The Future of Wind

I’m working an application to RES, and I have to say that their application form is a lot more enjoyable to write than those of many large energy companies. One of the questions was so interesting that I completely went over the word limit: I’ve decided to write an answer to that question here in more detail. The question is:

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES FACING THE WIND INDUSTRY IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS?  

I'm going to split my answer to this question into offshore and onshore wind, as I think that they have different challenges facing them.

EWB workshop!

The view from the entrance

Today I helped out with an Engineers without Borders (EWB) workshop. The idea was to have a bike powering a projector, showing Family Guy episodes (a student favourite!). However, there were some problems with the dynamo we bought, so we couldn't get it to work in the end.
We had other stalls up to show other parts of EWB. These included:

Warwick Go Green Week

It's Go Green Week this week at Warwick, which means lots of interesting talks, events and workshops!

There's plenty of information on the website here.

I'm personally helping out with a Engineers without Borders workshop: a bike-powered projector on Friday. I'll hopefully take lots of pictures and report back on it when it's done! There's also a leaflet to go with the workshop that I'm working on- I'll upload that when it's finished.

Exciting stuff!

Interesting articles

Since there is so much information out there at the moment about renewable energy, I thought I would highlight a few things I've found recently. Hope it's useful!

This week's New Scientist (dated 28th Jan) is a very interesting read. The cover story is about "How clean is green energy?" and essentially discusses the long term issues of large-scale renewable energy gathering. For example, if we put up wind farms everywhere, that will take the energy out of the air and so slow weather systems travelling across the world. Interesting stuff.
There is also a special report explaining "fracking"- a controversial technique for extracting gas. I personally didn't know much about fracking, so it was useful to get a brief explanation, as well as an opinion piece from Mike Stephenson explaining the risks. Definitely worth reading.

The book "Sustainable energy- without the hot air" is one of my favourite books for its clarity and simplicity in explaining our energy problems and how to solve them. There's now another similar book out about sustainable materials: I can't wait to read it! You can access it online for free too, so there's no reason not to.

These are just a few things which will keep me busy for the next few days. There is a huge amount of news and information about renewable energy now, such that it's difficult to keep up. Particularly while doing a full time MSc and looking for a job..