On a Rutland Farm, Cows Don’t Just Moo, They Make Power!

On a Rutland Farm, Cows Don’t Just Moo, They Make Power!

By: Amanda Cedrone
09/09/2011

Bessie, it turns out, has more to contribute than just milk and the occasional moo.

In Rutland, cows are helping to produce enough electricity to power 300 homes.

The Jordan Dairy Farm now houses an anaerobic digester, which takes cow manure and food scraps, and cooks it to create methane gas, said Amy Zorich, spokeswomann for National Grid.

“Anaerobic digesters fundamentally improve the long term financial health and viability of family dairy operations,” said Mel Kurtz, president of quasar energy group, which built the digester. “For a multigenerational farming operation like Jordan Dairy, innovation and progressive thinking are the means by which they can position themselves for growth and prosperity in an ever changing world.”

The methane gas powers a generator, which sends energy back to National Grid. Each cow provides enough energy to power a Massachusetts home for more than a year.

“That is clean energy that is renewable and from a local source,” Zorich said.

National Grid and AGreen Energy, a consortium of five Massachusetts dairy farms, announced the development Thursday.

Google Details, and Defends, Its Use of Electricity

Google Details, and Defends, Its Use of Electricity

A Google data center in Hamina, Finland, is housed in a former paper mill.

By: JAMES GLANZ
September 8, 2011

Google disclosed Thursday that it continuously uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, but it says that in doing so, it also makes the planet greener.

Every time a person runs a Google search, watches a YouTube video or sends a message through Gmail, the company’s data centers full of computers use electricity. Those data centers around the world continuously draw almost 260 million watts — about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant.

Up to now, the company has kept statistics about its energy use secret. Industry analysts speculate it was because the information was embarrassing and would also give competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations.

While the electricity figures may seem large, the company asserts that the world is a greener place because people use less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, drives to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said in an interview.

Google says that people conduct over a billion searches a day and numerous other downloads and queries. But when it calculates that average energy consumption on the level of a typical user the amount is small, about 180 watt-hours a month, or the equivalent of running a 60-watt light bulb for three hours. The overall electricity figure includes all Google operations worldwide, like the energy required to run its campuses and office parks, Mr. Hoelzle added. Data centers, however, account for most of it.

For years, Google maintained a wall of silence worthy of a government security agency on how much electricity the company used — a silence that experts speculated was used to cloak how quickly it was outstripping the competition in the scale and efficiency of its data centers.

The electricity figures are no longer seen as a key to decoding the company’s operations, Mr. Hoelzle said.

Unlike many data-driven companies, Google designs and builds most of its data centers from scratch, down to the servers using energy-saving chips and software.

Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, applauded Google for releasing the figures but cautioned that despite the advent of increasingly powerful and energy-efficient computing tools, electricity use at data centers was still rising because every major corporation now relied on them. He said the figures did not include the electricity drawn by the personal computers, tablets and iPhones that use information from Google.

“When we hit the Google search button,” Mr. Horowitz said, “it’s not for free.”

Google also estimated that its total carbon emissions for 2010 were just under 1.5 million metric tons, with most of that attributable to carbon fuels that provide electricity for the data centers. In part because of special arrangements the company has made to buy electricity from wind farms, Google says that 25 percent of its energy was supplied by renewable fuels in 2010, and estimates that figure will reach 30 percent in 2011.

Google also released an estimate that an average search uses 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, a figure that may be difficult to understand intuitively. But when multiplied by Google’s estimate of more than a billion searches a day, the figure yields a somewhat surprising result: about 12.5 million watts of Google’s 260-million-watt total can be accounted for by searches, the company’s bread-and-butter service.

The rest is used by Google’s other services, including YouTube, whose power consumption the company also depicted as very small.

The announcement is likely to spur further competition in an industry where every company is already striving to appear “greener” than the next, said Dennis Symanski, a senior data center project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization. At professional conferences on the topic, Mr. Symanski said, “they’re all clamoring to get on the podium to claim that they have the most efficient data center.”



From Modest Beginnings

Powering the Way to a More Responsible Future 

                           

In 1987, Southwest Windpower was created with a fairly modest goal: to create a small, reliable, battery-charging wind generator to complement solar energy systems powering rural areas of the world.

To realize their vision, David Calley and Andy Kruse, the company founders, modified a Ford alternator to create their first wind generator, the Windseeker®.

Fast forward seven years, and the company introduced its AIR series turbines, which were produced and shipped to more than 100 countries and became the best-selling battery-charging wind turbine in history.

From Modest Beginnings to Becoming a Worldwide Leader in Personal Wind Solutions:

Today, Southwest Windpower continues in its pursuit of innovation.

From our early beginnings creating wind energy systems for rural areas served by power companies, to our growing production of Skystream systems to reduce dependence on fossil fuels for those on the power grid, we’re continually moving forward to push the boundaries of clean, efficient, sustainable wind energy use in every corner of the world.

Think there’s nothing you can do to decrease your family’s environmental impact on the world? As of December 19, 2010 Southwest Windpower Skystream customers have generated enough wind energy to offset about 15,300 tons of carbon emissions! That’s the equivalent of 37,820,278 miles not driven in a car because our customers used clean wind energy instead of utility-generated energy.

Air Breeze and the Seas

Set Sail With Personal Wind Power

The wind knows no bounds, but does carry unique characteristics depending on its geographic location. In our series "Where You Are," we will discuss wind patterns and the effectiveness of personal wind turbines in regions across the globe.

Do you travel the high seas more than you stand on solid ground? Then you know first hand that off-grid, reliable power is essential to make life cruising, sailing or boating on the water as comfortable as on land. Our AIR Breeze model used alone can power lights, radios, computers, tools, appliances, autopilots, navigational devices, communications gear – pretty much all of life’s essentials on land or water.

Used in a hybrid system complementing solar photovoltaic, AIR Breeze can help keep your batteries charged year-round for an even more reliable energy supply than solar alone. Yachting Monthly recently recommended the AIR Breeze as the top high power wind turbine choice for boats among those on the market.

When the wind blows, AIR Breeze’s spinning blades create electricity that you can use on the spot. If the AIR Breeze is creating more energy than your needs at any time, the electricity is stored in batteries for later use. Most importantly, the AIR Breeze provides clean energy, keeping the seas you sail on, or the land you live on, pristine and navigable for all of your future endeavors. Plus, with no monthly utility bill, you are on vacation from electricity payments year round!

What Makes AIR Breeze Go?

•A microprocessor-based smart internal regulator with peak-power tracking provides improved performance, optimized energy output, improved battery charging and reduced sound

•Three durable composite blades for increased reliability and durability with less sound

•A brushless neodymium alternator for more efficient energy delivery with no maintenance

•Only two moving parts make AIR Breeze more reliable, with less need for maintenance

Navy Base Salutes Three New Skystream Wind Turbines

Navy Base Salutes Three New Skystream Wind Turbines


The Joint Expeditionary Base at Little Creek-Fort Story, Va., has three new Skystream 3.7 personal wind turbines standing at attention on the base grounds.

The turbines, installed on Earth Day, are furthering the Navy’s goal of having 50 percent of installations with net zero energy consumption by 2020. Since 2003 the base has reduced its energy consumption by 20 percent.

Two of the turbines will supplement power to maintenance facilities associated with the base’s golf course, while the third will supplement power to the Naval Special Warfare training facility.

Harvesting Organic Produce and Clean Energy

Harvesting Organic Produce and Clean Energy

It has been a good two years for the Guthrie family. Founders of Growing Harmony Farms, Gary and Nancy Guthrie run a small but productive community-supported agriculture (CSA) program in Nevada, Iowa.

Cultivating on less than two acres of land, the couple harvested nearly 21,000 pounds of fresh produce this past season. The produce is distributed among the 74 members of the CSA with extra carrots, garlic and sweet potatoes headed to local restaurants and natural food stores.

It has been a good two years for their Skystream 3.7 as well. In May, 26 months since its installation, the turbine's total electricity output exceeded 10,000 kWh and it is currently averaging about 400 kWh per month. Overall, the Skystream has offset nearly 90 percent of the Guthrie’s home electricity usage.

Gary notes, “In April we had a record breaking production of over 700 kWh of electricity. A few more months like that this year and we will be over the top.”

The Guthries have saved more than $1500 off their electricity bill, paying little more than their utility connection fee each month. With electricity rates expected to rise over the next several years, Gary anticipates that his actual dollar savings will increase substantially.

When the Guthries first installed their Skystream many folks asked them if the sound created by the spinning turbines bothered them. Gary says he hardly notices it.

“These days I am out in the garden quite a lot. There are days that I appreciate the quiet and days when I appreciate hearing her sing. The only time it bothers me is when she is spinning but going too slow to produce electricity,” Gary says.

The Northernmost Wind Turbine in the World

The Northernmost Wind Turbine in the World

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operates a cabin at Galbraith Lake, Alaska, that is well above the Arctic Circle, north of the Brooks Range, and near the Gates of the Arctic National Park. Because of the remote location, a small wind turbine provides on-site power.

Patrick Boonstra of Ahtna Engineering Services was involved in the installation of the Southwest Windpower Whisper wind turbine:

“We removed the existing Air 403 turbine that had been damaged and left inoperable,” Boonstra noted. “A blade was missing, and it had a cracked hub. The Arctic isn't kind to machines. All of the digging for the underground conduit was performed with a trusty 60-pound Bosch jackhammer. Shovels are of little use at this time of the year in the tundra. We installed a 30-foot tower kit and the Whisper 200 24-volt turbine from Southwest Windpower. Our Anchorage-based dealer, Susitna Energy Systems, provided us with great support and the turbine and tower kit.”

Here are a few pictures of the installation site. Based on the GPS coordinates – 68 28 .683' N 149 29 41.68' W – it is possible that this may be the northernmost small wind turbine in operation in the world.

Northern California Festival Sets Record in the Wind

The Berkeley Kite Festival in Northern California has been capturing the power of the wind since 1986. In 2010 they set a world record for the most octopus kites in the air at the same time. Check out the video of the event below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLKN8ZazXIo&feature=player_embedded