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Wind Power Plant
A wind power plant also known as a wind farm consists of multiple wind turbines spread over a usually quite large area. The location of these wind energy plants is carefully selected and more than just a windy place is required. Generally, wind speed increases with altitude, so a common location for installing windmills is on hills. Shorelines and open fields are other common installation places for these renewable power plants.
One of the big challenges with wind power is its variability of supply; it changes from hour to hour, day to day and even yearly. This presents a problem in incorporating large amounts of wind power into an energy grid system because there have to be a balance between supply and demand. This is a reason that makes placement of renewable power plants very important to reduce intermittency and variability. In the long run though, this technology should have no problem in delivering a stable stream of power. The nature of this resource is variable and sometimes produces less and sometimes more, still wind power is a strong overall deliverer and a good investment if implemented properly.
Hybrid Solar - Wind Power Plant
Hybrid plants are renewable energy plants that is designed to utilize more than one sustainable resource e.g. sun radiation and wind. Atlantic City, NJ has the biggest Hybrid Plant in the United States; it is powering their wastewater treatment system. The Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) have developed and implemented this Hybrid Solar - Wind Power plant which is one of the largest hybrid renewable power plants in the world. By capturing energy from the sun and the Atlantic coast winds, rather than burning fossil fuels the hybrid plant will produce enough energy to power the equivalent of approximately 3800 homes and removes the need for an estimated 24,000 barrels of oil per year.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Office of Clean Energy supports this project with $1.9 million, a significant amount of the total $3.25 million. An energy saving of $135,000 annually is expected from the hybrid solar - wind energy plant.
Some Well Known Power Plants
Zhangbei Guotou Wind Power Plant began installing its first batch of 30 General Electric wind turbines in 2006 and will install another 60 built by the Spanish company Energia Hidroelectrica de Navarra, SA (EHN) in 2007.
The wind farm located approximately 200 kilometers (120 miles) northwest of Beijing, will have 144 megawatts of installed capacity. The power will be pumped into the northern China grid, some of which will be used to help realize Beijing's pledge to use 20 percent renewable energy at the 2008 Olympic Games, Yang said.
The Peetz Table Wind Power Plant is the second commercial wind farm in Colorado. The wind farm is located near Peetz in northeastern Colorado and can generate up to 30 megawatts of electricity for Xcel Energy's
The wind farm at Peetz has 33 wind turbines - the first of their kind for a commercial operation in the U.S. NEG Micon manufactures the turbines and each can generate up to 900 kilowatts. Each unit consists of a 170-foot diameter rotor and a turbine, set on a 237-foot high tower. The total weight of each unit, including rotors, turbine and tower, is 164 tons.
Power Plant Aesthetics
Even though renewable electric plants comes with many environmental benefits, people living near these plants often find them visually intrusive and noisy, which creates resistance of land-based wind farms establishment in many places. Later on improvements have been made to blade design for noise reduction, with that problem solved, still some people living nearby power plants have complain regarding the shadow-flicker caused by the turbine blades when rotating. There is no solution to this problem at the moment.
One could of course install all the power plants off-shore and get rid of the complaints. But economically it's not always feasible and the challenges when it comes to on-shore power transmission with more complex installation processes it makes off-shore power plants less attractive in the eyes of investors.