Argentina will produce massive wind power turbines. This country of South America is using some of the biggest generators with de Eolis-15, that has 1,5 megawatts of power and almost 80 meters tall.
Río Negro and Neuquén, two of the southeast provinces in Argentina, along with the Science and Technology Department from Cutral-Có and Plaza Huincul-both municipalities with oil royalties- have joined each other to develop the wind turbine Eolis-15, designed by Invap to make the most of high speed winds.
This ambitious project is being financed by Rio Negro, who has already invested almost a million dollars in the project. Meanwhile Neuquén and the local municipalities will collaborate with money for the test and settings of prototypes until get the international homologation.
It will cost no less than 15 millions dollars and will take about three years to achieve. The final goal is to export wind energy, and some corporations are thinking to establish these turbines also in Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. Since the demand for turbines around the word is high, it is a good opportunity for exportation. Nevertheless, it would be great for Argentina to count on these turbines to produce energy for its own territory.
More on International Developments in Wind Power:
- Experts Say China’s Wind Energy Could Grow 1667% by 2020 : EcoWorldly
- Wind Power Blows into Peru and Brightens Future : EcoWorldly
- Japanese Wind Power Efforts Head Offshore : EcoWorldly
- Wind Farms: Sorting the Wheat from the Chaffinches : EcoWorldly
Via LaNación
Image credit: INVAP
there are very few producers of these kind of turbines and GE is one of them. Furthermore, the more producers the cheaper they will become I heard that if the US filled the dessert with these they could easily power the whole us with no waste, and much cheaper than current means.
To the poster above. I may have read a similar article. If we put wind power in 1-2% of the worlds desert they would produce enough power for most of the industrialized world.
Does anyone know how these things are networked? I’ve always wanted to work on wind turbines they fascinate me this gives me a chance to use my Argentine citizenship.
Massive? O RLY?
Standard size of wind turbines over here in Germany is about 3 Megawatts now.. they’re working on a 6 MW plant. Biggest problem seems to be the length of the blades – cannot be transported on any road.. have to create two parts..
Once these things get installed, aside from maintenance, they just keep producing power, forever, like an oil well that never runs dry. Kinda unfair to the oil barons isn’t it!
The real downfall with wind power is that no power is produced when there is no wind. A lot of the time wind dies down towards the evening, just when demand is picking up with people coming home. So some storage system is needed.
There is also a problem with putting them all in one place, at least in a big country like the US. The power lost in the transmission lines is proportional to the length squared. Until we come up with a true room temperature superconductor.
Dan,
This is an engineering problem, as an engineer I can tell you that there is no perfect solution. Deploy, make do and improve.
Anyway, wind Power is all about, location, location, location. Like hydroelectric power, wind power should be well placed.
I can show you areas where the wind never stops, in fact trees branches have a tendency to point downwind.
Here is the deal with wind power: it is unpredictable, the machines are huge and unreliable, hard to maintain, one can put them only in places that are far from demand (losses during transportation) and there is no solution for lightning strikes that keep ruining the blades. (I was working for a wind developer for three years) The bottom line : it is not a solutions, but the marginal source at best.
15 millions dollars….lol
If there was a way to purchase these by individuals with a payment plan or gov’t assistance to make them affordable, I would definitely buy 1. We have an average breeze every day, all day of 8-12 mph. But then again, it’s a unique area.
Standard size of wind turbines over here in Germany is about 3 Megawatts now.. they’re working on a 6 MW plant. Biggest problem seems to be the length of the blades – cannot be transported on any road.. have to create two parts..
Correct.
Enercon E-112
Until end of 2007 a total of 9 units has been installed, the last ones with 6 MW rated power, 114 m rotor diameter and up to 124 m hub height. Currently the first units of the E-112 successor, the E-126 with 127 m rotor diameter and 135 m hub height are installed at various sites in Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon
World’s Largest Wind Turbine (7+ Megawatts)
The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor diameter of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year).
http://www.metaefficient.com/news/new-record-worlds-largest-wind-turbine-7-megawatts.html
I’m all for the personal wind generator. On the roof hooked to the grid and presto. Maybe some day NYC would power Albany!
Spain has just installed a large thermo-solar plant that concentrates solar energy into a block of salt, which stores the energy for later use to generate steam for conventional turbines. Sounds like a promising solution.
Yes, just imagine everyone building one of those on their rooftops
Bill, in Minnesota there is legislation in place that allows for community based energy development especially with regards to wind. It is pretty popular and Nebraska subsequently wrote and passed legislation that mirrors Minnesota’s. CBED, as it is called in MN.(for community based energy development) has been around for a long time. Basically what CBED does is allow for investment and ownership opportunities on fairly large projects. The average size CBED project is 20 MW’s in MN but there are some proposed that are in the 300 MW range. At a couple million dollars a MW installed this is significant investment opportunities which keeps more of the money generated from being exported out of the state.
To others making statements regarding line loss and value relative to being able to dispatch wind. Although you obviously can’t dispatch wind, when wind projects are constructed over large geographical areas the capacity value of wind increases because of the ever changing wind speeds due to weather patterns over large geographical areas.
And the other point that was made regarding line loss. One of the beauties of wind is that there is an inherent value in being able to construct these projects relatively close to load. The ability to disperse wind in this manner has a lot of value relative to the transmission system. Minnesota has done studies that have indicated that huge investments in transmission infrastucture may be mitigated if more of a dispersed approach to constructing wind was taken.
When it comes to getting energy from the wind, “Massive Turbines” are NOT the answer. This is because – (please bear with me, this is so obvious it may appear “stupid” – it Isn’t – trust me) an Alternator is also required. So ? – well Turbines and Alternators just happen to have Opposite “Economies of Size”. I.e. One T to replace 4 of half the diameter will require 8 times the quantity of materials to build. The cost per m^2 of weather faced is therefore doubled by doublng the size.
Meanwhile, One Big Alternator to replace the four of 1/4 the thro’put, costs only about Twice as much in my experience. So Doubling the size of the “TADevices” halves the A-bill.
The total cost is of course n times (T + A) Wads
and can be seen to be lowest when T costs about the same as A. 1 Wad for instance. Cost of TAD 2 Wads ?
If we double the size to replace 4, then the cost goes from 4 x (1+1) or 8 Wads to 1 x (8 +2) Wads
This is a 25% increase. If you could do this again – you would of course have to start with 16 TADs – you see that the cost hikes to 2 and 1/8 times the minimum price. Likewise of course if you replace One TAD of the “best size” (i.e. cost = 1 + 1 Wads) with 4 of half the diameter, then 16 of 1/4 the diameter.
After some 20 years of solo “R&D” in this field, I find that the costs are about equal at a diameter of around just under One Metre !!
A very sensible design – which involves far more than meets the eye – and of around this size, can deliver around 5% p.a. of its cost in sites where current (80m high) “technology” returns around 0.13% – Official figure from Public meeting, Llandeilo, uk, July 2005.
The disparity between these figures is accounted-for – very well – by this “E of S” fact, and the operating mode of current designs which wastes high winds.
Very glad to hear from anyone on this.
G. Gilbert Vaughan
Celo Nikiup, Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria
bert.windon@gmail.com
I tell to all that all countries try to come forward to give some good hands to Argentina for their great work.