Renewable resource wind energy

Other sources of energy worth noting are the extensive wind farms, solar projects, and related emerging unconventional technologies. These renewable resources provide only small quantities of energy to the U.S. economy as of this writing. 

Wind energy economics focuses on the fuel-saving aspects of this renewable resource, but capacity benefits and pollution reduction are important considerations as well. The capital costs are significant, hut there is no annual fuel cost as is associated with fossil fuel technologies. Thus, wind energy has been used... 

Grubb, M. and Meyer, N. (1993). Wind energy resources, systems and regional strategies. In Renewable energy. Sources for Fuels and Electricity, ed. Johansson, T. B., Kelly, H., Reddy, A. K. N. and Williams, R. H. Washington, DC Island Press, pp. 157-212. 

Much of the world s richest wind and other renewable resources are stranded. It is necessary to build many large, new transmission systems to bring this energy to distant markets. For example the wind resources in the Russian Far East and the... 

Renewable energy resources have special attractive attributes. Renewable resources are more modular, even when developed in a centralized situation. Most biomass and geothermal plants are less than 100 MW. Wind turbines are physically separated and thus stand as separate risks. Fifty MW of wind turbines in one wind farm cover a large area. The loss of a single turbine has minimal impact on the system, and there is no fuel supply delivery system risk. 

On the other hand, some renewable resources like PV systems remain costly when compared to traditional energy. Flowever, the cost gap is expected to continue to decrease, and, to the extent deployment is accelerated, the gap should close even faster taking into account new approaches as for instance PV/thermal combined systems. Other renewable resources, such as biomass, small hydro, and wind can successfully compete with traditional resources. This is especially true if value (or cost) is assigned to the security attributes. 

As soon as a decision has been made on the type of renewable energy technology to be introduced in the overall system, the third step is to find data on the natural resource (wind speed data, solar irradiance data, biomass data, etc.). Meteorological data recorded onsite is the first priority, but if such a solution is not possible, the designer should use time series of meteorological data, which can be drawn from various databases such as NASA (2005) and the National Observatory of Athens (2007). 

Development of other non-fossil fuel energy sources, such as geothermal, solar, wind and ocean thermal systems will undoubtedly broaden the scope of application for electrolytic hydrogen — perhaps not because they represent a source of low cost electrical power, but because it represents the most attractive means for providing a transportable fuel from these renewable resources. 

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