MTV Windpower Video

Filed in National by on March 27, 2008

Stephanie Woods of Hockessin has made this video for MTV’s Street Team. As a fan of video on the net, I think this is a pretty nice overview. Guest appearances from Gerald Hocker, John Kowalko and Jeremy Firestone.

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  1. jason330 says:
    March 27, 2008 at 8:32 am

    Awesome job.

    Q: Why do all Delmarva Power people sound like evil retards?

  2. Andy says:
    March 27, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Maybe they are

  3. donviti says:
    March 27, 2008 at 10:23 am

    I need to know how old she is before I make a comment

  4. FSP says:
    March 27, 2008 at 11:10 am

    Great video. Very well done.

  5. Dorian Gray says:
    March 27, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Pardon my ignorance on this one. I support the wind thing 100% but I don’t understand it 100%. I’m sure one of you can enlighten me.

    The VP from Delmarva made the argument that wind does blow all the time. I was reading about the NJ wind farm in Egg Harbor (on the AC Expressway). If my memory serves me, don’t the computers in the turbines somehow store excess energy created during high wind times so that it may be distributed when the wind isn’t blowing? The computers also rotate the blades into the wind to ensure maximum efficiency as well, if I remember correctly.

    Can anyone confirm this?

  6. jason330 says:
    March 27, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    I know that the computers also rotate the blades into the wind to ensure maximum efficiency but I don’t think the elctricity can be stored.

    I’m pretty sure when the blades are not turning there is no electricity.

  7. kavips says:
    March 27, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    Correct. When the blades do not turn, there is no electricity being made. Perhaps someone heard once that someday, for wind to harness all our needs, we need a system of efficient batteries to store excess electricity to be used at another time. When our technology reaches that point, we can stop burning coal altogether.

  8. liberalgeek says:
    March 27, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Wind is often cited as integral to the “Hydrogen Economy.” Essentially using excess electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then when you need it, use fuel cells to convert from hydrogen to electricity.

  9. Tyler Nixon says:
    March 27, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    I see k and LG chimed in as I was writing this long answer…but anyway here goes :

    Basically a wind turbine is a large electrical generator attached to a fan blade. Think of a house/ceiling fan in reverse. In a house fan if there is no electricity, the blades don’t turn…vice versa, in a wind turbine if the blades don’t turn there is no electricity.

    These massive generators are not visually obvious because they are housed in the nacelle, which is the little box attached to the blade at the top of the tower. That little box is as large as a room, with a control panel and all…especially in the larger turbine models (like 4+ MW).

    When the electricity is transmitted from the turbine to the grid it then has to be ‘re-conditioned’ for transmission to end-users in usable form…same as with any type of large generation source. It can’t be stored, except by traditional storage methods (batteries, etc) which obviously are not typical. This is one reason why electrolytic hydrogen generation may come into play so critically for these emerging intermittent energy generation resources (wind/solar). Rather than use the electricity directly it can be used to create storable hydrogen fuel. There is a way to go, however, with typical electrolytic hydrogen production methods.

    The company I worked for doing wind power in ’01 developed a really interesting technology, eventually patented, whereby compressed air is pumped out of a slot cut into the trailing edge of the blades. The compressed air flow minimizes the blade drag created by the bounder layer separation that occurs at the tail of every airfoil.

    Any means of drag reduction is huge in wind power because drag represents inefficiency and thus less electricity from the available wind resources. More so, significant drag reduction means the possibility of using wind power in areas with marginal wind resources (like a Category 3).

    It is a shame the company (and its 20+ engineer work force) was driven from New Castle to Pennsylvania in early 2004, after several years of nightmarishly dead-end attempts to work with DEDO, McDowell, and the Minner administration.

  10. Tyler Nixon says:
    March 27, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Damn, kavips and geek said it much better than I did. That’s why they get the blogger big bucks. See you all this evening!

  11. liberalgeek says:
    March 27, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    Thanks, TPN. See you there.

  12. Dorian Gray says:
    March 27, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Thanks dudes. I knew I probably got my information jumbled up. I haven’t researched this issue as much as I should. Thanks again.

  13. donviti says:
    March 27, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    I stopped reading TPN at Basically…

  14. Tyler Nixon says:
    March 27, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    Deez, DonV. Deez.

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