Your Questions About Wind Turbine Jobs

admin answers:

Hey Taylor, yes, I agree with the other respondents here, there are great breakthroughs to come in the renewable energy business. Let me outline some specifics: Solar panels today, or photovoltiacs to be exact, are only about 12 to 15 % efficient. Over 80% of the suns energy that hit them is only turned into heat, same as if it just hit the ground. They used to be 7%, but we have almost doubled that. The Germans are working on a project right now to harness the suns light and heat to convert to electricity, it is called Desertec. Their plan is to heat oil to over 600 degrees F, then store it in a huge building sized insulated tank. Then using water to oil heat exchangers, they can send water in which will boil in seconds and run a steam turbine. There are several advantages to this plan, not the least of which is the solar array is now 50 to 60 % efficient. A solar factory in the northwest corner of the Sahara Desert can power all of Europe, all day, and all night since the stored hot oil stays above 212 degrees well into the night. Now we have solar electricity even while it’s dark. This is experimental, but if it works that well, you’ll soon see these plants in desert environments all over the globe. Some items further out on the experimental table are liquid salt as a heat medium, and items like liquid nitrogen, and so on. There is plenty of solar energy in the world, we just need to get better at using it, and people like you can make that happen.

Looking at wind, Albert Betz was the scientist who penned what is now called the, “Betz Limit,” a theoretical limit on how much wind energy can be converted to usable torque by a turbine. You can check it out on google or wiki if you like, but in a nutshell, 59% is the maximum theoretical limit of any wind turbine. Well our best units today work in the 30 to 35 % range, well below the Betz Limit. Again, people like you can help us push that envelope out further, so now we can run all the homes in the Pacific Northwest on half the wind farm we would need using todays technology. The same can be said for biomass, landfill conversions, methane use, hydro power, and so on. The area of direct thermal conversion is really old school, even as cool as it is now. There is a woodstove you can buy today that when you feed wood into it and heat it up, it also makes electricity using a Peltier Heat Junction. They work, but are expensive and highly inefficient, again, a work in progress and probably years behind. Global warming is no wimp, just ask anyone on the East Coast USA what they think about it today after the last two “weather patterns,” they have been through. Or check out Sir David Attenborough’s comments on Yahoo’s front page today. K’s comment on fossil technology should be “fracking,” not “fracting,” but he’s correct, we seem to be finding more oil when we should be burning less of it. My feeling on that is if it’s unhealthy to pipe the exhaust from your car to the inside of the vehicle, it’s just as unhealthy to vent it to the outside too.

If you really have an interest in all of this, I highly recommend getting an education in the field and doing whatever you can, we still need more help working all this stuff out. Our home generates about 90% of its own electricity now, with the help of a solar array and small wind turbine. We heat with passive solar and wood, and collect rainwater as well as heat water with the sun, but life would be even better if all this could be done with less resources, less money, and more reliability, that’s where people like you could come in. Good luck Taylor, and take care, Rudydoo

admin answers:

No live voltage – until blades allowed to rotate.