1. Wind Energy Educators Workshop
This slide show is a basic outline. We often make changes to this template depending on the time and location of the event.
Michael Arquin
The Kidwind Project
St. Paul, MN

2. What is KidWind?
The KidWind Project is a team of teachers, students, engineers and practitioners exploring the science behind wind energy in classrooms around the US. Our goal is to introduce as many people as possible to the elegance of wind power through hands-on science activities which are challenging, engaging and teach basic science principles.
KidWind Project |
KidWind Project |

3. Why Wind Education in K-12 ?
Students learn science/math standards
Lessons are completely scalable from elementary through college level
Addresses myths regarding wind energy
Improves the local understanding of wind energy
Provides a bulwark against misunderstandings and fictional problems with wind energy
Encourages higher interest in Science and Math
Science/Math activities with “larger social purpose”
Students learn about jobs/careers in wind industry, as well as opportunities for further training

4. Expensive Wind Kits… $200 !! $800 !! $99 ?? $200 ??
Where has wind been? One problem has been cost and reliability of materials.
Until recently most of the materials related to wind energy education did not work, were too expensive or did not help teach inquiry based science. Going from left to right;
Pitsco…cool but very expensive…more of a demo than something I would let middle school kids play with. They have a new $15 but it is small, chinsy and does not allow you to change any variables very easily
Kelvin -- Ok kit but the DC generator in this kit is improperly sized so you get little or no output…hub is also junk.
Kelvin --- a fan, software…and the best thing the vertical and horizontal axis box…but really expensive.
We can do better and cheaper as a group of teachers.
$300 “Complete Renewable Energy Set”
Demonstration – little experimental value

5. Typical Wind Lessons - Not Technical
Beaufort Scale
Pinwheels
Student Reports
Demonstrations
Discussion Activity
All very interesting but very little of the science and technology related to the current wind industry is presented.
In fact most text books are pretty negative about the future of wind and misrepresent the technology miserably.
Many of the wind lessons Kidwind found were not inquiry based or were more geared for Elementary students not MS, HS and College.
Textbooks also treat wind turbines as it is a futuristic devices that we may find on the moon or mars.

6. US installed capacity grew 45% in 2007 and 50% in 2008!!!
This is strange because… Wind Energy is the Fastest Growing Energy Source in the World!!
The lack of cheap and easy lesson plans, kits and material is kind of strange as wind energy is the fastest growing energy resource in the world. For the last five years it has been growing at rate of 20-30%.
A bit misleading b/c when you start with a small amount it easy to grow fast. Nuclear, Coal and Oil could never grow at those rates takes too long to build and there is too much generation out there.
US installed capacity grew 45% in 2007 and 50% in 2008!!!

7. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org

8. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org

9. 2008: 8,358 megawatts (MW) of new wind energy capacity installed
50% growth rate!
Brings US total installed wind energy capacity to 25,170 MW
Enough electricity to power the equivalent of close to 7 million households!
2009 was a slower year due to the economy

10. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org

11. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org

12. US installed capacity has fluctuate due to incentive that come into affect and then expire…hard to run a highly capitalized industry in this kind of environment. Things have been getting a little better. Last round of incentives will expire in December Some in congress want to extend this another 5 years.
One thing to explain here…
1 Megawatt of wind will generate enough power for about 300 homes. This depends on the type of device and where it is located.
Most large turbines that you see today are rated at 1.5 Megawatts…meaning that at peak output (high winds) it will be producing about 1.5 Megawatts

13. Why such growth…costs! 1979: 40 cents/kWh 2000: 4 - 6 cents/kWh
NSP 107 MW Lake Benton wind farm
4 cents/kWh (unsubsidized)
Increased Turbine Size
R&D Advances
Manufacturing Improvements
The rapid growth in wind power can be attributed to two things….reduction in cost of the electricity produced and more interested in Green Power.
I usually ask people here what they pay for their electricity by kwh….typical # are 7-20 cents. Wind has come way down in terms of cost over the last 40 years. The cheapest power out there is coal and wind cannot compete with that…Natural Gas and coal are comparable. The costs for wind listed above are the wholesale rate…do not include transmission etc.
On this slide I often ask the crowd how we generate most of our electrical power in the US.
Coal 50%
Nuclear 20%
Natural Gas 17%
Hydro 7%
Oil 3%
Renewables 3% Wind less than 1%
2004:
3 – 4.5 cents/kWh

14. Other Reason to teach… Elegant Power Source
In addition to teaching about wind power because of it’s growth in the US I find it to be an elegant source of power as do students when they try to build their own spinning devices. Solar boring….just sits there;-)
I will often tell a story about the Research done by Smart Power
SmartPower research is based on the fact that studies continue to show consumers are willing to switch and pay more for renewable energy, yet there is minimal market activity to date. SmartPower wanted to understand what are the emotional barriers which prevent people from purchasing clean energy and what are the most powerful emotional hooks that could make clean energy important and desirable to the American public?
SmartPower brought together focus groups to explore how the public perceives current energy choices. Participants were charged to write an obituary. Respondents were asked to imagine fossil fuels on earth have died. Their task is to then to write an obituary including:
What was the cause of death?
What will it be remembered for?
Who will take its place?
Who will miss it?
They found that many people were far less critical of fossil fuels than you might have imagined. Many felt it was scary to imagine our world without fossil fuels.  While many participants clearly recognized the problems of pollution, health and energy independence, they see fossil fuels as a necessary evil because it can be relied on to power our world. They also did not know about reliable alternatives. While they were all comfortable discussing clean energy and know how it’s made -- they don’t see it as “being up to the job” and is viewed as “eccentric” with “kinks to work out.”
Next, they asked respondents to draw what their “clean energy” world would look like and to name their “worlds” and date them. The pictures reinforced the prior findings; fossil fuels are viewed as a necessary evil -- bad for health, bad for the environment, bad for national security. But at the end of the day, it keeps my house warm. Some other findings were that:
Clean energy is simply not seen as up to the job
Using clean energy would require sacrifices
Clean energy is just too far in the future to be useful now
As the obituaries and the drawings tell us we need to convince people that clean energy is strong enough to take the place of coal, oil and nuclear. They also found that we need to inform consumers that these sources are available and happening now. From this research came an advertising campaign that tries to convince people that clean energy is viable and available.
The slogans, ads and radio spots created by this research is called Clean Energy: Its Real. It’s Here. It’s Working. Let’s Make More. Now SmartPower is doing research to see if this campaign changes any peoples mind about renewable energy choices.
Elegant Power Source

15. Need to Change Perceptions…
We also need to change students perceptions about what the future may look like and the limits of this technology.
Wind will never be “base load” for the grid. The wind farm above is capable of generating 15-20Mw of electricity at full capacity. The oil fired facility below is at 300Mw. Most Nuclear plants are at Mw…
Must keep the scale in mind….a very aggressive wind program can generate 10-20% of our power needs. To move towards a green future we are going to need mix of sources and also a great deal of energy efficiency….Wind cannot do it all.

16. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org
Wind Power
History
Technology
The Wind Resource
Wind in the Classroom
KidWind Project |

17. Early “Windmill” in Afghanistan (900AD)
First windmills were found in Persia.
They were vertical axis and were used to grind grains and seeds. They were kind of like a waterwheel turned on its side. Most of the paddles were covered by a wall and wind would run through a narrow opening to push the blades.

18. Many have seen the Dutch windmills
Many have seen the Dutch windmills. Used to grind grains, seeds, pump water, saw lumber…these were fairly sophisticated devices. Used to cover much of New England coastline.

19. Water pumpers were (and still are) a common site on farms in the Midwest and West. These devices pump water into a pond or cistern when it is windy and can be used at any time. Notice the blades on this device and compare them to electrical generating wind turbines are they the same or different?

20. Jacobs Turbine – 1920 - 1960 WinCharger – 1930s – 40s
In 1888, Charles F. Brush invented a large wind turbine which created electricity. This enormous windmill produced enough electricity for about 10 homes. Brush’s invention was soon adapted and copied all over the world. Electricity generating wind turbines spread throughout Europe in the early 1900’s, and they soon appeared in the United States as well. In the 1930s Marcellus Jacobs producing an affordable small turbine called the Jacobs that provided electricity for homes and farms throughout rural America. However, these small American turbines faded away with the widespread installation of power lines through the end of the 1930s.

21. Smith-Putnam Turbine Vermont, 1940's
In response to fuel shortages, Palmer Putman was able to raise enough money to design and build a 1,250 kW wind turbine in Vermont in This was the largest turbine ever built and functioned for more than a year. But a bearing failure and lack of support (due to machinery shortages caused by WWII) caused maintenance to be overlooked. When the turbine was restarted in 1945 this lack of maintenance led to a catastrophic blade failure and the project never recovered.

22. Modern Windmills

23. Orientation
Turbines can be categorized into two overarching classes based on the orientation of the rotor Vertical Axis Horizontal Axis
Turbine can spin on a vertical axis or a horizontal axis

24. Vertical Axis Turbines
Advantages
Omnidirectional
Accepts wind from any angle
Components can be mounted at ground level
Ease of service
Lighter weight towers
Can theoretically use less materials to capture the same amount of wind
Disadvantages
Rotors generally near ground where wind poorer
Centrifugal force stresses blades
Poor self-starting capabilities
Requires support at top of turbine rotor
Requires entire rotor to be removed to replace bearings
Overall poor performance and reliability
Have never been commercially successful (large scale)

25. Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines
Rotors are usually Up-wind of tower
Some machines have down-wind rotors, but only commercially available ones are small turbines
Proven, viable technology

26. Very Low Maintenance Requirements Proven: ~ 5,000 On-Grid
Modern Small Wind Turbines: High Tech, High Reliability, Low Maintenance
50 kW
10 kW
Technically Advanced
Only 2-3 Moving Parts
Very Low Maintenance Requirements
Proven: ~ 5,000 On-Grid
American Companies are the Market and Technology Leaders
400 W
900 W
When teachers build their Basic PVC Turbines they are more like a small wind turbine, simple direct drive systems.
Emphasize high RPM…these things spin fast RPM.
Many of these are sent to villages offshore as they can provide power for an entire village…here in the US is hard to justify the cost for one household. $$ on small wind turbines 10K-100K
(Not to scale)

27. Various small HAWTs
1. Southwest Skystream
2. Bergey
3. ARE (now Xzeres)
Check out

28. Over-Speed Protection During High Winds
Upward Furling: The rotor tilts back during high winds
Angle Governor: The rotor turns up and to one side

29. Yawing – Facing the Wind
Active Yaw (all medium & large turbines produced today, & some small turbines from Europe)
Anemometer on nacelle tells controller which way to point rotor into the wind
Yaw drive turns gears to point rotor into wind
Passive Yaw (Most small turbines)
Wind forces alone direct rotor
Tail vanes
Downwind turbines

30. Wacky Designs out there…
Over-road design is an artist rendering..
Lots of engineering/design excitement in this industry.

31. Large Wind Turbines 450’ base to blade Each blade 112’
Span greater than 747
163+ tons total
Foundation 20+ feet deep
Rated at 1.5 – 5 megawatt
Supply at least 350 homes

32. Wind Turbine Perspective
Workers
Blade
112’ long
Nacelle
56 tons
Tower
3 sections

33. Part of a turbine…all turbines from our little models to the biggest in the world have these parts.

34. A look inside.
Things to note as compared to Small Wind Turbines
Blades can be actively pitched by hydraulics. Spin at RPM --- much slower than a small wind turbine
Large driveshaft attached to a gearbox….must go from RPM to 1600 RPM for the generator.
Generator creates electricity.
Small Wind Turbines use vanes (typcally) to track the wind…they uses and anemometer and hydraulics to move the turbine.
Highly computerized and automated….senses conditions and can turn itself off if there is a problem.
Often connected by computers to one location and run from there.

35. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org
The “guts” of a wind turbine
KidWind Project |

36. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org
Maintenance
Now Hiring!
KidWind Project |

37. Wind Farms

38. Wind Farm in the MidWest.
Farmers and landowners are paid by wind developers to lease land for turbines. Not a bad cash crop!

39. Off-Shore Wind Farms
Many developers would like to move windfarms offshore because the wind are faster, smoother and they can be close to major population centers on the coast. This is very controversial in the US….we have a few planned offshore farms…CapeWind and Long Island…but nothing installed.
Major complaints about offshore are related visual impact, navigation impact and lack of history.
Check

40. Middelgrunden
There are quiet a few offshore wind farms in Europe near Holland, England, Ireland, Sweden and the Denmark.
This one is off the coast of Copehagen.

41. One “ballast” model is being tested right now off the coast of Norway
One “ballast” model is being tested right now off the coast of Norway. Search “hywind” for some cool info and images.
Commercial application of this technology is still a long way off…
Imagine one of these in a 10 year storm event. Yikes!

42. Importance of the WIND RESOURCE

43. Why do windmills need to be high in the sky??
The higher we get the more faster and cleaner the wind are.
As you move closer to the earth the friction with the surface of the earth causes the wind to slow down and to become more turbulent…bad things if you want to generate energy from the wind. The nacelle of most commercial wind turbines is around 100 meters.

44. Turbulent wind is bad wind
“Micro-Siting” refers to how a wind turbine is placed on a given property.
Trees and buildings are significant obstacles to the wind.
We can’t see it, but the region of disturbed flow downwind of an obstacle is twice the height of that obstacle and quite long. For example, a 30-ft tall house creates a region of turbulence that is 60 ft high and 600 ft long (2 football fields!).
This turbulence reduces power output from a wind turbine, and increases the stress and wear on that turbine.
THE SOLUTION  Place the turbine upwind of obstacles (in the prevailing wind direction), or use a tower twice the height of the obstacles, or both.

45. Calculation of Wind Power
Power in the wind
Effect of swept area, A
Effect of wind speed, V
Effect of air density, 
Power in the Wind = ½ρAV3 R
This is the equation for the power in the wind. (Don’t fear – there are only 2 equations in this presentation.) Each of the terms in this equation can tell us a lot about wind turbines and how they work. Lets look at wind speed (V), swept area (A), and density (Greek letter “rho,” ) one at a time.
First, let’s look at wind speed, V. Because V is cubed in the equation, a small increase in V makes for a increase in power. (illustrated on next slide)
(Click on the links at the bottom to get the values of both k and .)
Swept Area: A = πR2 Area of the circle swept by the rotor (m2).

46. Importance of Wind Speed
No other factor is more important to the amount of power available in the wind than the speed of the wind
Power is a cubic function of wind speed
V X V X V
20% increase in wind speed means 73% more power
Doubling wind speed means 8 times more power

47. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org

49. Some months are windier than others… on average.

50. Key Issues facing Wind Power

51. Wildlife Impacts
When siting a wind farm, developers must consider any possible wildlife impacts. Though this was not the case in early wind farm development (1980’s), today all proposed wind farms must undergo a strict environmental impact assessment.

52. It is a common complaint that wind turbines kill birds
It is a common complaint that wind turbines kill birds. While it is true that turbines kill birds, this graph puts that in perspective with other human technologies.

53. 1980’s California Wind Farm Older Technology + Higher RPMs
+ Lower Elevations
+ Lattice Towers
+ Poorly Sited
= Bad News!
Altamont Pass Wind Farm in California…
This wind farm was built in the 1980’s. Without doing an Environmental Impact Assessment, they built the wind farm in a raptor migration path. This wind farm had a major problem with avian mortality, and scarred the industry.
Today this farm is being repowered. This means they are taking down the old turbines and replacing them with new. With one new turbine, they can replace 10 old turbines. Still poorly sited, but this is an improvement.

54. In the November-December Audubon Magazine, John Flicker, President of National Audubon Society, wrote a column stating that Audubon "strongly supports wind power as a clean alternative energy source," pointing to the link between global warming and the birds and other wildlife that scientist say it will kill.
National Audubon Society endorses wind power…

55. Impacts of Wind Power: Noise
Modern turbines are relatively quiet
Rule of thumb – stay about 3x hub-height away from houses
Many people think wind turbines are noisy.
While this may have been true in the past (it is still somewhat true on older smaller devices)…newer larger devices are much quieter.

56. Transmission Problems
Where is the wind?
Where are the population centers?
Where are the wind farms?
How do we get wind energy from the wind farms to the population centers?
Probably the largest issue facing Commercial Wind Energy is transmission. It is typically windy where people don’t want to live so how will you get the power from where it is generated to where the people live? Most people oppose new power line construction vehemently….so this will be a touchy issue for a very long time.
Quick Fact: 1 mile of High Voltage transmission line can cost upwards of $1 million!

57. Siting and NIMBY Where you site is a very big issue….
Many communities are wary of large wind farms being built in there communities…This can come from general grievances with the techololgy to perceived problems of noise, bird kills etc.
This image shows where they want to site the Cape Wind Offshore windfarm…this is a very contested project…about half the people on the cape support this the other half oppose.

58. Wind Energy in the Classroom

59. Standards/Skills
Scientific Processes (Collecting & Presenting Data, Performing Experiments, Repeating Trials, Using Models)
Use of Simple Tools & Equipment
Forces Cause Change
Energy Transformations (Forms of Energy)
Circuits/Electricity/Magnetism
Weather Patterns
Renewable – Non Renewable Energy

60. Elementary Engineering is Elementary Wind Chimes Wind Art
Building simple blades 60

61. Middle Building Wind Turbines Assessing Wind Resource Mathematics 61
balloon
~3m
streamers
Kite or balloon string 61

63. Secondary Advanced Blade Design School Siting Projects Data Analysis
Advanced Math 63

64. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org
Download Wind Energy curriculum at
Individual lessons are FREE to download
KidWind Project |

65. Math Curriculum
Some sample math lessons… available for free download at kidwind.org

66. KidWind Project | www.kidwind.org
Circuits, Wind Farms, Battery Charging, and Hybrid Systems
KidWind Project |

67. Questions???

68. The KidWind Project