Wind Energy Option Research Articles

Development and assessment of an integrated wind-solar based energy system for sustainable communities

In order to address the growing demands for clean energy, coupled with the efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this study concerns a newly developed hybrid renewable energy system, which integrates solar and wind energy options, augmented with compressed air energy storage and battery storage solutions. The novelty of this paper stems around the diversification of energy storage solutions, which allows for meeting a highly variable demands in a more efficient and carbon-free manner. The present system is designed to provide a sustainable solution for the communities and is, in this regard, applied to supply the essential energy needs for a small city of about 5000 homes. The electricity is generated through a wind farm as well as power production from the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) and stored depending on the demands. The district heating and cooling loads are supplied from parabolic trough dishes, concentrated on a solar tower and processed through heating and refrigeration subsystems. Following the system development, the comprehensive thermodynamic analysis, optimization study and life cycle assessments are comparatively conducted. The proposed energy system achieves the energy and exergy efficiencies of 50.3 % and 44.1 % respectively. The ORC subsystem accounts for the highest exergy destruction in the system. The solar farm achieves an energy efficiency of 85 % and an exergy efficiency of 65 %, respectively. The ORC subsystem accounts for 59.7 % of the environmental impact throughout all impact categories due to the system irreversibilities and heat losses.

Renewable & alternative energy sources for strategic energy management in recycled paper & pulp industry

An energy intensive and competitive paper industry in India constitutes nearly 4% of global production and is growing at the rate of 6–7%. The use of renewable energy in this industry is examined by means of an open source survey of 25 major paper companies. This industry has a special category of renewable energy resource in energy rich biomass generated during paper manufacture. These include wood wastes, black liquor and sludge. Nearly 80% of factories are seen to use biomass energy. The use of solar energy (24%) and wind energy (16%) is relatively low. Reasons are seen in process complexity, large capital requirement and severe profitability penalties from disruption of production. The remedies are seen in industry specific research and enhanced policy support. Adoption of solar and wind energy options is expected to increase as more industry specific products and technologies become available with better economies.

Powering the 21st century by wind energy—Options, facts, figures

This review article aims to provide an overview and insight into the most relevant aspects of wind energy development and current state-of-the-art. The industry is in a very mature stage, so it seems to be the right time to take stock of the relevant areas of wind energy use for power generation. For this review, the authors considered the essential aspects of the development of wind energy technology: research, modeling, and prediction of wind speed as an energy source, the technology development of the plants divided into the mechanical and electrical systems and the plant control, and finally the optimal plant operation including the maintenance strategies. The focus is on the development in Europe, with a partial focus on Germany. The authors are employees of the Fraunhofer Institutes, Institute for Energy Economics and Energy Systems Technology and Institute for Wind Energy Systems, who have contributed to the development of this technology for decades.

Informed public opinion in the Netherlands: Evaluation of CO2 capture and storage technologies in comparison with other CO2 mitigation options

In this study, 995 respondents in a representative sample of the Dutch general population are set in the situation of policymakers: they are faced with the issue of fulfilling the Dutch demand for energy in 2030 in such a way that emissions of carbon dioxide will be reduced by 50%. In the Information-Choice Questionnaire (ICQ) that was developed for this, respondents evaluated information from experts on seven options for CO2 emission reduction and their consequences. Two CCS options were compared to two energy efficiency options, a wind energy option, a biomass energy option, and a nuclear energy option. Results show that people are not that enthusiastic regarding the two CCS options. These are evaluated 5.3 and 5.9 on average on a scale of 1–10 and not often chosen as one of the three preferred options, but they are also rarely rejected. Most of the other options in the questionnaire were evaluated rather positively, except nuclear energy and the more ambitious efficiency option. Analysis shows that the evaluation of the information regarding consequences moderately influences how options are evaluated overall. The results further indicate that the CCS options are evaluated less positively due to the comparison with other options.

Evaluation of small wind turbines in distributed arrangement as sustainable wind energy option for Barbados

The island of Barbados is 99% dependent on fossil fuel imports to satisfy its energy needs, which is unsustainable. This study proposes a 10 MW distributed wind energy scheme using micro wind turbines (WT) of horizontal (HAWT) and vertical axis (VAWT) configurations. These units are rated less than 500 W, and the scheme is hereafter referred to as mWT10. mWT10 is compared to the proposed 10 MW medium WT farm by the Barbados Light & Power Company (BL&P). The economic bottom line is the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The results highlight the BL&P proposal as the best economic option at BDS$0.19 per kWh, while that of both mWT10 configurations exceeds the conventional cost of BDS$0.25 by two to nine times. This is attributed to significantly higher relative installation and operational costs. However, the financial gap between mWT10 LCOE and the retail price of electricity is much smaller due to a large fuel surcharge passed on to each customer. Annual additional benefits of using wind energy include: greenhouse gas emissions savings of 6–23 kt of carbon dioxide; and anavoided fuel costs of BDS$1.5–5.3 million. The distributed mWT10 using HAWTs competes directly with the BL&P farm, however, it provides these benefits without the visual or ecological impacts of the larger machines. Conversely, VAWTs have features that favour a visually discrete and widely repeatable scheme but suffer relatively high costs. Therefore, this study illustrates the great potential of small wind turbines to be competitive with conventional wind farms, thus challenging the small wind industry to meet its potential by producing reliable and robust machines at lower cost.