The power of wind energy

Commonwealth

Commonwealth

Active member
Most of you know about the push renewable energy in today's society. I haven't seen a thread about it in awhile, so here goes. The purpose of this thread is to inform some of you about the benefits of wind energy - some of the facts are mind-blowing. I have a personal interest in the subject - I am a business administration major with a concentration in management and the environment - but I also believe that this is a great way for me to combine my passion with my career, something that many people struggle with.

I'm proud to say that my home resort, Jiminy Peak, was the first resort in North America to erect a wind turbine to power their snowmaking, lighting, and hotel/restaurant operations. In August 2007, Jiminy put up the Zephyr, a 1.5MW turbine. At a cost of $4 million, the Zephyr was a huge investment. However, with money saved from operating costs, the turbine is expected to be paid off in seven to eight years. Over the past winter, the turbine brought in an estimated 13,000 new skiers. Clearly, the turbine is not only an efficient cost-cutting measure, but it also promotes tourism - which is something the industry relies on.

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The sheer size of the turbine is amazing. Standing at 253 feet tall with three 123 foot long blades, the turbine swallows the mountainside. As of September 2009, the turbine has produced over 8,161,652 kilowatt hours, comparable to planting 160,000 new trees or driving 150,000,000 fewer miles. In terms of Jiminy's bottom line, the resort saved $200,000 in energy costs during the first year of operation.

Wind energy is not without its criticisms. Many argue that turbines disrupt the quiet beauty of the mountains, or that they affect the flight patterns of local birds. Others argue that the impact of deforestation is harmful. However, these criticisms pale in comparison to the benefits.

The project at Jiminy has spawned of more projects. Bolton Valley resort in Bolton, VT has recently constructed a smaller turbine, and Berkshire East in Charlemont, MA was given approval to build a turbine two weeks ago. Grouse Mountain in BC is also in the process of constructing a very impressive turbine.

What's the point of all this? I want to open the eyes of as many people possible. The percentage of the skiing population that have been to Jiminy, Bolton, Berkshire East or Grouse is very small. Therefore, I want to show YOU guys the benefits through quantifiable data. I want people to realize that wind energy is not only efficient and viable in terms of the environment, but also that from a business perspective it can be a wise investment. Yes, the risk is huge. But the returns are great, and I believe that more resorts will be looking to erect their own turbines in the future.

If you want more information, feel free to PM me or check out these websites.

http://jiminypeak.com/page.php?PageID=1367&PageName=Wind+Turbine+FAQ

http://www.boltonvalley.com/mountain/wind_turbine/

http://www.grousemountain.com/Winter/about-us/sustainability/wind-turbine.asp
 
Very cool. Do you have any info on payback period, ROI, etc? I would love to propose this to my home mountain. Being a government owned and operated hill this seems like a project that would go very well for them.... That and it's windy as fack up top!
 
I don't personally have an insider info as far as ROI and that kind of stuff, but I wonder whether the resort would be willing to send me some reports. I'll shoot them an e-mail, and I'll definitely relay what they say.

Glad you're excited!
 
i had the opportunity to go visit one of those during construction, holy shit its intense

and i got to stand on a massive crane that was the first to show up at ground zero to start the clean up, i thought that was kind of neat two
 
Im working on a 60 page proposal to build a wind farm for my operations class right now, wasn't aware that any ski resorts had done this though pretty sweet. Its definitely a market with the potential to explode right now, thanks for the post very interesting.
 
its a good step but without giving rid of this retarded monetary sysytem that we have saving the enviroment is next to imposible
 
It's usually pretty shitty. Large government subsidies usually go into these projects as private industry wouldn't do it on their own. You need huge scale and bargaining power with producers to get costs down if you want a decent return.
 
Like I mentioned the hill is government owned and operated so there's your subsidies. Provided they were on board. I think it is a no brainier for a hill like that though...

i.e. Job creation and other spinoffs, positive public relations, environmental benefits, independent and clean power source, cost savings over the life of the project, an abundance of wind energy (over 1000 W/m2 wind energy in this location), conversation piece, etc...
 
they're planning on building dozens of them on gore mountain in new york, i'm not really sure where that stands at the moment though...sick thread though
 
haha "disrupt flight patterns of birds" this just cracked me up. when peta and groups like that say shit like this is just hilarious. birds can fly around the damn tower.

anyway i love seeing these things going up on mountains. i love the whole green movement within the ski industry, surface having greener skis, smith with the goggles (i think its smith) just cool that the technology is there for us to use.
 
Yeah, but their argument does hold some validity. If you have a massive turbine spinning at 40-50 mph, there is the potential for birds to get sucked in. I know that in Jiminy's case, they had to provide an "avian impact assessment" to show that local/migratory birds would not be affected by the turbine.
 
hahaha thats hilarious. they can get sucked in but you would think because of evolution the smart ones would fly around. only; the strong survive
 
glass windows, cars, and house cats will always pose more threats to birds than turbines.

If anyone thinks they have a good site for wind energy at your home or other location where you can initiate project development, let me know. This is what I do. The company I represent, Proven Energy (http://www.provenenergy.com) makes small turbines that can power homes/small businesses and are great for remote power applications. We have over 2,500 of them from Antarctica to Saudi Arabia. While the turbine at Jimminey Peak has ~100ft blades, mine are between 6ft and 15ft long. We can't power a ski area with one, but they can still have positive impact in the right places.

Also, ski areas need to fucking do more of this right away (scroll down halfway on the page): http://www.aspensnowmass.com/environment/programs/climate.cfm

Utilize existing snowmaking systems during warm seasons as part of a microhydro system. I can go much further in depth on this if necessary...
 
I would rather keep our mountains beautiful than put shit like that on them. Turbines can go somewhere else, that thing is atrocious.
 
I can see your opinion, but I think the point where mountains stopped being beautiful was when chairlifts were invented, or mountaintop lodges began being constructed, or radio/cell phone towers were being placed on top.

I'm obviously all for this. I just feel like it is so efficient and effective in so many ways - as Klazo said, it brings in jobs and lowers rates when the excess power is sold back to the grid. To me, there are just too many benefits.
 
I am curious about the math behind your payback time. With 4 million initial investment, and 200000 saved each year, that is twenty years, unless more is saved each year. Also, wind turbines have yet to live up to the promised 20 year lifespan of their gearboxes. Which means in say 10 or 15 years a lot of money will have to go into replacing the gearbox. This issue alone is one of the biggest reasons wind energy has been slow to appear.
 
Do you by any chance live in Calgary?
The local hill (Canada Olympic Park) which hosted the olympics in 88' is owned by the Goverment. The company (Winsport Canada) is a huge developement group that runs the training for Canadian athletes (not 100% on that). They have training centres such as a World cup standard mogul courses, Aerial sites, terrain parks, Halfpipes, Bobsled tracks, Gymnastic center, curling, hockey, and pretty much every other sport that has to do with the olympics. The hill is pretty much all man made snow as it's located in the city and the top of the hill is CRAZY windy. They have a huge canadian flag up there and they have to replace it 5 times a year cause the wind rips it to shreds. Only downside of it is I don't know if they would want to go with it or not... cause they have a huge canadian flag up top and they have a 90m ski jump tower (Which I think might be the highest point in calgary, cause it's on top of the hill) So they might not want to take away from the heritage of those olympic memorials.
 
I found the amount of $200,000 in an MSNBC article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29467263), and they say that that is the amount saved in the first year. I'm assuming that the savings will be increasing time goes on.

I haven't read anything about lifespans, but you make a valid point. I'm interested to see what they plan on doing when the time comes.
 
Yeah, I think they purchase the wind from a third party...something like purchasing wind energy credits or something? But that's still very cool, the only thing different from the examples I posted are that they are cutting out the middle man.
 
First off, the rise in cost of energy is outpacing inflation. I'm not sure what assumptions have been made for commonwealth's math, but this will certainly explain some of the discrepancy.

Also, while all the large utility scale turbines today have gearboxes, my small ones do not. They are direct drive with permanent magnet generators. There is another company out of VT that has been installing 100kW machines called Northern Power. They are nearing release of a 2.2MW large utility scale turbine that is also direct drive, permanent magnet generator machine.

I for one feel really strong about having much more local distributed renewable energy projects that produce energy right where it will be consumed. Less transmission loss. And you don't have to have huge banks of lead acid batteries to make these systems effective. The extra energy can just go back out to the grid (for a credit from the utility company) where it will be consumed by your neighbors (and they will continue to purchase the energy from the utility company). This is called net-metering.

I really think that the areas such as Aspen, Vail and all other purchasing 100% wind energy should have some local production to compliment this investment at least. This can be done with smaller turbines such as the ones I sell, solar PV, and (as I already pointed out) the lowest hanging fruit is microhydro - utilizing the existing snowmaking pipelines.
 
I disagree with the mass production and distribution of small scale windmills on the grounds of efficiency. Since the power output of a turbine depends on the square of the radius, larger windmills are always going to be better at utilizing the wind.
I would also be surprised if a windmill was produced without a gearbox having a power output of 2.2 MW. Do you have any details of this? Obviously the reason for the gearbox is to have the windmill run at it's most efficient generation speed, independent of wind speed. Without a gearbox it seems the efficiency of one must be compromised.
 
details: http://www.northernpower.com/utility-wind/the-product.php

Yes, economies of scale work with lots of things including the size of a wind turbine's wind swept area.

However, here are some benefits for distributed energy such as small wind:

- Enables individuals and businesses to control their own cost of energy and not be subject to perpetual utility cost increases.

- Way smaller capital investment

- Smaller visual impact

- Can offset need for bringing on more dirty generation by reducing demand on existing grid (utilities continue to push for new generation in the form of coal and nuclear)

- Many more feasible sites than large wind

- Smaller site footprint

again, a link to my company's web site to get more info on what I sell: http://www.provenenergy.com

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And I think every ski area should have some visible renewable energy projects. What Jimminey Peak did is great, but not every ski area can make such huge projects a reality...
 
I agree. I probably should have stated this earlier, but I have zero affiliation with Jiminy, besides the fact that I skied there growing up. All of the facts and figures are data that I have dug up on the internet, so I none of the calculations concerning payback period are mine. I have no insider information.

Sno, how did you get into the industry?
 
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