From email to social networking to YouTube, you’ve often got to wonder: what doesn’t Google do? They’re currently adding one more thing to their list of accomplishments – turning to clean energy.

Contracting Energy

Cows on the future site of the farm. Image credit Google Official Blog

The Happy Hereford wind farm, located in Texas, is expected to start producing energy in late 2014. Google has contracted the entire 240MW output of the farm as part of their continually expanding wind energy portfolio.

What’s interesting about this arrangement is that Google won’t be using the power directly. Regulations in the area prevent their data center from drawing power straight from the wind farm. Instead, Google will be selling the energy to local providers.

Google benefits from this through the use of renewable energy credits. Basically, these credits are “proof” that the energy was produced through a reliable source. Google will be retiring the credits when the re-sell the energy, meaning they break even while reducing their carbon footprint at the same time.

The easiest way to understand how this works is to think of it as an energy swap. Google draws the energy for their data centers from conventional sources. They then purchase wind energy, sell that energy, and use the money they make to pay for their original electricity bill. The wind energy goes to someone who would have used conventional energy, but isn’t held under the same regulations as the data center. So even though Google is technically using regular energy, they are still supporting the industry, and the net result is a reduction in their personal carbon imprint.

Supporting the Industry

Aside from the complicated math of renewable energy credits, there’s one important benefit to this contract: Google is providing a small wind company with a stable source of income. Even if no one purchases that energy, it’s Google taking the loss, not the wind farm.

A guaranteed flow of income is important for any starting business. If the company knows how much they are making, they can pay their workers stable wages, and count on expansions in the future. Even if they can’t use the energy themselves, Google has still made sure that the clean energy industry can continue to grow.

Image credit Sea Grant Michigan

When you think of offshore turbines, your first thought probably involves the ocean. But who says you can’t put those same turbines out on a lake? The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, also known as LEEDCo, hopes to use the vast space in the middle of the lake to create an “offshore” wind farm in fresh water. It will work, but the question is whether citizens want it.

The Icebreaker Project

LEEDCo is currently holding a “Power Pledge” to gauge support for their proposed energy solution. The Icebreaker project will put 6 turbines on the lake by 2017. If the project goes well, hundreds of turbines could follow shortly after.

The project has already received both federal funding from the Department of Energy, and from several private partners. At this point, it’s not a matter of funding, it’s just a matter of interest in the community, which seems to be growing. The pledge itself costs nothing, but would let anyone who signs it be first in line to receive energy from the new turbines. So far, over 3,000 Ohio state citizens have signed up.

Using Lake Erie

With over 9,000 square miles of surface area, Lake Erie is certainly large enough to make room for a few turbines. There’s enough wind to make the project worthwhile, but not nearly the same amount of instability as the sea, getting rid of some of the issues with floating turbines.

However, the lake is also an important location for both commercial and recreational purposes. From a business point of view, the waters are used for a strong fishing industry and transportation. From a tourism standpoint, the lake is well known as a place for boating, swimming, and diving for shipwrecks. One or two turbines won’t affect any of this; but a large farm might take up a large amount of valuable space.

In this case, as with any wind farm, the question is how much land should be sacrificed to provide renewable energy. That wind is a valuable commodity, but so are the waters in the lake itself. If this project is going to succeed, the creators will need to find a balance between gathering energy and respecting the environment at the same time.

Image credit Recharge News

Offshore turbines have been all over the news lately, from new prototypes to offshore land auctions. The wide, empty oceans seem like the perfect place to put wind farms, and countries all over the world are taking advantage of them. But one Japanese company has an entirely different take on the concept.

Tapping into Two Sources

Modec, an Engineering company based in Tokyo, is working on a new turbine that will generate energy from both the wind and the waves. The Skwid uses a dual turbine system: one floating above the surface to catch air currents, and one underneath to catch currents in the water.

The wind turbine uses a vertical design, with three main rudders. This design will help it capture twice the energy of a horizontal turbine, and will conserve space at the same time. The Skwid turbines will initially be tethered to the shore; however, future technology could allow the turbines to be loaded with batteries, extending the potentially useful area far out into the ocean.

Roughly 80-90% of the device’s energy output will come from the wind turbine on the surface. Water currents don’t have quite as much energy potential. Still, the addition of that extra turbine could help tap into an unused energy source, generating more power for a relatively low cost. The hope is that just one of these turbines will be enough to give energy to as many as 500 homes. Of course, since the turbines are still in development, that mark is still a ways off.

The beauty of this idea is that the main structure already exists in the form of the standard floating wind turbine. The space underneath floating turbines is going completely unused; the anchor beneath it prevents any kind of fishing, and ships give the turbines a wide berth. By using that space, the energy potential of any given area of ocean is greatly increased.

Modec’s turbines are slated for testing later this fall, and could be in use within a few years. If you’re interested in learning more, check out this video by CBS, discussing the turbines and their creator.

How is a fish like a VAWT?

Flying and swimming animals fly in pattern formations all over the world. The classic “V” shape of geese is used to help make their migration flights less taxing, while the similar layout of a school of fish helps them navigate ocean currents. Both water and wind flow in streams, which are efficiently shaped by fins and wings.

So, if nature can find a way to harness the power of air or water currents so easily, why can’t wind turbines? Vertical turbines have a lot of similarities to fins, which means they might be able to take advantage of the same patterns used by schools of fish.

The Problem: Wind Shadows

Normal turbines have to be spaced fairly far apart to be effective. A turbine slows the wind that passes through it, creating what is known as a “wind shadow.” This difference isn’t noticeable at first, but if you stack enough turbines next to each other, you’ll start to notice a distinct lack in power generation. Each turbine slows the wind a little more, until there’s almost nothing at the end of the line.

There are two ways wind farms deal with this. One option is to simply get a larger amount of land, and space out the turbines appropriately. Another option is to rent small areas from local landowners, placing turbines on unfarmable patches of land spaced so far about that wind shadows become negligible.

Inspiration from a School of Fish

Diagram of vortices caused by fish fins. Image credit GizMag

When water flows off the fins of a lead fish, it creates vortices, or pockets of moving water. The next fish uses these pockets to move forward in the water, and creates another set of pockets for the fish behind them.

John Dabri, a professor at Caltech, suggests that we can use this concept to increase the efficiency of wind turbines. Vertical axis turbines cut through the air much like a set of fins; by interspersing turbines meant to rotate in one direction or another, there’s a chance to harness these swirling pockets of wind and increase the energy efficiency of a farm even further.

Downsides and Issues

Of course, no idea is perfect. There’s a reason why you aren’t seeing Dabri’s concept in motion yet: it isn’t completly refined.

The main problem is that, in order for this “school of fish” layout to work, the wind has to be blowing from a set direction. The moment it shifts, the perfect alignment is thrown out of whack. Depending on the angle, this can decrease energy by a small amount, or take the benefits away entirely.

The second problem is that the space around turbines isn’t just dead. Farm crops, grass space, and service roads take up the ground around the base of a turbine, while the turbine itself takes up the air. GizMag mentions that the school of fish layout would render the surrounding area completely useless – or at least, far more useless than it is now.

So is it Viable?

Dabri’s method isn’t new – he first unveiled the concept in 2010, and it’s been looked at before. In ideal conditions, it could work incredibly well, but it still needs fine tuning to hold up in real life.

In the meantime, the question is whether we need to look into condensing large wind farms, or spreading the turbines out over a rural area. Many people feel that the existence of turbines ruins the view or the landscape, and causes noise pollution. Condensing the turbines to a single farm increases the noise pollution in one area, but keeps it out of other spaces; spreading them out lowers the overall pollution but increases the span of the affected area. Before we look into ways to make wind energy more efficient, we need to decide which option is more viable.

The VolturnUS. Image credit New York Times

Wind energy has been in use for centuries; Christopher Columbus certainly didn’t use coal to make his journey. Even though wind power isn’t commonly used for commercial vessels, we can all picture a wooden boat with billowing sails, rushing through the sea. Now wind energy is returning to the waves with the floating turbine that was recently launched in Maine.

The Volturn US

Unfortunately, this particular turbine isn’t vertical, but it’s still fairly innovative. The 65 foot VolturnUS is just a prototype; it’s only 1/8th of the planned size for the final turbine. The tower floats on three hollowed-out concrete tubes, which help provide stability on the rocky waves. At it’s current size, this turbine can generate 20 kilowatts of power, but the larger version should be able to generate 6 megawatts.

According to the Department of Energy, the Volturn is one of seven turbines that are currently being developed. The goal is to explore the possibilities of off-shore energy, which could result in over 4,000 gigawatts of energy potential.

Why OffShore?

If a turbine was moving at full speed every second of every day, it would generate immense amounts of energy. Unfortunately for turbines (but fortunately for the rest of us), the wind isn’t constant and heavy. Currents change and move, and wind patterns are never steady. This means that land turbines usually only generate about a third of the power they could be if they had a steady supply of airflow.

The sea, however, is an entirely different matter. In the Gulf of Maine, where the Volturn is being anchored, there’s a steady, predictable breeze every morning. The rising sun heats the air over the land, while the sea keeps the air above it fairly cold. This change in temperature causes a strong – and more importantly, regular – breeze that can be easily tapped.

The biggest problem with offshore turbines has been the difficulty in constructing them. It’s incredibly to build a strong foundation underwater, especially once you get farther out and the land below drops away. Likewise, floating turbines have the possibility of being toppled by waves – something the VolturnUS is hopefully prepared against.

Of course, offshore wind farms aren’t particularly new; Europe has had them for quite some time. 22 of the worlds largest offshore wind farms are located in Europe, and there are countless other small groups of turbines. The United States may be a little behind, but that doesn’t change the fact that the possibility of taking our turbines off the land and putting them into the water could make wind energy a lot more viable.

Image Credit X-Wind Power

Can you imagine trains powered by the wind? No, we’re not talking about putting sails on a train. Thanks to the new XW-80 turbine, it looks like Britain might be able to get 70% of the electricity it needs to power its railways straight from the sky. The project still has to go through a trial, but if it suceeds, the sheer fuel efficiency of the turbines will have a massive impact on the current way we look at energy.

Why a Vertical Turbine is the Solution

Currently, a large amount of wind-based energy comes from wind farms. Picture rows upon rows of classic-looking windmills, hooked up to a power generator. While this works great for powering nearby buildings, it doesn’t work quite as well when you want to power miles upon miles of train tracks.

Vertical turbines don’t need to be placed in a wind farm. They’re surprisingly quiet, and don’t take up nearly as much space. Instead of filling a farm with dozens of turbines, you could easily lay those turbines right next to the train tracks, providing power to the train as it travels.

Another advantage to vertical turbines is that they can handle an abrupt changes in wind direction. Horizontal turbines typically have a long response time when the wind changes, which can cause a loss of power. In an urban setting with unreliable wind, vertical turbines can fit in far more easily.

Will Vertical Turbines Become Part of the Urban Skyline?

Vertical turbines aren’t just good for train tracks. Their sleek design allows vertical turbines to be easily slipped into unused spaces, including the middle of cities. The shape of the turbines won’t block windows like a horizontal layout would, and isn’t as likely to interfere with communication signals.

These turbines are also quiet. It’s one thing to put a noisy, creaky horizontal turbine in the middle of the city, where any nearby homeowners will complain; it’s another to give them a quiet source of cheap energy that adds far more to the community than it takes away.

Of course, there won’t be a turbine in every city. Some places just don’t have enough wind to generate a useful amount of electricity. But cities with ever-present breezes would make a great target for this form of technology. If the wind is there and you can fit the turbines around pre-exisiting buildings, why not try it out?

The XW-80 still needs to be tested out. But if Britain successfully manages to power their rails with the wind, we’re looking at a huge change in both the fuel and transportation industries. Public transportation is already fairly cheap compared to regular vehicles. Make it more energy efficient and reduce the cost on the city, and you might be seeing a wind-powered train in your own city within a few decades.