So we’ve posted a bunch of stuff about the Jiminy Peak wind turbine, from how it works to all the surveys and work they had to do before it went up. What none of these speak to, however, is what an ordeal it was to get the turbine to the top of Jiminy Peak (a ski mountain). Luckily the folks at Jiminy had lots of video, which they sent us and let us post. So …. here’s the turbine going up the hill. (Music is by Sarah Schachner who owns the full rights to it and all that jazz but was kind enough to let us use it for this video. Thanks Sarah.)
Jiminy Peak Wind Turbine
On Wednesday, March 18th we went up to Hancock, Massachusetts to see Zephyr, the 1.5 megawatt GE wind turbine at the Jiminy Peak ski resort.
Getting a Wind Turbine Up a Mountain
April 17th, 2009Spin
April 14th, 2009EOS Ventures
April 14th, 2009
This was going to be a post about the economics of wind (which I will get to and add a link once I post), but I decided to first tell the story of how Jiminy Peak got their wind turbine. First, it’s important to understand that there aren’t a lot of other single wind turbines around, most of them are part of large wind farms. Jiminy Peak actually has “the only privately owned megawatt class turbine in the nation for on-site energy usage,” according to the EOS Ventures website. Basically, after going through the process of surveying and procuring the turbine the team at Jiminy learned a ton and decided to start a company to help others get their renewable energy projects off the ground.
Here are the steps they went through (which come from full case study outlining the process at the EOS site).
- Wetlands study for the access road and site.
- Wetlands assessment for surrounding area.
- Avian Assessment, (bird study).
- A determination by Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency (MEPA) for an Environmental Notification Form (ENF).
- Study of rare and endangered species was completed.
- A letter of opinion was obtained from the National Heritage Society.
- Civil engineering analysis of site and access roads.
- Visual Impact Assessment of the project (photo simulations).
Then, once they finished all that and realized it was a viable option they went to talk to GE. Because GE doesn’t sell a 1 megawatt turbine (the smallest is a 1.5 mw) Jiminy had to go back to the drawing board and do a few more studies to make sure the larger turbine wouldn’t be an issue. This second round looked like this:
- A re-evaluation of the wind study and determination of how many kilowatt hours could be generated by a GE turbine indicated it will produce 4.6 MILLION KILOWATT HOURS of electricity. (Jiminy uses 7 million kilowatt hours).
- Turbulence data was necessary in order to assure there would be no excessive vibrations to the turbine over the useful life of the next 50 years. Historical weather information proved there are no turbulence concerns.
- The ability for the turbines connection into Jiminy’s electrical distribution and National Grid’s distribution system was satisfactory answered.
- Civil Engineering and contractor capabilities for hauling this heavier piece of equipment up the mountain and installing it was resolved.
Finally after everything was cleared they installed it (a whole other ordeal, since it’s not every day you need to get a structure of that size to the top of a ski mountain). The total cost $3.9 million and it’s predicted to take 8 years to pay back (all according to EOS of course).
Clearly not a very easy process, which is exactly why the team at Jiminy started EOS. Very interesting.
Turbine Aesthetics
April 13th, 2009When we were up at Jiminy Peak, we talked to Tyler Fairbank who’s the son of Jiminy Peak owner Brian Fairbank and also the CEO of EOS Ventures, a green energy company Noah wrote about here.
One of the things we’d discussed before we went to see/climb the turbine was the aesthetics of wind turbines. Noah and I happen to think they look pretty cool, but definitely have witnessed the NIMBY point of view – the aesthetics of the turbines, particularly in large scale installations, is a frequent obstacle for approval from the local residents.
Here’s a clip of us talking to Tyler about how the turbines look.
So interestingly, there was a pretty dramatic shift of opinion on the area post-installation. This seems pretty normal to me, and got us thinking that maybe the pitch for a turbine installation needs to be more design oriented.
Here’s a wind farm in Palm Springs, California – one which I’ve driven through myself. Its pretty cool looking, but is definitely the work of engineers, its in a grid formation, and probably laid out with only zoning and maximum efficiency in mind.
Contrast with this:
Ok, so yeah I picked tulips because of the Dutch windmill association, but my first thought on wind farm aesthetics is how come they’re all one color? As part of an installation hire an artist to design the colors of the turbines (it works for water towers, I see tons of those painted in interesting fashions. Also, as in this picture, maybe make a few concessions for maximum efficiency and skip the grid layout of the turbines and opt for something that is more pleasing to the eye or follows the natural contours of the landscape.
Another thought is visualizations – why not use tools like Google Maps/Earth, and Google SketchUp to not only visualize how the turbines would look in a particular location for general visualization purposes, but also use it as an easily sharable platform for proposals/competitions for the artistic side of a turbine installation ? Not to mention being useful as a general sales/presentation tool. hm.
I bet taking a more beautifying approach would go over well with just about everyone, and would help move things along faster in terms of public acceptance.
Also, found this cool shirt:
How Wind Tubines Work
April 13th, 2009Our guide Ryan up at Jiminy Peak was kind enough to explain to us how turbines work. I’ll let you watch the video and learn for yourself, but here are a few highlights:
- They run at a constant 22rpm (or as close it as possible), which they maintain by pitching the blades and turning the Nacelle.
- All of this is handled automatically by a weather station on top.
Okay, I’ll let Ryan explain …
The Turbine at Jiminy Peak
April 8th, 2009We’ve posted a few videos and things from our trip to the wind turbine at Jiminy Peak, but we haven’t talked about it much yet. So … that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
First off, here are the basics: It went up in August of 2007, it’s 80 meters high (that’s 262.467192 feet according to Google), each blade is 37 meters long (~121 feet … which is about 10 feet bigger than the largest blue whale ever recorded) and it’s roughly a 7-to-7.5 year return on investment for the folks at Jiminy Peak. (I will go deeper into how they made this whole thing happen in another post. Turns out it’s not super easy for an individual/organization to procure a single turbine.)
Anyhow, here’s Betsy from Jiminy talking about how it happened and why they made the decision to go with a turbine:
As a side note, she mentions the trouble with getting it up there. We’re trying to find the video of them doing that to throw up on the site. Hopefully will be up in the next few days.
Flip Drop
April 3rd, 2009
Something just for fun: when we went to visit the gigantic wind turbine we took one of our Flip cameras and made a parachute out of a plastic bag, and dropped it off the 260′ high turbine. It survived just fine, and made this dizzy little video.
Turbining
April 3rd, 2009We’re slowly getting through all the video from our trips so far (probably about 12-15 hours total). We’ll be posting the good stuff as we go. Here’s our day at the turbine in 3:42.
Nacelle
April 3rd, 2009A wind turbine is basically made up of three parts: A giant tube, 3 big blades and a nacelle (which is the name for the thing that sits at the top of the giant tube and holds the blades in place).
I had never heard the word “nacelle” before we visited Jiminy Peak, so I decided to figure out what it’s all about. So … It’s, “A streamlined enclosure (as for an engine) on an aircraft.” Here’s how Miriam Webster breaks down the etymology: “French, literally, small boat, from Late Latin nacicella, diminutive of Latin navis ship” (apologies if this is only interesting to me).
The thing is about the size of a school bus and holds all those parts you can see above. It’s pretty much the guts of the turbine.
Aircraft Signaling Beacons
March 19th, 2009Yesterday we climbed up the wind turbine at Jiminy Peak.
Now we’ll be writing a lot more about the trip, as well as posting more photo and video as soon as possible. However, I wanted to just get a quick post up about something I found interesting. During our tour we got to talking about the signaling beacons on top of the turbine. During the day there is a flashing white beacon and at night it goes to red (the white is so bright that when it accidentally stayed on one evening neighbors complained, thinking it was lightning). Anyway, I asked whether they knew the height requirements to have airplane beacons and no one was quite sure. So when I got back I did a little research and turned up some interesting stuff.
I couldn’t find a single number from the FAA, mostly because it seems that the height requirements change depending on your distance from an airport. However, I did find these guidliens from the Washington state government which require anything over 150 feet to have a beacon. In addition, a search around the FAA site turned up this dense PDF titled “Development of Obstruction Lighting Standards for Wind Turbine Farms”, which I didn’t get all the way through, but outlines the requirements for wind turbine farms. In case you’re interested, here’s the recommendation:
Considering the lighting concepts currently used for illuminating radio towers and long-span bridges, which states that obstructions near to each other should be treated as if they were one large obstruction, a similar lighting concept was adopted for illuminating the wind turbine farms. The lighting concept for wind turbine farms includes the use of red, simultaneously flashing lights positioned on the outer perimeter of the wind turbine farm, each spaced no more than one-half statute mile from each other, and requires only one fixture per turbine. As long as the wind turbines are painted white in color, daytime illumination is not required.
Oh, and if you’re still hungry for more (which I can’t really imagine you are), here are somre more details on the light requirements from the beacons (another FAA PDF).