Green Energy News | September 16, 1996

September 16, 1996 – Vol.1 No.25

ENERGIES... week of September 16, 1996

THE ISLE OF NANTUCKET off the Massachusetts coast may soon harness the power of its nearly ceaseless wind in a new windfarm project underway by the New England Electric Co. The state’s Department of Public Utilities wants the company to produce 2.5 megawatts of power on the island, and wind power seems the only possibility. The plan is to install 4 two-hundred foot tall state-of-the-art windmills.

Nantucket has seen windfarms come and go. In the early seventies, after the first energy crisis, there was a major push nationwide for energy independence. Independent islanders were quick to install wind generators as an alternative to imported oil. Unfortunately, the price of oil fell to absurdly low levels and the relatively inefficient wind generators of the time couldn’t compete financially.

Today, by some estimates, windmills are 100 times more efficient than the early models and can compete with oil. Some Nantucket Islanders are concerned about noise and vibration from the towering mechanisms, but the new machines are fine tuned to be fairly quiet and vibration free.

The islands along the the south coast of Massachusetts have some of the highest sustained wind speeds in the country, and thus are ideally suited for windfarm development.

ELECTRICITY IN A CAN. Electronic Electricity Repositories (aka ESEE Electronically Stored Electrical Energy) may be a way to store energy for use in cars and homes, according to retired GM engineer Frank Lincoln. While the slow charge from alternative energy sources such solar panels may not be enough to meet the high energy demands of a zooming automobile, an EER filled with electricity from panels or wind generators could store the large amounts of electric power needed for passing slow moving traffic. Moreover, unlike batteries, EERs could also be replenished quickly from a wall socket at home or an “electric” filling station.

EER TECHNOLOGY is nothing new. Research on trench capacitors, the basic technology behind EER, has been going on for years. Frank feels the time is right for EER to come into the forefront of alternative energy research.