info@truenorthpower.com
A Publication of the FREE Wind Press - May be re-printed for personal use only
Copyright (C) 2007 TRUE-NORTH Power Systems
For commercial or non-profit publication contact TRUE-NORTH Power Systems
Lion's Head ON N0H 1W0 - (519) 793-3290
A Publication of the FREE Wind Press - May be re-printed for personal use only
Copyright (C) 2007 TRUE-NORTH Power Systems
For commercial or non-profit publication contact TRUE-NORTH Power Systems
Lion's Head ON N0H 1W0 - (519) 793-3290
Issue 3:1 Headlines: April 2005
So What's Up with Ontario Power Rates?
As Ontario power rates continue to rise, more and more consumers are trying to figure out, When does it make sense to get renewable energy? Honestly, there is no simple calculation you can make to know. That's because owning your own power plant for personal use is a unique event. You are replacing a service with a product and that's very different than just buying a newer/better product or service. You become both supplier and consumer of a critical commodity. That puts you in the "drivers seat". The only trouble with that is "you're the driver" . . it cuts both ways. . but it's where more and more people are choosing to be, since energy supply and demand is so controlled and yet so out-of-control.
Making power for your own use is done for personal reasons and the cost and payback comparisons are rarely a purely financial decision. But how do you know what you are really paying when you get your hydro bill. The bill itself is really quite simple if you treat it like most other bills. How much product did you get? . . . and How much did it cost? Divide the product (total kWhrs) by the cost in dollars to get the cost per kWhr. Forget all that rates stuff in between. They are all costs, all part of the value you got.
Hydro One Networks recently sent each customer an explanation of increases siting an OEB (Ontario Energy Board) raise in "delivery" or "distribution rate" of about 2% or $2 per average bill. That would mean the average bill must be about $100. Ok but, they also say that Basic Electricity costs have been increased about 3% which they say should add about $4. (so first off how can 2% = $2 AND 3% = $4 at the same time?)
To be practical, with all the uproar over soaring electricity rates, they will always try to paint the best picture possible but you need to read between the lines to get at the true meaning. The OEB has allowed all Ontario distributors to now "recover costs they incurred when the market was opened". The new OEB plan is supposed to "provide more stability and predictability". You could say it's more predictable but is it more stable if rates rise faster than general inflation?.
The Smart Meter Program. is described in an excerpt from a recent bill insert and the Hydro One Networks website(Excerpts in RED Italics) are what they'd like you to know about this $39M C&DM Program. You can "read between the lines" in blue.. NOTE: The actual use of SMART Meters to control demand raises a number of practical issues such as "Can a utility limit power demand intentionally without accepting liability for losses incurred as a result? ie lost data, flooded basements, melted freezers etc" or "Will consumers actually get up at 2am when the washing is done and move it to the dryer?"
Smart meters are coming. Smart meters measure how much and when electricity is used. Smart metering technology provides advanced billing capabilities, outage notification, (like we need a gadget to tell us when the power has failed) and can link meters to conservation and demand management programs (C&DM). (conservation is good but not the DM or "Demand Management" This is a $39.5M program for Hydro One. It means these SMART meters could be able to limit your use of energy and prevent brownouts or blackouts across the province by browning you out instead . . . or perhaps just turn off your hot water heater when they see general demand getting too high. How all this is done is still uncertain. Hydro One is studying options that are to be reported next month (June05). This meter could be commanded by the utility and simply not allow you to use more than some set limit of kilowatts. This limit would be set by the utility not by you. Since the politicians and the OEB are avoiding raising rates to the real cost of energy when demand is high, they may choose to just limit what you can have. . . that's because the advertised price of power could still remain quite low as long as you don't include the costs when demand is high. If you can prevent high demand you can still say the average price of power is low.) The Government of Ontario has established targets for the installation of 800,000 smart meters by December 31, 2007. By 2010, all Ontario consumers should have a smart meter installed. (They don't say how much the meters and all this installation work going to cost each user? If you ask for one to be installed for "Net Metering" purposes it's $748. Maybe they will just add it to the rates in smaller amounts) Hydro One is already moving on this initiative. We’re planning to have 25,000 smart meters installed for our customers by the end of this year. Customers who have a smart meter will begin to pay time-of-use prices no later than April 2006. (If consumers could understand the real motives behind Smart Meters they might have something more to say about it. 25,000 meters is an $18.7 Million dollar program. Doing the whole province with 800,000 meters is a $200 million program even at their cost. If they actually charge consumers $750, that's another half Billion dollar revenue stream for utilities over the next 6 years.) These prices for electricity will differ according to the season and time of day. (This is the real conservation part. The price you do pay in less than a year (ie Apr06) will be the actual demand price based on systems demand and time of day, so when most people are using power, breakfast and dinner evening, they will be paying the highest price. Wnay to know what the "Demand price is right now? Click here. Notice the price during meal hours and evenings. That is when you use electricity mostly, and that's when it will cost the most. That should get some people's attention quickly. Will you change your habits to avoid these costs? As is it now, you don't plan your day around what you eat and the cost of electricity . . . BUT YOU WILL! It is also worth noting that, the price of electricity after April 2006 will be reviewed and likely increased EVER 6 MONTHS according to the new OEB plan.
The OEB Applications for all Ontario Utilities are available here if you really want to know the details.
"Time of Use" pricing will assist consumers in making conservation and economic decisions but what they call "Residential Load Control" will put the conservation decision in the hands of utilities.
In their own words: "There is still considerable uncertainty concerning the technology and functionality to be selected for the majority of metering installations. We need a better understanding of the costs and risks before proceeding with implementing SMART Meters across the province." More information is available on the Hydro One Networks website
As a couple of final notes here is an interesting point of discussion from their 2006 Rate Distribution Application 7-8 April 2005."How will Rural and Remote Rate Assistance change and how will Hydro One recover this? The OEB sets a rate. Hydro One is under-collecting right now but hopes this will be corrected." Look out farmers and rural customers. Your rates need to be brought in line. You've actually been getting a too low a price until now, and they plan to recover that. Also, Hydro One Networks would say their residential Customer Satisfaction index is 78% but the Stakeholders Session of April 05 noted that system interruption frequency or duration statistics are not part of how it is assessed.
As Ontario power rates continue to rise, more and more consumers are trying to figure out, When does it make sense to get renewable energy? Honestly, there is no simple calculation you can make to know. That's because owning your own power plant for personal use is a unique event. You are replacing a service with a product and that's very different than just buying a newer/better product or service. You become both supplier and consumer of a critical commodity. That puts you in the "drivers seat". The only trouble with that is "you're the driver" . . it cuts both ways. . but it's where more and more people are choosing to be, since energy supply and demand is so controlled and yet so out-of-control.
Making power for your own use is done for personal reasons and the cost and payback comparisons are rarely a purely financial decision. But how do you know what you are really paying when you get your hydro bill. The bill itself is really quite simple if you treat it like most other bills. How much product did you get? . . . and How much did it cost? Divide the product (total kWhrs) by the cost in dollars to get the cost per kWhr. Forget all that rates stuff in between. They are all costs, all part of the value you got.
Hydro One Networks recently sent each customer an explanation of increases siting an OEB (Ontario Energy Board) raise in "delivery" or "distribution rate" of about 2% or $2 per average bill. That would mean the average bill must be about $100. Ok but, they also say that Basic Electricity costs have been increased about 3% which they say should add about $4. (so first off how can 2% = $2 AND 3% = $4 at the same time?)
To be practical, with all the uproar over soaring electricity rates, they will always try to paint the best picture possible but you need to read between the lines to get at the true meaning. The OEB has allowed all Ontario distributors to now "recover costs they incurred when the market was opened". The new OEB plan is supposed to "provide more stability and predictability". You could say it's more predictable but is it more stable if rates rise faster than general inflation?.
The Smart Meter Program. is described in an excerpt from a recent bill insert and the Hydro One Networks website(Excerpts in RED Italics) are what they'd like you to know about this $39M C&DM Program. You can "read between the lines" in blue.. NOTE: The actual use of SMART Meters to control demand raises a number of practical issues such as "Can a utility limit power demand intentionally without accepting liability for losses incurred as a result? ie lost data, flooded basements, melted freezers etc" or "Will consumers actually get up at 2am when the washing is done and move it to the dryer?"
Smart meters are coming. Smart meters measure how much and when electricity is used. Smart metering technology provides advanced billing capabilities, outage notification, (like we need a gadget to tell us when the power has failed) and can link meters to conservation and demand management programs (C&DM). (conservation is good but not the DM or "Demand Management" This is a $39.5M program for Hydro One. It means these SMART meters could be able to limit your use of energy and prevent brownouts or blackouts across the province by browning you out instead . . . or perhaps just turn off your hot water heater when they see general demand getting too high. How all this is done is still uncertain. Hydro One is studying options that are to be reported next month (June05). This meter could be commanded by the utility and simply not allow you to use more than some set limit of kilowatts. This limit would be set by the utility not by you. Since the politicians and the OEB are avoiding raising rates to the real cost of energy when demand is high, they may choose to just limit what you can have. . . that's because the advertised price of power could still remain quite low as long as you don't include the costs when demand is high. If you can prevent high demand you can still say the average price of power is low.) The Government of Ontario has established targets for the installation of 800,000 smart meters by December 31, 2007. By 2010, all Ontario consumers should have a smart meter installed. (They don't say how much the meters and all this installation work going to cost each user? If you ask for one to be installed for "Net Metering" purposes it's $748. Maybe they will just add it to the rates in smaller amounts) Hydro One is already moving on this initiative. We’re planning to have 25,000 smart meters installed for our customers by the end of this year. Customers who have a smart meter will begin to pay time-of-use prices no later than April 2006. (If consumers could understand the real motives behind Smart Meters they might have something more to say about it. 25,000 meters is an $18.7 Million dollar program. Doing the whole province with 800,000 meters is a $200 million program even at their cost. If they actually charge consumers $750, that's another half Billion dollar revenue stream for utilities over the next 6 years.) These prices for electricity will differ according to the season and time of day. (This is the real conservation part. The price you do pay in less than a year (ie Apr06) will be the actual demand price based on systems demand and time of day, so when most people are using power, breakfast and dinner evening, they will be paying the highest price. Wnay to know what the "Demand price is right now? Click here. Notice the price during meal hours and evenings. That is when you use electricity mostly, and that's when it will cost the most. That should get some people's attention quickly. Will you change your habits to avoid these costs? As is it now, you don't plan your day around what you eat and the cost of electricity . . . BUT YOU WILL! It is also worth noting that, the price of electricity after April 2006 will be reviewed and likely increased EVER 6 MONTHS according to the new OEB plan.
The OEB Applications for all Ontario Utilities are available here if you really want to know the details.
"Time of Use" pricing will assist consumers in making conservation and economic decisions but what they call "Residential Load Control" will put the conservation decision in the hands of utilities.
In their own words: "There is still considerable uncertainty concerning the technology and functionality to be selected for the majority of metering installations. We need a better understanding of the costs and risks before proceeding with implementing SMART Meters across the province." More information is available on the Hydro One Networks website
As a couple of final notes here is an interesting point of discussion from their 2006 Rate Distribution Application 7-8 April 2005."How will Rural and Remote Rate Assistance change and how will Hydro One recover this? The OEB sets a rate. Hydro One is under-collecting right now but hopes this will be corrected." Look out farmers and rural customers. Your rates need to be brought in line. You've actually been getting a too low a price until now, and they plan to recover that. Also, Hydro One Networks would say their residential Customer Satisfaction index is 78% but the Stakeholders Session of April 05 noted that system interruption frequency or duration statistics are not part of how it is assessed.
How Windy is WINDY? Where can I get the data?
So how windy is it at your place? "Oh it's always blowing here . . We get wind here ALL THE TIME!". Yes, but how windy is it? "Well the flags are always straight out . . . all day long." If that is the case on your site you may actually have less than average wind because a flag will stand straight out at about 10mph. If that's the wind you have all the time then there is only 32 watts per square meter of cross section and you can extract (collect) only about 14 watts of that available energy before the wind will go around rather than through the blades of a wind turbine. On the other hand, if your place is fairly protected by trees, the wind in your yard may be too light to fly a flag most of the time, but 30 feet above those 40ft pines there is clean laminar flow air that could contain almost 200watts per square meter a lot of the time.
Wind like solar energy is "low density energy". That means you need a fairly large collector to gather useful amounts of it. But unlike the sun, which is only there half the time on some days, the wind can blow anytime day or night. Remember, "A day without sun is . . well, night". And there is Zero PV energy at night. No I'm not saying Solar PV is no good. It's more predictable than wind from day to day but the amount of energy available from wind on just an acre of land can vary greatly. Every case is unique. . . and I'm not talking about Commercial wind production. That's TOTALLY different. Read FREE Wind News 0406. I mean, the energy I get from my own turbine does not exist a hundred feet away on my own property. Imagine how different it is down the road, or even 5km away at the airport where some actual detailed wind recordings exist.
If you want to know how much wind you have for building a commercial wind farm you need about 12-18 months of wind and climate data . . or you'll never attract any investment capital. If you want to know how much energy there is on your property you can do the same but it would be largely an academic exercise and a waste of time and money. For about the same money you can install a tower and small wind turbine and actually measure how much "energy" there is, rather than just study the "potential" for electricity generation. The information available from the weather office offers only the most general application to your site. You could perhaps buy commercial wind data from companies who produce it. Maybe there has been interest in a local wind farm and some company has already acquired the data very near your property. They may be willing to sell it to you but it was intended for justifying a wind farm on the property they studied and usually only relates to wind at 30, 50 or 80 meters height for the location of their anemometer tower. Most personal turbines don't have 30 meter towers and it was not done on your property, so again that kind of data is only a general guide at best.
There are weather stations all over the province, usually right beside the road, on 25 ft towers with anemometers collecting piles of actual wind and climate data every day. A lot of this historical data is available online from www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca. Some of this data goes back to the 1800s. The web page will allow you to input a LAT/LONG or a nearby town, airport or automated weather reporting station. It will then offer up annual reports with monthly averages. Again, this should only be considered roughly applicable to any personal generator location. So what can you do? Well, until recently your could only do your own anemometer analysis or perhaps fly a kite or balloon as I've suggested in previous Newsletters.
But now . . just in the last few months . . a new FREE database has been published by Environment Canada (yes your tax dollars at work) . .showing calculated wind data as it relates to virtually any 5km square of Canada. It's in a very well designed and easily navigated website called www.windatlas.ca I have not explored the entire database but I know that not all areas are complete. For most of us Alberta, Southern Ontario and the Maritimes do work. Click on "MAPS" legend or "Colour Maps" on the home page and then on the area of Canada you are interested in. What you will find is Average Wind Power and Average Speed data that can be localized to a few square kms. Although the lowest height calculation is still only 30M it will show you what the Weibull power distribution is for a fairly specific location. It has towns and roads and streams so you can zoom in somewhat and locate your property fairly accurately. Click on the point of interest and you can produce the power distribution and Weibull chart and allow you to enter the basic wind turbine parameters.
This data is all any private wind user needs to decide if there is enough energy in the local wind to install a wind turbine. Now the question is: "Is there some place on my property where I can collect some of that energy?" You still need to do a site study to evaluate the height and placement of the tower in relation to tree buildings and other obstacles but you'll be able to see rather quickly from the Windatlas if are in a high or low ind site. Don't be discouraged if it looks like you're not is a hot sector because local terrain, tree heights and you proximity to open water makes a big difference. Also, just because Windatlas shows a good wind location does not mean your property can make best use of wind until you evaluate the terrain, vegetation and other factors on the actual property.
So how windy is it at your place? "Oh it's always blowing here . . We get wind here ALL THE TIME!". Yes, but how windy is it? "Well the flags are always straight out . . . all day long." If that is the case on your site you may actually have less than average wind because a flag will stand straight out at about 10mph. If that's the wind you have all the time then there is only 32 watts per square meter of cross section and you can extract (collect) only about 14 watts of that available energy before the wind will go around rather than through the blades of a wind turbine. On the other hand, if your place is fairly protected by trees, the wind in your yard may be too light to fly a flag most of the time, but 30 feet above those 40ft pines there is clean laminar flow air that could contain almost 200watts per square meter a lot of the time.
Wind like solar energy is "low density energy". That means you need a fairly large collector to gather useful amounts of it. But unlike the sun, which is only there half the time on some days, the wind can blow anytime day or night. Remember, "A day without sun is . . well, night". And there is Zero PV energy at night. No I'm not saying Solar PV is no good. It's more predictable than wind from day to day but the amount of energy available from wind on just an acre of land can vary greatly. Every case is unique. . . and I'm not talking about Commercial wind production. That's TOTALLY different. Read FREE Wind News 0406. I mean, the energy I get from my own turbine does not exist a hundred feet away on my own property. Imagine how different it is down the road, or even 5km away at the airport where some actual detailed wind recordings exist.
If you want to know how much wind you have for building a commercial wind farm you need about 12-18 months of wind and climate data . . or you'll never attract any investment capital. If you want to know how much energy there is on your property you can do the same but it would be largely an academic exercise and a waste of time and money. For about the same money you can install a tower and small wind turbine and actually measure how much "energy" there is, rather than just study the "potential" for electricity generation. The information available from the weather office offers only the most general application to your site. You could perhaps buy commercial wind data from companies who produce it. Maybe there has been interest in a local wind farm and some company has already acquired the data very near your property. They may be willing to sell it to you but it was intended for justifying a wind farm on the property they studied and usually only relates to wind at 30, 50 or 80 meters height for the location of their anemometer tower. Most personal turbines don't have 30 meter towers and it was not done on your property, so again that kind of data is only a general guide at best.
There are weather stations all over the province, usually right beside the road, on 25 ft towers with anemometers collecting piles of actual wind and climate data every day. A lot of this historical data is available online from www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca. Some of this data goes back to the 1800s. The web page will allow you to input a LAT/LONG or a nearby town, airport or automated weather reporting station. It will then offer up annual reports with monthly averages. Again, this should only be considered roughly applicable to any personal generator location. So what can you do? Well, until recently your could only do your own anemometer analysis or perhaps fly a kite or balloon as I've suggested in previous Newsletters.
But now . . just in the last few months . . a new FREE database has been published by Environment Canada (yes your tax dollars at work) . .showing calculated wind data as it relates to virtually any 5km square of Canada. It's in a very well designed and easily navigated website called www.windatlas.ca I have not explored the entire database but I know that not all areas are complete. For most of us Alberta, Southern Ontario and the Maritimes do work. Click on "MAPS" legend or "Colour Maps" on the home page and then on the area of Canada you are interested in. What you will find is Average Wind Power and Average Speed data that can be localized to a few square kms. Although the lowest height calculation is still only 30M it will show you what the Weibull power distribution is for a fairly specific location. It has towns and roads and streams so you can zoom in somewhat and locate your property fairly accurately. Click on the point of interest and you can produce the power distribution and Weibull chart and allow you to enter the basic wind turbine parameters.
This data is all any private wind user needs to decide if there is enough energy in the local wind to install a wind turbine. Now the question is: "Is there some place on my property where I can collect some of that energy?" You still need to do a site study to evaluate the height and placement of the tower in relation to tree buildings and other obstacles but you'll be able to see rather quickly from the Windatlas if are in a high or low ind site. Don't be discouraged if it looks like you're not is a hot sector because local terrain, tree heights and you proximity to open water makes a big difference. Also, just because Windatlas shows a good wind location does not mean your property can make best use of wind until you evaluate the terrain, vegetation and other factors on the actual property.
Power control and Load Diversion
Every power producing generator needs a "limit switch" or governor of some kind that will keep the power under control or within some limits. A wind turbine will spin easily in the wind and without any load on the blades they would quickly fly beyond there design speed unless energy is taken from the system. The reason wind turbines stay under control is they take energy from the mass of air passing through the blades and convert it to electrical current. If energy is not converted it is used to drive the blades faster and faster until there is a failure.
Many ideas have been offered and tried to use mechanical or electrical limiting methods. This is either done as braking or furling to keep the blade speed under control. Some turbine designers have used aerodynamic braking with winglets or flyweight mechanism that will throw on actual brakes, similar to your car brakes, when the rpm gets too high. Others use a side furling mechanism whereby the wind pressure on the tail forces the blades to turn away from the wind and the loss of lift causes the blades to stall, lose energy and slow down. A new electronic furling mechanism has been explored by AEROMAG Wind Energy since 1999, that allows an electronic circuit to determine the load on the blades and dynamically change the speed of the blades to match the best performance efficiency for any wind speed. It seeks out the "Power Sweet Spot" and extracts as much energy as it can without stalling. This new electronic furling controller is now undergoing it's first pre-production performance testing here at the FREE Wind Test Centre in Canada.
When there is no place to put the energy though, you must either shut down the turbine or divert the energy to some other use. Load diversion is done all the time by the big commercial hydro networks. They are constantly balancing load and demand to ensure that the energy always has someplace to go and there is always enough "spinning reserve" to satisfy new demands when they come. As producer and user you must do the same. PV solar producers have a different choice. PV solar current can easily be "shut down" by "opening the switch". The potential to create power is still there at the panels but with an open switch there is no current flow. Wind on the other hand must either slow the turbine blades by braking or shift the power off to a resistive load. Since small wind turbines produce a relatively small amount of power (maybe 1-3 kW or less at full power), that's most effectively and safely done with a heat resistor.
Every power producing generator needs a "limit switch" or governor of some kind that will keep the power under control or within some limits. A wind turbine will spin easily in the wind and without any load on the blades they would quickly fly beyond there design speed unless energy is taken from the system. The reason wind turbines stay under control is they take energy from the mass of air passing through the blades and convert it to electrical current. If energy is not converted it is used to drive the blades faster and faster until there is a failure.
Many ideas have been offered and tried to use mechanical or electrical limiting methods. This is either done as braking or furling to keep the blade speed under control. Some turbine designers have used aerodynamic braking with winglets or flyweight mechanism that will throw on actual brakes, similar to your car brakes, when the rpm gets too high. Others use a side furling mechanism whereby the wind pressure on the tail forces the blades to turn away from the wind and the loss of lift causes the blades to stall, lose energy and slow down. A new electronic furling mechanism has been explored by AEROMAG Wind Energy since 1999, that allows an electronic circuit to determine the load on the blades and dynamically change the speed of the blades to match the best performance efficiency for any wind speed. It seeks out the "Power Sweet Spot" and extracts as much energy as it can without stalling. This new electronic furling controller is now undergoing it's first pre-production performance testing here at the FREE Wind Test Centre in Canada.
When there is no place to put the energy though, you must either shut down the turbine or divert the energy to some other use. Load diversion is done all the time by the big commercial hydro networks. They are constantly balancing load and demand to ensure that the energy always has someplace to go and there is always enough "spinning reserve" to satisfy new demands when they come. As producer and user you must do the same. PV solar producers have a different choice. PV solar current can easily be "shut down" by "opening the switch". The potential to create power is still there at the panels but with an open switch there is no current flow. Wind on the other hand must either slow the turbine blades by braking or shift the power off to a resistive load. Since small wind turbines produce a relatively small amount of power (maybe 1-3 kW or less at full power), that's most effectively and safely done with a heat resistor.
Tower? - What Tower
Deciding where and how high the tower should be, to get into the best laminar flow air, is just the beginning . . . choosing the kind of tower and supplier is another. Then, how about the local by-laws and insurance . . . It's all too complicated. . . . Not really. Some Municipal Planners are now starting to get informed about Small Wind. They've hear all about Big Wind as everyone else has, but like most people, they think they should apply Big Wind solutions to small wind owners. Here are some of the tower considerations that you might run into and some ideas that might help you as well.
The choices for the small wind owner are usually pretty simple and come down to space, convenience and price. But there are still many unresolved planning issues. Some jurisdictions have height restrictions for structures. Real Estate and Provincial tax auditors will treat renewable energy systems as "Real Property" . . that is, it is part of the home or business that it is located on and like a central air conditioner, pool or inground sprinkler, it goes with the house. This means they may treat concrete pads or anchors as "Foundations" and that brings into play certain by-law restrictions. Likely, you will be required to keep 15-25 ft back from any property line for placing such anchors, but that may actually depend on how a tower is anchored. If you pour concrete, the by-laws will likely determine it's a foundation or footing and that invokes the setback. But what if you just drive a tether (like a Williams Soil Anchor) into the ground. Is that any different than a tent peg? . . . a very deep tent peg but no more obtrusive than a stake in the ground. Depending on soil type, steel cable tethers can be very effective, be installed in 30 min and cost only $50 each. These I would argue are not a foundation nor a footing and so might legally be installed up to the edge of the property line. They are removable with a backhoe.
If your tower is not visible from the road should that necessitate a height restriction? It certainly does not affect the "Vista" or view, for which some by-laws are specifically written to protect against. If by-laws were written in a balanced way then a good height restriction might take into account the need for turbine towers to be as high as possible in order to produce well. In rural settings there need not be a major issue here. Near urban centres it should be more restrictive . . but always on a case by case basis because there are many "near urban" and even "in urban" tower sites that are not obtrusive and still quite productive from 30-60 feet or more. Bottom line is: There is no blanket height limit that can apply fairly to all locations.
Some advice for Municipal Planners:
Wind turbines perform best in “Laminar Flow” air, ie air that is smooth and of consistent speed and direction, with little or no turbulence. The further above surrounding obstacles a turbine can be mounted the sooner it starts up and the longer it will run and produce. Laminar flow air is first found approximately 30 ft above obstacles and a generally accepted rule of thumb is “30ft above obstacles within 300ft of the turbine” (See CANWEA or AWEA websites). This is because once air passes over the surrounding trees there can be a 30 ft layer of turbulence above the trees and turbulence air can exists another 300-500 feet over open area (depending on wind speed) before it smoothes out again.
Since the mature trees surrounding many properties are 45-50ft, the lowest point the turbine can achieve good sustainable wind energy is on a tower of 70-75 ft hub height. Anything less would often experience significant turbulence and loss of production. A tower higher than 75ft can improve performance even more since the wind generally increases it’s speed and smoothness with height. But, above 75 ft however the cost of the tower starts to become a determining factor. Above 150ft., aviation obstruction rules may become an issue, so in general, a small wind turbine can usually be cost effective and efficient at a height of between 75-100 feet, when installed around farmland and forest areas where there are no hills or higher elevations. With the help of terrain height, a tower of 35-50 ft can often produce the same power as a 75 ft tower on flat terrain with even 20-30ft trees nearby. Local obstacles and dominant wind direction can be significant factors in selecting a tower location.
There are a whole range of other issues regarding the proper location of a tower and turbine but Small Wind turbine impacts are in no way similar to Big Wind Farms. Please see CANWEA “Small Wind is NOT Big Wind”, (it will be on the new CanWEA Small Wind website, to be launched in soon June.) I'll announce the link, to anyone who gets the FREE Wind News, as soon as it goes public. This information was presented at CanWEA Annual General Meeting, Oct 2004, and is summarized in a previous Newsletter The actual presentation is also available online. Just send an email to david@truenorthpower.com for the link to download a copy for educational purposes only.
Deciding where and how high the tower should be, to get into the best laminar flow air, is just the beginning . . . choosing the kind of tower and supplier is another. Then, how about the local by-laws and insurance . . . It's all too complicated. . . . Not really. Some Municipal Planners are now starting to get informed about Small Wind. They've hear all about Big Wind as everyone else has, but like most people, they think they should apply Big Wind solutions to small wind owners. Here are some of the tower considerations that you might run into and some ideas that might help you as well.
The choices for the small wind owner are usually pretty simple and come down to space, convenience and price. But there are still many unresolved planning issues. Some jurisdictions have height restrictions for structures. Real Estate and Provincial tax auditors will treat renewable energy systems as "Real Property" . . that is, it is part of the home or business that it is located on and like a central air conditioner, pool or inground sprinkler, it goes with the house. This means they may treat concrete pads or anchors as "Foundations" and that brings into play certain by-law restrictions. Likely, you will be required to keep 15-25 ft back from any property line for placing such anchors, but that may actually depend on how a tower is anchored. If you pour concrete, the by-laws will likely determine it's a foundation or footing and that invokes the setback. But what if you just drive a tether (like a Williams Soil Anchor) into the ground. Is that any different than a tent peg? . . . a very deep tent peg but no more obtrusive than a stake in the ground. Depending on soil type, steel cable tethers can be very effective, be installed in 30 min and cost only $50 each. These I would argue are not a foundation nor a footing and so might legally be installed up to the edge of the property line. They are removable with a backhoe.
If your tower is not visible from the road should that necessitate a height restriction? It certainly does not affect the "Vista" or view, for which some by-laws are specifically written to protect against. If by-laws were written in a balanced way then a good height restriction might take into account the need for turbine towers to be as high as possible in order to produce well. In rural settings there need not be a major issue here. Near urban centres it should be more restrictive . . but always on a case by case basis because there are many "near urban" and even "in urban" tower sites that are not obtrusive and still quite productive from 30-60 feet or more. Bottom line is: There is no blanket height limit that can apply fairly to all locations.
Some advice for Municipal Planners:
Wind turbines perform best in “Laminar Flow” air, ie air that is smooth and of consistent speed and direction, with little or no turbulence. The further above surrounding obstacles a turbine can be mounted the sooner it starts up and the longer it will run and produce. Laminar flow air is first found approximately 30 ft above obstacles and a generally accepted rule of thumb is “30ft above obstacles within 300ft of the turbine” (See CANWEA or AWEA websites). This is because once air passes over the surrounding trees there can be a 30 ft layer of turbulence above the trees and turbulence air can exists another 300-500 feet over open area (depending on wind speed) before it smoothes out again.
Since the mature trees surrounding many properties are 45-50ft, the lowest point the turbine can achieve good sustainable wind energy is on a tower of 70-75 ft hub height. Anything less would often experience significant turbulence and loss of production. A tower higher than 75ft can improve performance even more since the wind generally increases it’s speed and smoothness with height. But, above 75 ft however the cost of the tower starts to become a determining factor. Above 150ft., aviation obstruction rules may become an issue, so in general, a small wind turbine can usually be cost effective and efficient at a height of between 75-100 feet, when installed around farmland and forest areas where there are no hills or higher elevations. With the help of terrain height, a tower of 35-50 ft can often produce the same power as a 75 ft tower on flat terrain with even 20-30ft trees nearby. Local obstacles and dominant wind direction can be significant factors in selecting a tower location.
There are a whole range of other issues regarding the proper location of a tower and turbine but Small Wind turbine impacts are in no way similar to Big Wind Farms. Please see CANWEA “Small Wind is NOT Big Wind”, (it will be on the new CanWEA Small Wind website, to be launched in soon June.) I'll announce the link, to anyone who gets the FREE Wind News, as soon as it goes public. This information was presented at CanWEA Annual General Meeting, Oct 2004, and is summarized in a previous Newsletter The actual presentation is also available online. Just send an email to david@truenorthpower.com for the link to download a copy for educational purposes only.
Welcome Commander
Finally, an all-in-one controller for LAKOTA. The days of calculating resistance and circuit break selection are gone. The LAKOTA Commander is an all-in-one cabinet you can bolt on the wall and connect in literally a few minutes. Made of the Command Module (CM) and Load Equipment Module (LEM) it's space age nomenclature brings a lot of closure to several tough integration problems installers used to be faced with. What resistors do I need? what wire type . . what breaker and how do I prevent damage to the controller by other generators like battery chargers and solar PV. So many decision for the installer or owner meant they often made mistakes hooking them up or overlooked and important protection circuit. Now, with Commander you connect three wires in from the turbine and two wires out to the batteries and you're done. The only setting you may want to adjust is the diversion voltage based on which batteries you choose. See the story above on load diversion to learn more about power management .
The two analog meters (I love those analog meters) constantly show the instantaneous production in volts and amps. Multiply the two at any point and you get watts. It would be nice to have a watt meter there too I guess. Why analog and not digital meters? Aren't digital more accurate? Actually analog is more practical. It's the same reason your car does not have a digital speedometer. Anyone remember when the car makers tried that. It just takes too much brain processing to determine it's state. If you had one of those in your car chances are you probably remember getting a speeding ticket you didn't think you deserved. You have to look . . read . . then translate or interpolate those rolling characters into a number and then decide if it is within an expected or appropriate range. With analog meters your brain simply notes that the position of the needle is within or out of range, and then you may decide to study it for an exact reading. . . . much faster and much easier to observe from a distance with a quick glance, even from across the room.
LAKOTA Commander has two built-in air-heat ceramic resistors capable of dissipating up to 2 kilowatts, more than twice the rated power of LAKOTA and 50% more than the peak power of nearly 1.3 Kw. They are the safety device that can dissipate any excess energy that is not needed and cannot be stored. The most likely time to have a system failure is during bad weather when the utility power is damaged by falling trees, ice or lightning. Under these conditions, the system needs to be able to look after itself and that is done but having a controller that is "fail-safe". If a breaker opens or an inverter fails or a battery short happens you want the system to look after itself whether you are there or not.
The next generation, OB1 Commander is another step beyond safety. One of the big problems with getting the most out a mechanically simple wind turbine is that you can't optimize it's ability to extract energy from both low and high wind speeds. The power range is to large. If it is really efficient at 10-12mph then it is not very efficient at 25 mph. If it is made to be efficient at 25mph then it's production does not really start till 15-20mph. Also, without variable pitch mechanisms or other mechanical means a fixed pitch blade can only be optimized for best performance in a fairly narrow range of wind speeds (maybe 5-8mph wide). When you try to add features like blade feathering (change angle of attack) or aerodynamic breaking this adds, cost, complexity and failure modes that can lower reliability or lead to other performance problems. Generally, the simpler the better when it comes to any mechanical system and this is especially true for Small Wind.
On the other hand, complexity can easily be handled best by computers . . solid state devices that are generally much more reliable than the mechanical devices they replace. Computer chips are also re-programmable so when new ideas and new methods are introduced it sometimes is as simple as changing the program code or adding a new parameters to achieve improvements in performance. This is why the OB1 Commander was developed over 6 years ago. It electronically "watches" the power of the wind, second by second and adjusts the blade speed electromagnetically, and continuously, in order to find the "Power Sweet-Spot" where the most energy can be extracted at any given moment. That's called "Electronic Furling" and it is not a mature science yet. Which parameters should be used and what or how often they should change is a developing field of research . . . one that AEROMAG Wind Energy has pioneered since the late 1990s.
The OB1 Commander is now being installed at the FREE Wind Test Centre in Ferndale ON and is the first and only production system of it's type in the World. Prototype OB1 Commanders have been in operation virtually continuously since May 2001 and normal production is expected to being within weeks. This controller is designed to handle up to 5Kw production from 1 or 2 LAKOTA or 1.2kW of solar with an OB1 turbine (peak OB1 output is over 3.5kW). More on the OB1 in the next FREE Wind News.
Finally, an all-in-one controller for LAKOTA. The days of calculating resistance and circuit break selection are gone. The LAKOTA Commander is an all-in-one cabinet you can bolt on the wall and connect in literally a few minutes. Made of the Command Module (CM) and Load Equipment Module (LEM) it's space age nomenclature brings a lot of closure to several tough integration problems installers used to be faced with. What resistors do I need? what wire type . . what breaker and how do I prevent damage to the controller by other generators like battery chargers and solar PV. So many decision for the installer or owner meant they often made mistakes hooking them up or overlooked and important protection circuit. Now, with Commander you connect three wires in from the turbine and two wires out to the batteries and you're done. The only setting you may want to adjust is the diversion voltage based on which batteries you choose. See the story above on load diversion to learn more about power management .
The two analog meters (I love those analog meters) constantly show the instantaneous production in volts and amps. Multiply the two at any point and you get watts. It would be nice to have a watt meter there too I guess. Why analog and not digital meters? Aren't digital more accurate? Actually analog is more practical. It's the same reason your car does not have a digital speedometer. Anyone remember when the car makers tried that. It just takes too much brain processing to determine it's state. If you had one of those in your car chances are you probably remember getting a speeding ticket you didn't think you deserved. You have to look . . read . . then translate or interpolate those rolling characters into a number and then decide if it is within an expected or appropriate range. With analog meters your brain simply notes that the position of the needle is within or out of range, and then you may decide to study it for an exact reading. . . . much faster and much easier to observe from a distance with a quick glance, even from across the room.
LAKOTA Commander has two built-in air-heat ceramic resistors capable of dissipating up to 2 kilowatts, more than twice the rated power of LAKOTA and 50% more than the peak power of nearly 1.3 Kw. They are the safety device that can dissipate any excess energy that is not needed and cannot be stored. The most likely time to have a system failure is during bad weather when the utility power is damaged by falling trees, ice or lightning. Under these conditions, the system needs to be able to look after itself and that is done but having a controller that is "fail-safe". If a breaker opens or an inverter fails or a battery short happens you want the system to look after itself whether you are there or not.
The next generation, OB1 Commander is another step beyond safety. One of the big problems with getting the most out a mechanically simple wind turbine is that you can't optimize it's ability to extract energy from both low and high wind speeds. The power range is to large. If it is really efficient at 10-12mph then it is not very efficient at 25 mph. If it is made to be efficient at 25mph then it's production does not really start till 15-20mph. Also, without variable pitch mechanisms or other mechanical means a fixed pitch blade can only be optimized for best performance in a fairly narrow range of wind speeds (maybe 5-8mph wide). When you try to add features like blade feathering (change angle of attack) or aerodynamic breaking this adds, cost, complexity and failure modes that can lower reliability or lead to other performance problems. Generally, the simpler the better when it comes to any mechanical system and this is especially true for Small Wind.
On the other hand, complexity can easily be handled best by computers . . solid state devices that are generally much more reliable than the mechanical devices they replace. Computer chips are also re-programmable so when new ideas and new methods are introduced it sometimes is as simple as changing the program code or adding a new parameters to achieve improvements in performance. This is why the OB1 Commander was developed over 6 years ago. It electronically "watches" the power of the wind, second by second and adjusts the blade speed electromagnetically, and continuously, in order to find the "Power Sweet-Spot" where the most energy can be extracted at any given moment. That's called "Electronic Furling" and it is not a mature science yet. Which parameters should be used and what or how often they should change is a developing field of research . . . one that AEROMAG Wind Energy has pioneered since the late 1990s.
The OB1 Commander is now being installed at the FREE Wind Test Centre in Ferndale ON and is the first and only production system of it's type in the World. Prototype OB1 Commanders have been in operation virtually continuously since May 2001 and normal production is expected to being within weeks. This controller is designed to handle up to 5Kw production from 1 or 2 LAKOTA or 1.2kW of solar with an OB1 turbine (peak OB1 output is over 3.5kW). More on the OB1 in the next FREE Wind News.