Wind Online

GE is providing a great opportunity to acqiure funding for the future of smarter, cleaner and more efficient electric grids. GE Ecomagination Challenge is designed to be a catalyst for the development of cleaner, smarter and more efficient economy.

Ecomagination is searching for researchers, entrepreneurs and start-ups to improve the way we create, connect and  use power and offering a total of $200 Million to the best ideas in partnership with Emerals Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, KPCB and Rockport Capital.

1253 ideas and 27202 ballots were submitted by 14640 users until now. You can submit, read ideas and vote directly from http://challenge.ecomagination.com/ct/ct_list.bix?c=ideas .



GE Ecomagination Challenge is not only a great oppurtunity to spread environmental consciousness, but it is also a great oppurtunity for participants to realize their ideas for smarter, cleaner and more efficients electric grids.

As Robert Alan indicated “we can create a more sustainable, cleaner and safer world by making wiser energy choices”.

A.Yigit NEPHAN
21.08.2010

Three months ago, I had visited LM Wind Power Blades Factory located in Kolding, Denmark and had a chance to get detailed information about LM blade technologies and manufacturing process of blades.  After then, we contacted with EAWind (http://eawind.com/) for the repair of damaged blades in our ongoing projects. I had a chance to witness blade repairing process and got some useful information from Mr. Adem Eldemir about the design and manufacturing process of WTG blades. Here below, you can read a brief information about blade manufacturing process.

Everthing starts with design. Designing of wind turbine blades is a very complex process including variables such as shape, structure, materials and processes. Design is basicly an optimisation problem of two variables which are performance and cost. Performance of blades are designated by the help of aerodynamic structure, fluid mechanics calculations and stress analysis.
Materials which are used while manufacturing blades can be stated as birch plywood sticks, core material  and fultruded fiber rods.


After making two shells in a mould, manufacturing process starts with glass fibre layer. Birch plywood sticks and carbon rods are applied on sections where high strength is required on. If stiffness is required on the areas where high strength is not, balsa wood  applied on these sections. The last layer which is applied is glass fibre layer. After appliying glass fibre, all the air is vacuumed and liquid epoxy is infused. This process is named as Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Moulding (VARTM).  Blade sections are then cured and glued together.


After gluing blade sections together, their edges and surfaces are polished and finally painted.


A.Yigit NEPHAN
21.08.2010

 I posted my first entry in this blog on July 5, 2009. When I posted this first entry (http://www.windonline.org/2009/07/hello-world.html), I was working in a heavy lift & transport company as an assistant project manager.

After the publishing of my first entry, I had posted another 30 articles and started working in a company which is one of the biggest wind energy investor  in Turkey.

Meanwhile, monthly page views reached up to 1,000 per month by the help of more than 600 unique visitors.

I would like to thank you all who give me the inspiration for writing new articles about wind energy.

I hope you will have a chance to see more entries within following year.


A.Yiğit NEPHAN
10.08.2010

After Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell's request to return of the classified war documents in their possession and delete them from www.wikileaks.org website, WikiLeaks became item of the agenda again.

For those who do not know, Wikileaks is described as an international organization that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of otherwise unavailable documents while preserving the anonymity of sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks).

WikiLeaks also published some confidential documents about wind energy. These files can be stated as:

1. CRS: Wind Energy: Offshore Permitting, October 22, 2008 (http://bit.ly/ann8lK)
2. CRS: Wind Power in the United States: Technology, Economic, and Policy Issues, June 20, 2008 (http://bit.ly/aBefMv)
3. Te Apiti Wind Farm 2008 Annual Emission Reduction Report, 2009 (http://bit.ly/dBYJVy)
4. Confidential Report on UK and Irish Wind Energy v. Nuclear Power: Impact of Intermittency, Poyry, 1 May 2009 (http://bit.ly/2jqQGR)

In my previous blog entry, I described capacity factor and listed the top 10 wind farms in Turkey in 2009 in terms of capacity factor. You can find this blog entry in http://www.windonline.org/2010/07/top-10-wind-farms-in-turkey-in-2009-in.html .

While I was comparing capacity factor of two sites which have the same installed capacity and are located in Turkey, I had come by very interesting results in terms of showing the similarity between these two different regions.

One of the wind power plants is located in Bandirma district of Balikesir, and the other one is located in Bergama district of Izmir.

The distance between these districts are around 280 km. One of them is close to the Sea of Marmara, where the other one is close to the Aegean Sea.



Here below, you will be able to take a closer look at their production rates and capacity factors in 2010.