Using the Wind to Save Money

Reported October

BOULDER, Colo. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Wind is a clean and cost-effective renewable energy. Still, the U.S. relies on it for only 1 percent of its energy. Now, one of the nation's largest energy providers is challenging scientists to come up with a way to reliably predict wind so it can be used to make more electricity. A possible solution for many of the country's energy and environmental concerns may be literally blowing in the wind.

"I would like to see anything impact my electrical bill," Kent England told Ivanhoe. "I think all types of energy we can use we need to get, including wind energy."

Wind is a clean, low cost, renewable energy, but a big problem is predicting when and where it will blow.

"Wind is one of the hardest things to predict because it is influenced by so many factors," William Mahoney, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Col., told Ivanhoe. "You have to know what is happening at the global scale."

Atmospheric scientists are developing highly detailed, localized weather forecasts so utility companies know when to power up wind turbines and power down fossil fuels.

"You can get a lot more bang for your buck, so to speak, out of a wind generator," Mahoney explained.

Wind can't be stored so these computer models will have to predict windy conditions on short notice, one to two hours in advance of demand.

Off-shore turbines are the next frontier and are used in parts of Europe where wind accounts for 30 percent of its energy. Twenty-eight U.S. states border a coastline, making wind readily available. President Obama has set a national goal for the United States to have 20 percent of its electricity wind generated by the year 2020.

The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-USA contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

David Hosansky
NCAR/UCAR Media Relations
(303) 497-8611
hosansky@ucar.edu

Peter Weiss
American Geophysical Union
Washington, DC 20009-1277
(800) 966-2481
http://www.agu.org
pweiss@agu.org

American Meteorological Society
Boston, MA 02108-3693
(617) 227-2425
http://www.ametsoc.org

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IEEE
Pender McCarter
IEEE http://www.ieee.org
IEEE-USA http://www.ieeeusa.org
p.mccarter@ieee.org

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