I know I do. As soon as I start hearing about a currency crisis in a country I can’t even pronounce, I usually flip the channel to The Andy Griffith Show re-runs. It’s not that I’m cold and apathetic. I just struggle connecting what’s going on in a vowel-less nation to my own life.
Truth be told, I sometimes feel that way about the wind industry also. Now, I know we’re going to see each other in a little over a month, so before you make a note on your WINDPOWER show planner to hunt me down and give me an earful, let me explain.
Wind Systems is based out of a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, about as far as anyone could get from a wind turbine here in the U.S. If you’re deathly afraid of wind turbines, this is where you come to live an anxiety-free life (provided you’re not equally as afraid of mosquitoes the size of several endangered species of predatory birds).
In that environment, it’s easy to begin to feel like you’re out-of-touch, like you’re so far separated from the action that it can’t possibly affect or influence your life.
Then it hits me. The wind industry is relevant in Alabama because Wind Systems is in Alabama. It’s relevant here because of the manufacturing facilities located here, and the support industries located here.
I begin to think about a local event I attended last year advocating a stronger renewables presence in Alabama. I think about the group I recently encountered that is sponsoring a student turbine design competition in the Huntsville area. I think about how Alabama Power just last year signed one of the largest power purchase agreements on record. I think about how the recent approval of a HVDC transmission line is paving the way for wind power to travel to all parts of the Southeast — including Alabama.
This is all happening because of the advances that have already happened in the wind energy industry. Somehow, I had lost perspective on that. In regaining that perspective, I also revitalized my resolve.
Beyond the Deep South, I think it’s easy for any of us in this industry to lose perspective, especially when things honestly aren’t going that well.
In a few short weeks, we’ll meet in Orlando for WINDPOWER 2015. In the past, I’ve talked about how this event often serves to give us the kick in the pants we need to regain our perspective and renew our purpose. Now, I’m wondering how much more beneficial it would be if we all took the time to assess and clarify our perspective before we arrive in Orlando.
As always, thanks for reading…
The central theme of the event tackled one of the most pressing issues for the offshore wind business today — cost reduction. Three of the biggest players on the European offshore wind stage — DONG Energy, MHI Vestas Offshore Wind and Siemens Wind Power — launched an initiative at the event called United Industry. The declaration aims to spark joint and collective actions across the whole of the value chain to deliver long-term reductions in the cost of offshore wind.
Bringing customer input into the development process, Elk River has the capability to work with special requests. These products fall under the direction and supervision of Elk River’s R&D team, and are diligently researched, tested, and approved to ensure the same quality standard as all of the company’s products. If there is any question about the safety or reliability of a product, the company simply will not make it.
Deutsche WindGuard regularly performs calibrations of different RSDs on this test field. Some of the results gained in these calibrations will be presented in this article. In order to illustrate the need for these measurements, DWG made two comparisons. One is between instruments of the same type and one between instruments of different types.
In December 2014, the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory released maps that illustrate the potential for new wind energy resources that developers could unlock using next-generation wind turbine technologies. These taller turbines accompanied by longer blades have the potential to harness wind power resources from more than one million additional square miles of the United States, roughly triple the amount of developable land that was accessible with turbine technology in 2008. This funding opportunity will help mitigate the transportation and logistical constraints associated with larger turbine blades, helping spur wind energy development in areas of the country where wind resources can be accessed at greater heights, especially in the Southeast.
Consistent high demand and the planned growth of current customers as well as new markets and applications are behind the growth plans, which are further fuelled by the introduction of their new product AIREX T10, which is expected to accelerate the growth of extruded PET-based core materials versus other polymer cores. Growth for extruded AIREX core materials is identified in the marine, aerospace and wind energy and markets as well as in the transportation and automotive industry where composites are increasingly used.
Once the regional winners were chosen, the top winners in each category from each region moved up to the national competition. A new set of judges from across the country examined each project in an effort to distinguish the best in terms of teamwork, safety, overcoming challenges, innovation, and quality.
Without first checking the temperature how do we know if the coffee will be too hot, or just right? Perhaps it did not need to be heated at all. This may sound elementary, and yet it is exactly what we are doing when we check a joint for tightness with a torque wrench: the tightening process is repeated to ensure that the same tension achieved at installation is maintained. Is the time spent re-tightening actually doing something useful? Using this re-torque method, do we really know if a bolt is loose? Rather we assume they all could be loose and tighten indiscriminately. However, there are means to verify tension in a bolt without putting a wrench on it.
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