Word: windes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...answer is wind power, the technology that has become synonymous with going green. Companies that started out small, like Denmark's Vestas and India's Suzlon Energy, have become multinational giants selling steel and fiberglass wind turbines; even blue chippers like General Electric have identified wind power as a major revenue source for the future, while the construction and installation of wind turbines will employ workers here in the U.S. Investing in wind power, said President Barack Obama at a turbine factory in Iowa on Earth Day, "is a win-win. It's good for the environment; it's great...
...green talk and growth in wind power - it accounted for 42% of all new electricity generation added to the U.S. grid last year - wind still makes up less than 3% of America's total electricity generation. Even at current rates of growth, that figure is unlikely to change soon. The question is, Will wind ever produce enough power to satisfy America's energy needs? (Watch TIME's video "The Truth About Wind Power...
...study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) says yes. A team led by Michael McElroy at Harvard University assessed the global capacity for wind power - the total amount of sheer energy that's being carried on the breeze - and found that current technology could harness enough power to supply more than 40 times the planet's present-day levels of electricity consumption. For the U.S., there's enough wind concentrated in the Midwest prairie states to supply as much as 16 times the current American demand for electricity. The energy is there, on the breeze...
...Wind-power estimates have been made before, but the PNAS team drilled them down to greater detail. Using a simulation of global wind fields from NASA's Goddard Earth Observing System Data Assimilation System - a network of complex computer systems used to simulate and predict meteorology - McElroy and his colleagues could map the distribution of wind resources around the globe, then calculate how much electricity could be produced by tapping those breezes with current turbines, which can generate about 2.5 megawatts on land, and larger turbines that can generate 3.6 megawatts offshore. (Offshore winds tend to be stronger and more...
...results show that there's more than enough wind to go around, and not just in breezy, big countries like the U.S. Even land-limited Japan can produce more than three times its current electricity consumption with wind power, provided it taps offshore wind. The problem isn't supply but distribution: in the U.S. and elsewhere, some of the richest wind resources tend to be far from the densely populated coastal areas that need the most electricity. Another problem is intermittency - even in Chicago, there are days when the wind doesn't below. But both those hurdles can be sidestepped...