Abstract: Energy from Wind--Old Idea with New Potential

Michael Dubey

Wind energy is a significant alternate resource for generating electricity, heat, or hydrogen fuel. If exploited to its full potential in the United States, wind can provide almost 19% of the electrical energy demand forecast for the year 1995. That is equivalent to conserving 2.1 billion bbl of oil. Further, wind-energy conversion to electricity is nonpolluting, environmentally inert, and nonhazardous, and wind-energy is continually replenished.

The most likely opportunity for wide-scale exploitation is in the generation of electricity by utilities, as a supplement to fossil steam and hydroelectric power plants. Storage for satisfying peak demand or for periods without wind is provided by the unburned fuel or retained water conserved whenever the wind turbines operate. Thus, the economic tradeoff between the cost of fuel necessary to produce a kilowatt hour of energy and the cost of owning and operating a wind-turbine generator allocated per kilowatt determines whether or not wind energy is competitive. In many regions of the United States and the world, fuel costs already have escalated beyond the equivalent energy cost of wind, and if they should continue to rise as they have since 1973, it is likely to make acceptance of w nd energy or other alternate energy sources more imperative.

In the Circum-Pacific community, wind turbines can be used effectively to supplement diesel, or gas-turbine power plants to conserve fuel, or to operate synergetically with hydroelectric facilities as a totally independent self-sufficient energy supply.

Recent studies of wind data show an abundance of good wind sites. The technology for developing large wind turbines, with rotor diameters of 80 m or more, is well in hand. What is needed to trigger the availability of commercial systems, is the materialization of market demand and a commitment from public and private utilities, communities, and government agencies to acquire these systems.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90962©1978 AAPG 2nd Circum-Pacific Energy and Minerals Resource Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii