known as the Coriolis Effect, a concept taught in early physics courses. Dr. Bagepalli identified six discrete rotational cells / fluid-channels, contained within the troposphere, from around the planet. These six channels are useful to decision makers in locating a profitable wind turbine field.

Wind Energy Technical Discussion

"Wind is a mostly Northern and Southern Phenomenon", said Dr. Bagepalli, as he explained optimal siting locations from around the globe. On either side of the equator, from twenty to twenty-eight degrees latitude, is where the sweet spot exists.

Within the U.S., the optimal wind corridor exists starting in the Mid-West in Minnesota, and heading south-southwesterly into Texas and New Mexico. Much of this optimal wind corridor exists on Native American lands.

Mountains have an important effect on optimal wind conditions, as they interact with long-distance wind-current flows and impact the density of air striking wind turbine blades. The condition of the ground also impacts long-distance wind flows, with Dr. Bagepalli pointing out that "sheep are a wind turbine's best friend".

I have plenty of other notes and memories I took that I'm keeping off-line for now, but would be glad to share them via the forum discussion or CR4's private message system for registered users. Wishing all my readers from around the globe a Happy Earth Day 2010!

- Larry Kelley

Resources:

GE Energy Learning Center (ELC) Images: Taken by this blogger, with permission.

ASME Hudson-Mohawk's March Newsletter: http://sections.asme.org/hudson-mohawk/2010_March_Newsletter_v3.pdf

Thomas Dolby's "Top of the Pops" performance on British television, circa 1982: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9i7rWk3jAE

Image, Three Wind Turbines integrated with Dual-Tower Hotel - Bahrain World Trade Center (BWTC): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWTC

Illustrated View, Generic Triple-Blade Wind Turbine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_Turbine

"Windpower" (no space) usage on a GE Energy web site: http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge_wind_energy/en/index.htm

Wikipedia's primer on Windpower History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wind_power