EWB Tour: Wind farms and the Eden Project!

A few weeks ago, I went away to Cornwall for the weekend with Engineers without Borders (EWB). We went to a wind farm (Delabole), the wind turbine at the farm we stayed at and the Eden Project.
Firstly, Delabole wind farm. This was my first time at a proper onshore wind farm and I was impressed by the scale of the turbines, which are each around 40m high. I was also listening carefully to try and hear the blades: after watching Windfarm Wars, it was clear that the main issues that some in the community had with the proposed wind farm was the added noise, as well as the visual impact. I could only barely hear the turbines spinning, which surprised me as some in the BBC programme were saying that the noise had stopped them sleeping and ruined their lives. Obviously, I only saw the turbines on one particular day in particular wind conditions, but I was still expecting to be able to hear the blades turning as we drove up to the farm! A few of the pictures are below.

A few turbines

View of a turbine from the base

Info board

After that, we went to go and see the turbine belonging to the farmer we were staying with. This fairly small (50kW rated, I think) turbine generates electricity for him while taking up a small ground footprint- it was simply in a field with cows, who didn't seem too bothered! This is evidently a good use of the space available to the farmer- he can generate money and energy at the same time and in the same place as growing cattle.

Finally, we went to the Eden Project. This remarkable place, set in an disused quarry, contains two "biomes", Rainforest and Mediterranean, both with a huge range of plants and trees, as well as a large outdoor garden and The Core, a building devoted to teaching about sustainable living. It's an incredible place, and I'd recommend anyone to go there- I'm not a plant lover, but I still enjoyed the beauty and peacefullness of the place. The Core was an interesting educational space, but was really aimed at instilling the ideas of sustainability in the next generation, so was at a lower level than I'm used to; good to see these kinds of facilities available though. The restaurant was also amazing- great local food and surprisingly cheap! Eden Project pictures below.

The Core

Biomes

Overall, it was a great weekend away. I came away with a bit more perspective about renewables in the UK, and the feeling that, for all the talk about targets and emissions, there are forward-thinking people actually putting those ideas into action.

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..

The Future of Energy

Yesterday, I went to a fascinating series of talks as part of "One World Week" here at Warwick. The event was called "The Future of Energy: A Power Struggle". The speakers  included heads of large energy companies, a lawyer specialising in energy and an American researcher into energy systems.

It was really interesting to see where the emphasis was put in the different talks, in terms of the "future energy mix". For example, Kevin McCollough (NPower) thought that nuclear was an inevitable part of our future, whereas David Hone (Shell) focussed on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a technology to push, so that we can keep using the current fossil fuels that we do currently. Adrian Gault (Committee for Climate Change) suggested that it would be very difficult to meet our emissions targets for 2050 without significant bioenergy and CCS contribution, with all the new cars sold in 2030 being electrically driven. Mark Jacobson (Stanford) put forward an ambitious model based on Wind, Water and Sun (WWS) which the rest of the panel thought was too lofty a goal.

Wind Turbine on Campus: getting involved!

I've recently been getting involved with the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) society at Warwick, and went today to have a closer look at their wind turbine; I went there before and had a look, but this time I got the chance to look at the whole system up close, including the data logger and inverters!

It was great to see it up close, although it wasn't turning at the time, and I'm hoping to get involved on the data logging side. At the moment, the output power (and other data) is stored within the inverter for 10 days or so, and needs to be downloaded onto a computer. This would be a good starting point for a data report (perhaps weekly), where a graph of performance over the week, average power output, percentage of uptime and total energy generated could be put online.