World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

April 11, 2004 – Vol.9 No.3

WORLD WIND WATCH.

The architect’s vision for the Freedom Tower - the single spire to built on the site of the fallen World Trade Center buildings in New York City - is for the building to be powered, in part, with wind energy. The plan calls for a wind generation system to be installed inside the lattice-work tower that will rise above the planned 70-story office building to a height of 1776 feet.

At first thoughts were that vertical axis turbines could be used - one on top of each other - now another company, Point Power Systems, believes a series of conventional horizontal axis turbines, like the 6-kilowatt turbine it sells, would work just fine.

Power Point says that its turbine can operate in light breezes or heavy winds. Winds in the spire could be quite strong because of the altitude of the tower as well as its near ocean-front location.

Freedom Tower developers will announce a wind energy contract for the building later this year. Visit Point Power Systems at http://www.pointpowersystems.com/

Northern Power Systems has announced that it will be negotiating an $8.3 million contract with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to build a prototype, 2-megawatt wind generator designed to operate efficiently at low wind speeds.

If Northern wins the contract, a cooperative research agreement, the company and NREL will share costs and research capabilities. Efforts would be focused on building a turbine based on permanent magnet, direct drive, variable-speed drive train technology, similar to the technology already employed in the company’s North Wind NW 100/19 100-kilowatt turbine already commercialized. That turbine will begin generating electricity in wind speeds as low as 4 meters per second (9 miles per hour)

Direct-drive, megawatt-class turbines are nothing new to the utility-grade turbine business. Enercon, one of the top turbine companies on the planet, uses direct drive - no gear box - technology in all its products including its 4.5 megawatt machine now in testing.

The pending contract will come under the DOE’s WindPact program. Visit Northern Power at http://www.northernpower.com/ ,Enercon at http://www.enercon.de/ .