User:Teratornis/Energy

This user subpage contains notes to organize my edits to articles relating to energy.

Welcome
I invite comments from other Wikipedians. Please comment on the talk page. I have it on my watchlist. If you find it easier to comment on this page, be my guest, but I will usually move such comments onto the talk page after I take them into account on this page.

This page illustrates how I search for references using templates such as Google and Google scholar cite. These templates allow me to record my actual searches, so other users can verify the results, and (possibly) learn to use the same tools. Everything we learn about Wikipedia comes from studying the work of other Wikipedia users. I am grateful to all the Wikipedia users from whose work I have learned. On this page I document some of my work in more detail than I can put into edit summaries and talk page comments. If you find anything useful here, consider paying it forward by documenting some of your own work for others to study. Maybe you will teach me something new.

I have lots of to-do items on this page that I may not get to soon. If you find anything you'd like to do now, feel free to do it. You can tell me what you did, or just let me find out that you did, when I get around to checking whether I still need to do that task. Also, feel free to steal any ideas you can apply in ways I did not think of.

I date most of my entries, but I don't always get around to updating my notes after I complete a task. Not many people besides me look at this page.

Peak oil
I created a Peak oil navigation template, and I added it to all the articles it links to, and a few more.

Out of Gas
06:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC): to-do: write an article about David Goodstein's book: Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil. I checked out a copy of the book from the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. See: WP:BK and WikiProject Books.

23:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC): several other users created the article. I would like to add a detailed chapter by chapter synopsis, with links to all the topics Goodstein mentions which have Wikipedia articles. That would be a lot of links. Are we allowed to do that? See some other nonfiction book articles that have synopses:
 * Guns, Germs, and Steel
 * The God Delusion
 * God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything - this contains a detailed synopsis of chapters 1-8. That is a model for what I can do.
 * The End of Faith

I'll make my synopsis in User:Teratornis/Sandbox3.

Google Books has some useful information about this book:
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=5dRVAsFwFi0C

National Geographic
National Geographic Magazine has run several articles that mention peak oil. I vaguely recall at least one article in National Geographic from the 1970s or 1980s, which I believe had a large illustration of Hubbert's curve. I think that may have been the first time I ever saw Hubbert's curve. I should try to find that article.

The June 2008 issue of National Geographic has another article about peak oil. I mentioned it in a Help desk answer: Here is the citation:
 * Help desk (permanent link) (Help_desk/Archives/2008 May 17 - the eventual archive link)

Peak oil user pages
05:28, 18 May 2008 (UTC): I've run across several user subpages about peak oil. Search for them systematically, using one of my searches from Help desk searches:

User:Americanus/Peak Oil People
17:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC): I ran across the page: User:Americanus/Peak Oil People when I. I left some suggestions for the author at: User talk:Americanus (permanent link). It might be nice to promote that page to a list in article space. However, it looks like that user has not recently been active, so he or she might not see my suggestions soon.

Costs of energy in different forms
05:28, 18 May 2008 (UTC): the oil price increases since 2003 have mixed up the costs of energy from different sources. Since oil has increased in price more than six times from its 2003 low, and almost ten times since its late 1990s low, petroleum and refined petroleum products are now getting to be fairly expensive sources of energy. Make a table showing the cost and energy equivalence for several forms of energy. This is relevant for determining when various alternatives become economical for various applications. For example, right now the cost of energy in the form of retail motor gasoline is considerably higher than the cost of energy in the form of retail electricity, at least where I live (where electricity comes mostly from coal-fired plants - yuck).

The following table compares several sources of energy, stating a typical cost for each one. (Since most sources of energy vary widely in price, I will extend the table to list several rows for each source, to show the effect of price variations.) For each source of energy, each row shows a sample cost for the unit which people use to measure that source, the energy density for that unit, the equivalent cost if we could convert that source to motor gasoline at 100% efficiency, and the equivalent cost if we could convert that source to electricity at 100% efficiency. (Of course because of Carnot efficiency we can only convert about 30% of the heat of combustion of a fuel into electricity in a thermal power plant. But note, using electricity to charge batteries in an electric vehicle leads to a much lower vehicle fuel cost than the hypothetical conversion of electricity into gasoline, because a gasoline engine is only between 15% and 30% efficient, whereas the combination of batteries and electric motors can be between 80% and 90% efficient, I believe. Thus the fuel cost for an electric vehicle would be only about a third of the equivalent cost to generate a gallon of gasoline from electricity. In effect, the comparison is between the energy content of the coal that feeds the power plant vs. the refined gasoline that feeds the internal combustion engine in an automobile. This compares well with the figures in Electric car, which also show a much lower fuel cost per mile for electric cars compared to internal combustion engine vehicles.)

Conversion factors:


 * 1 kWh = 3.6 MJ
 * 1 US gallon = 3.785411784 litres (exactly)

Conversions using Google Calculator (one must use  to represent the equal sign in the Google template):


 * Coal:


 * Natural gas:


 * Petroleum:
 * $/MJ:
 * $/kWh:
 * $/gallon gasoline equivalent:


 * Gasoline:
 * $/MJ:
 * $/kWh:


 * Electricity:
 * $/gallon gasoline equivalent:

Some comparisons that would be useful to make:


 * The fuel cost per mile (or per km) for electric cars or electric scooters versus their internal combustion engined equivalents.
 * How high the price of natural gas must rise to make renewable energy such as wind power a cheaper source of hydrogen (for example, for Ammonia production). (See below.)

References:
 * a quick-reference list of conversion factors used by the Bioenergy Feedstock Development Programs at ORNL
 * Barrel of oil equivalent
 * Energy density
 * Heat of combustion
 * Tesla Roadster
 * Electric car

Vincent Ellis McKelvey
It might be interesting to write a biography of Vincent Ellis McKelvey (already red linked from: WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/American politicians/Executive branch). Apparently he led the opposition to M. King Hubbert, and lost his job by betting against Peak oil. His saga may be an object lesson for the peak oil deniers of today, who still seem to dominate the Energy Information Administration. See this excerpt:

The US Secretary of the Interior at the time, Stewart Udall, later apologised for having helped lull Americans into a "dangerous overconfidence" by accepting the advice of the US Geological Survey so unquestioningly. A long-serving US Geological Survey director who had led the campaign against Hubbert, V E McKelvey, was forced to resign in 1977.
 * http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/what-they-dont-want-you-to-know-about-the-coming-oil-crisis-523830.html

22:22, 25 June 2009 (UTC): someone else started the Vincent Ellis McKelvey article, but it currently reads somewhat like a puff piece, without explaining why McKelvey resigned. See if I can find reliable sources for more details about McKelvey's campaign against M. King Hubbert, and then work them in.

Anoxic event
19:54, 21 June 2008 (UTC): the Anoxic event article doesn't mention the possibility of humans triggering the next one, by burning a sufficient quantify of fossil fuel in a sufficiently short time. In keeping with Build the web, look for ways to link to and from the Anoxic event article and articles pertaining to Peak oil and Global warming.


 * Special:Whatlinkshere/Anoxic event
 * Effects of global warming links to Anoxic event

Price of crude oil and price of gasoline
Most people notice the price of motor fuel more than the price of crude oil, since few people consume crude oil directly. That's part of why the Oil price increases since 2003 did not become very noticeable until recently, when the price of motor gasoline began rising faster. This reference explains the relationship:



Jason Grumet
19:29, 29 June 2008 (UTC): Jason Grumet is Barack Hussein Obama's senior energy advisor, and director of the National Commission on Energy Policy (which needs an article, by the way). If Obama wins the upcoming election, Grumet may become one of the most powerful figures in energy. Therefore he would certainly be notable enough for a Wikipedia article, and he probably is notable enough already. Learn more about Jason Grumet:


 * finds 10,200 hits
 * finds just 2 hits

For example:


 * Oil Shockwave
 * Oil Shockwave

08:54, 17 October 2008 (UTC): Jason has been active recently:
 * http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1842740844&channel=1155152715 - Obama Representative Jason Grumet in Energy Debate, Oct 7, 2008
 * Unfortunately the above video has poor quality, apparently shot from a hand-held camera using ambient mic pickup, so the speaker is barely intelligible.

T. Boone Pickens, Jr.

 * - Google finds a number of popular press accounts.
 * "Pickens Plan" - Google scholar cite finds nothing that appeared in the year 2008.

Peak oil discussion at Richard Dawkins Forum
There is an interesting discussion thread about peak oil on the Richard Dawkins Forum. I've posted to it a fair amount. Some postings in the thread contain links to reliable sources for energy-related articles on Wikipedia.
 * Peak oil thread, first page

Food security
08:16, 17 October 2008 (UTC): the peak oil literature raises many alarms about the degree to which industrial agriculture and intensive farming depend on the exhaustible resources of petroleum and natural gas. The basic facts are that world population has boomed as a result of man's increasing drawdown of fossil fuel to boost agricultural productivity, fueling the green revolution, and to ship food around the world. The result is that the present world population is much larger than could survive on the style of agriculture and local self-sufficiency that was common before the petroleum age. Thus a consequence of post-peak oil declines in petroleum extraction could be starvation on an unprecedented scale. The world's poorest billion people live on about $1/day or less, and the next poorest two billion on $3/day or less. Rising costs for petroleum and natural gas have contributed strongly to the 2007–2008 world food price crisis, since the cost of food represents, to a large degree, the cost of the fossil fuel to produce the food. To make matters worse, world population continues to grow at about 77 million new people per year, with most of the growth among the poorest people. Poor people consume the least amount of fossil fuel per capita, but a large proportion of what they do consume is in the form of fossil fuel inputs to the food they eat. Since the poorest people may spend most of their income on a subsistence diet, they are highly vulnerable to being priced out of adequate food as prices for fossil fuels rise.

Even wealthy nations are not immune to food risk, should the supply of fossil fuel decrease faster than societies can adapt. Cuba's Special Period may be a model for what the rest of the developed world may experience in a future of increasingly scarce petroleum.

Unfortunately for clarity, it's easier for people to call attention to a problem than to analyze it competently. Modern food production does depend heavily on the fossil fuels first in line to become scarce. However, this only spells doom if nothing else can substitute for these fossil fuels inputs quickly enough. Thus we need to know what substitutes are available, how much they cost, and how fast people can scale them up.

Renewable ammonia
One very large fossil fuel input to agriculture is in the form of natural gas to produce hydrogen via steam reforming, which then feeds the Haber process to create ammonia for fertilizer. I.e., natural gas provides the energy for nitrogen fixation. The straightforward way to make this process sustainable is to use renewable energy to generate electricity to generate hydrogen from electrolysis of water. (In a hypothetical hydrogen economy, this would equate to diverting some of the hydrogen from use as an energy carrier to a feedstock, much as some of natural gas and petroleum go to feedstock use today.) Thus the exhaustion of natural gas need not spell doom as long as enough electricity is available from other sources. However, the cost of ammonia will probably be higher. Some quick notes and links to organize later:


 * Ammonia production - a brief section I added on March 23, 2008. My notes were somewhat preliminary because at the time I was only aware of Iceland's small production of renewable ammonia.
 * - Bradley has a section that discusses the economics of generating ammonia from wind power, with calculations to show the cost equivalence between natural gas and electricity (that is, the prices for the two commodities that make them equivalent on cost for generating ammonia).
 * Norsk Hydro - the company made renewable ammonia for years, until abundant supplies of cheap natural gas provided a (temporarily) cheaper source for hydrogen.
 * Vemork - a dam and hydroelectric power station built by Norsk Hydro which produced hydrogen by electrolysis from 1911 to 1971. Ironically, it ceased hydrogen production at almost the same time that U.S. oil production was peaking, which humbled the many critics of M. King Hubbert, who had predicted the timing of the peak correctly back in 1956 to widespread ridicule. This was also just before the 1973 oil crisis raised awareness of fossil-fuel dependency and the need to develop renewable energy.
 * Pickens Plan - T. Boone Pickens wants to expand the use of compressed natural gas to power transportation in the U.S., as a way to cut U.S. oil imports more quickly than plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles seem likely to. Since natural gas costs about half as much as the energy equivalent in gasoline or diesel fuel, it seems almost inevitable that the free market will begin diverting natural gas to transportation, putting pressure on natural gas prices. Thus an indirect way to free up more natural gas for transportation would be to take it out of ammonia production. In other words, you can either power transportation directly with electricity, or power it indirectly with electricity by using electricity to free up natural gas. The choice will obviously depend on how fast battery technology progresses.

It would be interesting to expand the sustainable ammonia production section I started with more of the history of Norsk Hydro's ammonia production, and coverage of Bradley's cost analysis.

George Monbiot interviews Fatih Birol
09:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC): George Monbiot interviews Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency in this video from the Guardian UK: The video is interesting. Monbiot mildly grills Birol over the large (negative) change in the IEA's projections of future oil supplies. Birol dodges the worst pretty deftly, without really addressing Monbiot's point, namely that governments around the world had been basing their plans on IEA projections, and now the IEA is saying there won't be as much oil in the future as it was predicting as recently as one year earlier.
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/dec/15/fatih-birol-george-monbiot

Michael Klare
07:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC): the Michael Klare article does not do this author justice. I watched Blood and Oil on YouTube, a documentary featuring Michael Klare, which details the history of U.S. military dealings with Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, dating back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.


 * (uploader claims fair use)
 * (uploader claims fair use)

Related articles:


 * Truman Doctrine
 * Eisenhower Doctrine
 * Carter Doctrine
 * United States Presidential doctrines
 * Energy policy of the United States
 * Energy Task Force
 * CENTCOM
 * Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia - USS Quincy (CA-71)

To-do: get this book and write an article about it:
 * Google Books link - shows a partial preview of the book's contents.
 * Energy Victory - a book with overlapping content, but from a somewhat more neoconservative perspective.
 * See my related notes in the section: above.
 * See my related notes in the section: above.

Review WikiProject Books about how to write book articles. Study examples of featured articles about books and films: Start a subpage at: and then move it to the article space after I develop it.
 * WP:FA
 * WP:FA
 * User:Teratornis/Blood and Oil

08:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC): I'm poking away at it, a little at a time. It's interesting that Wikipedia has articles about seemingly every person, place, or thing mentioned in the book, and most of what Wikipedia has about these topics appears to agree with Klare's synthesis. A book article on Wikipedia can add a lot of value to a book, simply by linking to many things the book mentions.

16:42, 24 April 2009 (UTC): Klare cites the National Defense Council Foundation which has some figures on the true cost of U.S. oil imports.
 * http://www.iags.org/n1030034.htm - NDCF report: the hidden cost of imported oil

20:48, 24 April 2009 (UTC): When citing a book multiple times, here are some tips I saw on the Help desk:


 * Footnotes
 * Citing sources
 * Rp - a template (the name of which stands for "reference pages") for appending Harvard referencing-style page numbers to Cite.php-generated inline reference citations. It is presently the only solution for the problem of an article with a source that you want to cite many, many times, at numerous different pages, from within a single article.
 * To-do: look for some featured articles that use this template.
 * A counterexample is the God Is Not Great article, which uses multiple, manually-formatted, ad hoc page number references.

16:54, 19 June 2009 (UTC): consider making a Timeline of U.S. military involvement the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. See Lists of timelines for examples.

Transportation dependency on oil
19:01, 24 March 2009 (UTC): several articles that discuss "energy" do not clearly describe the special (and as of 2009, currently irreplaceable at scale) role of petroleum in powering transportation. While petroleum accounts for "only" 40% of U.S. energy consumption, it supplies the fuel for approximately 97% of transportation in the U.S. Transportation is critical to nearly every sector of a modern economy, which depends on the ability to move goods and people in large volumes quickly. It is misleading to lump petroleum in with "energy," because while that makes sense from a simple First law of thermodynamics equivalence between work and heat, it overlooks the practical engineering differences between an energy carrier which is conveniently portable, and other sources of energy which people have to consume in fixed locations. For example, electricity moves conveniently through wires, but available methods for storing electrical energy have very low energy densities compared to liquid fuels from petroleum. This restricts most electricity consumption to locations near electrical outlets, or to electric trains or buses that can run from overhead lines on fixed routes.

Determine the best way to add this type of clarification to the sections which at the moment do not explain it well, if at all:
 * United States oil politics - the lead section summarizes America's petroleum dependence in terms of overall energy, but does not mention the critical dependence in the transport sector.
 * Energy in the United States - doesn't do the best job either.
 * Peak oil - does better, but still doesn't highlight the extreme dependency among autonomous road vehicles.

Find the articles, if any, which explain this dependency. I'm pretty sure I have seen some.
 * Ethanol fuel in Brazil - mentions the U.S. ethanol industry which is small relative to overall gasoline consumption.
 * - this finds several more articles to review in connection with how they portray transportation in relation to petroleum.

I've heard Matthew Simmons say "Oil is transportation" in some of his videos. Find a reliable source for this quote.

Here's a source that predicts the U.S. will take eight years to get to one million battery-electric vehicles, and 35 years for the world to "fully embrace" electric vehicles:



"Luckily for the industry, the switch to electric cars is expected to be gradual. Mark Duvall of the Electric Power Research Institute, a research outfit for the electric utility industry, says having 1 million on U.S. roads in eight years is an achievable goal. Just last week, Volkswagen CEO Stefan Jacoby estimated in a speech at UCLA that it could take 35 years for the world to fully embrace electric vehicles."

The slow transition to electric vehicles might be "lucky" for the industry, but it sounds catastrophic for U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The U.S. is on pace to have virtually no domestic oil left in 35 years. In the meantime, U.S. population is growing faster than in most if not all the other developed countries.

See my additional notes in below.

Petroleum in the United States
07:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC): Until last year there was no Petroleum in the United States article, which was odd considering that the US is the world's largest oil consumer and importer, and (as of 2010) still the third largest producer. The article has some empty or sparse sections someone could expand. I added a Commonscat to link from the article to Commons:Category:Petroleum in the United States for some related media already on Commons.

The article says nothing about greenhouse gas emissions at the moment. See Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States and the USEPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

Natural gas in the United States
07:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC): there is no Natural gas in the United States article. But we do have:


 * Gasland
 * Henry Hub
 * Marcellus Formation
 * Shale gas in the United States
 * Category:Natural gas pipelines in the United States
 * Category:Natural gas infrastructure of the United States
 * Category:Natural gas fields in the United States

Wind power
Several of the smaller articles about Wind power need work, or need starting.

Wind power in the United States
Wind power in the United States shows a table listing the wind potential for the 50 states, with Ohio at 4,000 GWh/yr. This seems to be far lower than the updated NREL estimate for Ohio which accounts for 100m turbine hub heights, which I referenced in the section above:

66,000 MW * 0.3 (capacity factor) * 24 (hr/day) * 365 (day/yr) = 173,448,000 MWh/yr = 173,448 GWh/yr

In fact the value in the table is 173448/4000 = about 43 times lower. This is a massive discrepancy. I should investigate it.

United States wind resource map
03:34, 4 October 2008 (UTC): find an updated wind resource map for the U.S. Image:US wind power map.png is rather old, does not show the newest data, and reflects a lower hub height (50m) than is becoming standard for newer commercial wind turbines (100m). See my comments in: AWS Truewind has an interactive wind resource map for the U.S., but AWS Truewind sells wind resource maps so I doubt that their maps are available for free distribution on Wikipedia. Search the Web for wind resource maps from the U.S. government (which would then be free under PD-USGov). Those searches find some links, several of which I have seen before:
 * Talk:Wind power
 * wind resource map united states
 * The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States dates from 1986. That appears to be the source of Image:US wind power map.png.
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp from the EERE shows a more recent and detailed 50m wind resource map.

Between fragmented authoritarianism and policy coordination: Creating a Chinese market for wind energy

09:06, 23 January 2009 (UTC): an updated wind map is here; I uploaded it to Commons:
 * http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/
 * http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/images/home_usmap.jpg
 * File:United States Wind Resources and Transmission Lines map.jpg

09:13, 25 February 2010 (UTC): now NREL has new wind resource maps, for the whole US at 80m and apparently for every state now. See: Unfortunately, the maps are available in PDF which I might be able to convert to SVG. There are also some very large PNG files that look like blowups from the PDFs. The PDF file of the US has vector information, as the state boundary lines draw after the wind resource region raster scrolls onto the screen like a curtain. Here are instructions to convert PDF to SVG, except that I don't have all the programs: It would probably be a nightmare to figure out how to import all this new data and maps to Commons.
 * http://www.fastcompany.com/1558412/the-top-10-states-for-wind-power
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_resource_maps.asp?stateab=tx (Texas was missing before)
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp PDF map of the USA at 80m
 * Commons:Commons:Graphics village pump/April 2009

04:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC): User:Xenon54 on the Help desk recommends Media-Convert for online conversion. I will try that. You just specify a URL, and the input and output formats. Except that when you specify a URL, you don't get as many choices for the output format. So I will convert from the local file I downloaded,. But that does not work either, because when you select PDF as the input, you only get a few output formats, and the two that I want are not there (SVG and PNG).

20:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC): it would be nice if the wind resource data was available as a shapefile, like the other shapefiles from the National Atlas: Then we could generate our own maps of the various states, using a program such as Quantum GIS.
 * http://nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html

16:48, 23 October 2010 (UTC): see: Graphic Lab/Resources/PDF conversion to SVG.

Onshore wind resources by state
On February 11, 2010, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory released the first comprehensive update of the wind energy potential by state since 1993. Since the XLS file of wind potential is inconvenient, transcribe the figures for various states, starting with the states that appear (or will soon appear) in the Wind power in the United States template:

Wind Energy Potential Installed      Annual Capacity (MW)  Generation (GWh) Arizona       10,904.1        30,616 California    34,110.2       105,646 Illinois     249,882.1       763,529 Indiana      148,227.5       443,912 Iowa         570,714.2     2,026,340 Kansas       952,370.9     3,646,590 Maine         11,251.2        33,779 Michigan      59,042.3       169,221 Minnesota    489,270.6     1,679,480 Missouri     274,355.1       810,619 Montana      944,004.4     3,228,620 Nebraska     917,998.7     3,540,370 New Hampshire  2,135.4         6,706 New Mexico   492,083.3     1,644,970 New York      25,781.3        74,695 North Dakota 770,195.8     2,983,750 Ohio          54,919.7       151,881 Oklahoma     516,822.1     1,788,910 Oregon        27,100.3        80,855 Pennsylvania   3,307.2         9,673 South Dakota 882,412.4	    3,411,690 Texas      1,901,529.7     6,527,850 Washington    18,478.5        55,550 Wyoming      552,072.6     1,944,340

Statistics
20:20, 6 May 2010 (UTC): a report from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy with some statistics for wind power and other renewables for the United States:



The whole report has many interesting tables, maps, and graphs about renewable energy. Page 58 has a graph and table showing US wind power growth and annual generation. Some of that information is not yet in Wind power in the United States.

U.S. Wind Energy Capacity U.S. Wind Energy     and Percent Increase Generation         from Previous Year (Million kWh)      Total (MW)   % Increase 2000    5,593                2,578       2.6% 2001     6,737                4,275      65.8% 2002    10,354                4,686       9.6% 2003    11,187                6,353      35.6%  2004    14,144                6,725       5.9% 2005    17,811                9,121      35.6% 2006    26,589               11,575      26.9% 2007    34,450               16,824      45.3% 2008    52,026               25,369      50.8% 2009 2010

The Renewable Energy Data Book says total US primary energy consumption in 2009 was 94.9 Quadrillion Btu. (94.9 quad)

Wind power in the USA
The Wind power in the United States article has this wind resource map: Image:US wind power map.png which dates from around 1985, according to its documentation page. Newer wind power maps for the U.S. are better, since the U.S. government and the wind industry have prospected more for wind as the industry has developed. See for example:


 * http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/wind_maps.asp

06:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC): the above link seems to be broken now.

00:02, 7 December 2008 (UTC): at 8 minutes into this video, a sequence of USA maps from NREL shows the growth of installed wind power by state and year: It would be interesting to find the source images, upload them to Commons, and add them to a gallery tag in Wind power in the United States. It would also be interesting to combine all the images into an animated graphic file, but I don't know what format we can use on Commons. Wikipedia has at least this animated graphic in GIF: which appears in WikiProject Mathematics/Nav. Actually that page shows a still image with a link to the animated GIF, with this wikitext:
 * (I don't know how to cram the Fragment identifier:  into the YouTube template, so here is the link.)
 * (I don't know how to cram the Fragment identifier:  into the YouTube template, so here is the link.)
 * Image:Glass tesseract animation.gif

'''The tesseract, the four-dimensional analog of the cube. To see an animated version, click here.'''

I am looking for the maps; I have not found them yet. But here are some: I found the animated graphic; it's right on the NREL's Wind Powering America home page: Actually the site says it's part of EERE, but the images say NREL on them. I guess all these DOE offices and laboratories overlap. More maps are here: Here's the latest installed capacity map for the U.S.: Figure out how to upload this to Commons. Look at an example first: The above image has this wikitext: == Summary ==
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/windmaps/installed_wind_capacity_300.gif
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_installed_capacity.asp
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/windmaps/installed_capacity_2008.jpg
 * http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=NREL&go=Go
 * commons:Image:Direct normal solar radiation 2004.jpg

Licensing
I'll make a suitable category for this image and the other images from NREL that are on Commons. See if commons:Category:NREL is available.

I see this interesting category: which appears to automatically contain every image that has the.
 * commons:Category:PD-USGov-NSF

The NREL disclaimer doesn't say whether I can use its images. However, the site links to this page: Copyright
 * commons:Template talk:PD-USGov-DOE has some cautionary notes about whether or not various government laboratories claim copyrights over their work. Including:
 * Labs with ambiguous or nonexistant copyright policies:
 * National Renewable Energy Laboratory
 * http://www1.eere.energy.gov/webpolicies/#copyright

Materials on the EERE Web site are in the public domain. EERE requests that it be acknowledged as the source in any subsequent use of its information. Some materials on this site have been contributed by private individuals, companies, or organizations and include a copyright notice. It is the user's responsibility to contact copyright owners and obtain the written permission required under U.S. copyright law before using these materials.

Links may be made to the EERE Web site from personal and organization Web pages. EERE requests that you link to its site rather than downloading portions of the site to another Web server so viewers will see the most up-to-date information.

There is a commons:Template:PD-USGov-DOE, but I don't know if it applies to NREL publications.

Also see:
 * commons:Commons:Image copyright tags visual

USA number one?
According to this reference: Google finds additional links which confirm this: See whether I can verify this, and if it is true, work the information into these articles which currently rank Germany first and the United States second: 16:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC): on further reading, I see Germany is still first in terms of installed nameplate capacity, but because U.S. wind farms have stronger winds on average, the U.S. produces more wind energy per year. In other words, the U.S. has a higher average capacity factor for its wind power than Germany does. However, the U.S. is adding new capacity faster than Germany and should overtake it in nameplate capacity in 2009.
 * "U.S. wind production jumped 45 percent last year, and, in July (2008), the country overtook Germany as the world's top wind producer."
 * "U.S. wind production jumped 45 percent last year, and, in July (2008), the country overtook Germany as the world's top wind producer."
 * Wind power
 * Renewable energy in the United States
 * Wind power in the United States - the lead section

01:10, 25 August 2008 (UTC): I edited the lead section of Wind power in the United States and added a new section: Wind power in the United States. There's little point in editing the other articles that rank the U.S. behind Germany in installed capacity, since U.S. capacity will probably top Germany's in 2009. I.e., this ranking ambiguity will resolve itself soon enough when the U.S. tops the world in both nameplate capacity and actual wind energy production.

06:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC): the U.S. has now gained the outright lead in wind power installed nameplate capacity. Other editors have updated several wind power articles to mention that.

USA wind power annual report, 2007
09:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC): This is an interesting reference that I must study, available at at least two URLs:
 * http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/43025.pdf
 * http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/43025.pdf

Wind power in the United States already cites it three times, but uses a bare URL rather than a Cite web template. I'm fixing that.

07:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC): an interim report for third quarter, 2008: I could update Wind power in the United States with some interim results, if nobody beats me to it.
 * - highlights include expansion to U.S. wind turbine manufacturing plants, and 8 GW of wind power nameplate capacity under construction.
 * - "The U.S. wind industry installed about 1,400 MW of new wind capacity in the third quarter of the year, bringing the total installed capacity to over 4,200 MW in the year and over 21,000 MW overall. Some 8,000 MW more are under construction for completion this year or next year. Over 7,500 MW is likely to be installed in 2008."

Great Plains
01:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC): the Great Plains article says nothing about wind power. The history subsection: Great Plains mentions the ongoing population loss in the Great Plains since the 1930s. Wind power development could slow or reverse the population loss, at least in specific areas. T. Boone Pickens cites Sweetwater, Texas as an example. Find some sources and work them into the Great Plains article.



02:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC): I added the new section: Great Plains.

Wind power in Ohio
Wind power in Ohio already exists, but it is not as complete as it could be. 08:48, 22 December 2008 (UTC): I beefed it up a bit. I still have more material to add, especially information about future wind power development in Lake Erie.

Bowling Green
00:52, 29 October 2008 (UTC): Wind power in Ohio does not yet mention Bowling Green, Ohio, the site of Ohio's first utility-scale wind farm. "The four turbines are such an oddity that they draw tourists and schoolchildren by the busload to the wind farm, which is next to a landfill. A solar-powered kiosk with a touch screen offers data on the project, wind speed and real time power generation.
 * The dedication celebration for the AMP-Ohio/Green Mountain Energy Wind Farm was November 7, 2003.
 * 4 Vestas V80-1.8MW wind turbines
 * The dedication celebration for the AMP-Ohio/Green Mountain Energy Wind Farm was November 7, 2003.
 * 4 Vestas V80-1.8MW wind turbines
 * 4 Vestas V80-1.8MW wind turbines

"We sort of turned the Wood County landfill into a tourist attraction," said Kent Carson of AMP-Ohio, which operates the US$10 million wind farm."

- excerpt from the above reference

05:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC): here are some photos of the wind farm on Picasa that I probably cannot use:
 * http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=wind%20farm%20ohio&psc=G&filter=1#5142527104489279602
 * http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=wind%20farm%20ohio&psc=G&filter=1#5252982719917207762 (a photograph of the wind farm's sign)

09:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC): I found some photos of the wind farm on a confusing photo-sharing site. Try to figure out the licensing, if any:
 * http://www.instructables.com/id/SSJFJ89FI3OANYY/#
 * http://www.instructables.com/files/deriv/FJ8/2W18/FI50YKWZ/FJ82W18FI50YKWZ.LARGE.jpg (aerial view)
 * http://www.instructables.com/files/deriv/FKG/E142/FI3XV1AQ/FKGE142FI3XV1AQ.LARGE.jpg (a photo of the decidedly non-fancy visitor kiosk)
 * http://www.instructables.com/files/deriv/FB7/FNMN/FI3XV1AT/FB7FNMNFI3XV1AT.LARGE.jpg (one of the Vestas wind turbines)
 * http://www.instructables.com/files/deriv/FOE/FJV0/FI50YKWS/FOEFJV0FI50YKWS.LARGE.jpg (photo of the Wood County Landfill with two of the wind turbines in the background)

I can see the wind farm on Google Maps; the wind turbines are near what looks like the landfill, just west of Bowling Green:
 * 41.37948°N, -83.73771°W

18:07, 2 October 2010 (UTC): another photo of the wind farm to get from Flickr:
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelwashing/3663267038/in/photostream/

NASA Glenn
00:52, 29 October 2008 (UTC): The Glenn Research Center (full name: NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field) did pioneering work on some of the first modern large wind turbines, the basis for today's large commercial wind turbines. (At the time, NASA Glenn seems to have been called NASA Lewis.) These were NASA's "Mod" series. Most of the Mod series wind turbines were not actually erected in Ohio, although they could well have been, because Ohio's Lake Erie shoreline is a decent wind resource area.


 * commons:Image:Mod-0 Wind turbine.jpg - NASA may have tested the Mod-0 in Ohio.
 * commons:Image:Mod-5B Wind turbine.jpg - The NASA/DOE Mod-5B 3.2 Megawatt wind turbine in Oahu, Hawaii, photo by NASA Glenn Research Center
 * Image:Mod-2 Wind Turbine Cluster3.jpg - NASA/DOE 7.5 megawatt three wind turbine cluster in Goodnoe Hills, Washington, photo courtesy of NASA (only 320 × 256 resolution)
 * commons:Image:Mod-2 Wind Turbine Cluster.jpg (even lower 126 × 104 resolution)
 * http://grcimagenet.grc.nasa.gov/images/archive/projects/C85_5009h.jpg - the same image in magnificent 2000x1600 resolution
 * History of wind power - has an unsourced paragraph about the NASA/DOE Mod-series project

Search for sources about these NASA wind turbines and add it to the Wind power in Ohio article, and add sources to the History of wind power section, if possible.


 * NASA/DOE wind turbine - search with Google scholar cite
 * - search with Google

Both searches find many links. Here's one with a diagram showing the relative scale of the Mod-series turbines, along with a listing for each example in the series: More sources: For example, here is a photo on http://history.nasa.gov of the Mod-0 wind turbine at Plum Brook station in Ohio: http://history.nasa.gov lists: Steven J. Dick, NASA Chief Historian. More searching finds more images on Federal Government sites of the wind turbine at Plum Brook: While poking around, I found this unrelated yet still cool photo of a bald eagle at NASA Glenn's Plum Brook Station: More of the wind turbine at Plum Brook Station: NREL has a photographic exchange site, which shows low-resolution photos for free, but it looks like they charge $42 for a high resolution photo.
 * - this is a "kids page" but it still has useful information, some of which seems to assume smart kids.
 * - this is an uglier version of much of the same information as on the "kids page" above.
 * - this has some nice photos I would like to copy, except this is a PDF so the photos are not as separate image files. Try to find the source photos, if DOE has them online anywhere. Google image search on the .gov domain finds some examples:
 * http://images.google.com/images?as_st=y&um=1&hl=en&q=wind+turbine+site%3Agov&btnG=Search+Images
 * - scroll down to the section entitled "THE ENERGY CRISIS", which discusses NASA Lewis' shift to working on the energy problem after the post-Apollo NASA budget and staff cuts.
 * http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4306/p209.jpg - 100-kilowatt wind turbine at Plum Brook.
 * http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/images/content/149602main_1975_03490_250x330.jpg
 * http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/multimedia/imagegallery/if_40_eagle.html
 * http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/history/70s_energy.html
 * http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/images/content/149602main_1975_03490_250x330.jpg
 * http://www.nrel.gov/data/pix/

Ohio wind resource map
06:46, 15 March 2008 (UTC): upload this map of Ohio's wind resources to Wikimedia Commons, and add the PD-USGov template to its description:
 * Ohio Wind Resource Map
 * Ohio - 50m wind power

I will probably have to convert the original JPEG image to a PNG. I can do that with Netpbm.

That map for Ohio is essentially a single-state version of this wind resource map for the entire United States:


 * Image:US wind power map.png
 * commons:Image:US wind power map.png

I don't think I have ever uploaded an image to Wikimedia Commons before. Read the article about it and see WP:EIW. If I can figure out how to upload the Ohio wind resource map, I can then upload maps for the other states, or at least the states with significant wind power potential.

The Ohio Wind Resource Explorer page has wind power maps for Ohio at 50m and 100m heights, from AWS Truewind LLC. The 100m map shows wind power up to two classes higher than the 50m map for many areas.


 * 50m wind power map for Ohio
 * 100m wind power map for Ohio
 * Follow the procedure in Requesting copyright permission and see if I can get permission to upload those files to Commons. It looks like AWS Truewind created the maps for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which might make them U.S. government publications and therefore not under copyright. But I need to find out whether AWS Truewind retains any rights in them.

Some sizable areas of wind power class 5 are not too far from where I live, in Logan County, Ohio and Champaign County, Ohio. The Buckeye Wind Project may begin construction there in 2010. See:



In fact, a wind farm might get built there in 2009:

Ohio wind power potential
This page says Ohio's wind energy resources are larger than in previous estimates based on 50m elevation, because new technology (i.e., larger wind turbines) can exploit faster winds at 100m:


 * Press Release - New Wind Maps & Analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Reveal Ohio’s Significant Wind Energy Potential Could Power 2 Million Homes

Actually the article claims that Ohio's wind power potential (66,000 megawatts (MW), nameplate capacity? The capacity factor might only be 0.3 or less, although perhaps higher over Lake Erie) exceeds Ohio's current electrical consumption. Determine what Ohio's electricity consumption is. The Ohio article does not seem to mention it; for an example from a neighboring state's article of what the Ohio article might say about Energy, see: Illinois. Economy of Ohio says nothing about energy, either.

Here is an overview I found:


 * State energy profile for Ohio from the Energy Information Administration

Ohio's total annual energy consumption appears to be about four quads. Determine how that compares to 66 GW of nameplate capacity. I love unit conversions; see if the convert template understands quads. Template:Convert/list of units says it understands BTU but not quads. The Quad (energy) article does not give the conversion to TWh. convert does not seem to understand scientific notation or arbitrary multiples for Imperial units, so just put in all the zeros for a quadrillion (which is 1,000,000,000,000,000):


 * 4000000000000000 BTU

which equates to an average power of:

(1,200 TWh/yr) * (1000 GW/TW) / (365*24 hours/yr) = 137 GW

That's at least in the ballpark, if it represents total primary power and not just electricity.

Search some more with Google:


 * http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/energy_summary.cfm/state=OH
 * http://www.eredux.com/states/state_detail.php?id=1117&state=OHIO - shows Ohio as having 33,870 Total Net (MW) Summer Capacity, whatever that means.
 * http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_profiles.cfm?sid=OH
 * http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_profiles.cfm?sid=OH

09:10, 3 January 2009 (UTC): another interesting article on energy unit conversions: Cubic mile of oil.

Environment Ohio
07:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC): more resources about wind power in Ohio:
 * http://www.buckeyewindproject.com/d/Ohios-wind-energy-future.pdf Ohio’s Wind Energy Future, Amy Gomberg, Environment Ohio & Environment Ohio Research and Policy Center, November 2006
 * http://www.buckeyewindproject.com/d/Energizing_Ohios_Economy.pdf Energizing Ohio’s Economy: Creating Jobs and Reducing Pollution with Wind Power, Erin Bowser and Amy Gomberg, Environment Ohio Research & Policy Center; Travis Madsen, Frontier Group, AUGUST 2007
 * Biographical notes about the authors: http://www.environmentohio.org/center/staff

Here are the URLs to these papers on the Environment Ohio Web site, so I can make a primary reference that might be less likely to break.


 * http://www.environmentohio.org/reports/energy
 * http://www.environmentohio.org/reports/energy/energy-program-reports/ohios-wind-energy-future2#qraTPoPEh-CviE1-Hd-3Ag
 * http://www.environmentohio.org/uploads/18/7W/187WJvnfH-BJDVTnddVLKw/Wind-Report-Final.pdf
 * http://www.environmentohio.org/reports/energy/energy-program-reports/energizing-ohio39s-economy-creating-jobs-and-reducing-pollution-with-wind-power#LREOejD_e1Sb7FQ968UnLQ
 * http://www.environmentohio.org/uploads/tk/Nj/tkNjSqFFv4znKtHAAFsnlQ/Energizing_Ohios_Economy.pdf

Lake Erie wind power potential
A very large portion of Ohio's wind resources are over Lake Erie. Lake Erie may be a good location for offshore wind turbines. As of early 2008, the United States has no offshore wind turbines. Lake Erie might be a good location for them, because:


 * Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes. The western half is especially shallow.
 * Proximity to electrical transmission networks and electricity consumers.
 * Proximity to heavy industry for making large wind turbine components.
 * Ease of transporting large wind turbine components throughout the Great Lakes by barge.

Some links relating to offshore wind power:


 * Category:Offshore wind farms
 * United States:
 * Cape Wind
 * United Kingdom:
 * London Array
 * Scroby Sands wind farm
 * Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm
 * Denmark

Search for references with Google:

Here's one: Search further on that term:
 * Fresh Water Wind Farm on the Great Lakes - Windustrious Cleveland

05:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC): I stumbled across an interesting report: This is one of the more informative reports I have found. It discusses the enormous wind power potential of the Great Lakes, it mentions existing and potential pumped hydro power storage plants around the Great Lakes, and discusses the economics of using wind power to assist with the production of biofuels. That last item intrigues me because of the current heavy dependence of agriculture and transportation on petroleum and natural gas. Wind power can boost the ethanol output of a fermentation plant by generating hydrogen via electrolysis, which can then reduce carbon dioxide into methanol, ethanol, and/or methane. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of fermentation. Currently, the carbon dioxide from fermentation plants does not contribute its carbon to liquid fuels.

23:52, 14 November 2008 (UTC): another news article about interest in the wind power potential of the Great Lakes:
 * , which says, among other things, that a recent (uncited) study found Michigan's portion of the Great Lakes alone could generate 322 GW of (apparently) nameplate capacity from wind.
 * - mentions some names involved in studying Great Lakes offshore wind potential (I can search on these for more publications):
 * John Cherry, University of Michigan researcher, Great Lakes Commission;
 * Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (Tom Graf, Land and Water Management Division);
 * Laurie Jodziewicz, siting policy manager, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA);
 * Chris Shafer, professor, Thomas M. Cooley School of Law

23:49, 27 November 2008 (UTC): more about Lake Erie wind power potential, from a monitoring station on the Cleveland Water crib:

Melink Corporation
22:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC): a couple of weeks ago, I saw the first large-ish wind turbine I've seen in real life. Evidently it is at the Melink Corporation: I visited the wind turbine on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2008. The turbine is next to the Melink Corp. building. I was able to ride my bicycle right to a parking lot next to the turbine. An access path goes directly to the turbine tower, but I did not follow it, because nobody was around to give permission. The model may be an Aventa AV-7, 6.5 kW nameplate capacity, rotor diameter 12.8 m:
 * official site - Google Maps link
 * 39.14372°N, -84.24879°W
 * official site - Google Maps link
 * 39.14372°N, -84.24879°W
 * http://www.aventa.ch/englische%20Homepage/eAV7/eTAV-7.htm
 * http://www.thewindpower.net/wind-turbine-datasheet-243-aventa-av-7.php
 * http://www.thewindpower.net/wind-turbine-datasheet-243-aventa-av-7.php

Vestas V27 at Great Lakes Science Center
The Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland installed a Vestas V27 wind turbine (nameplate capacity: 225 kW) in 2006 between the Cleveland Browns Stadium and the Science Center. Vestas no longer manufactures the V27, as it is now below the minimum economic size for modern commercial wind farms. The Science Center purchased a used turbine from a wind farm operator in Denmark which replaced the turbine with a larger model. Enexco in California reconditioned the turbine, and White Construction from Indiana erected it on the new site.

Find some sources and work this into the Wind power in Ohio article.

I mentioned this turbine in Unconventional wind turbines.

07:25, 15 December 2008 (UTC): The Great Lakes Science Center broke the above link. Google still has a cached copy, the text of which I am saving as an HTML comment. I should have figured out how to save this with WebCite. <!-- Wind Turbine Project Q & A

May 17th, 2006

Why did the Science Center install a wind turbine? The Science Center’s mission is to demonstrate the interrelationships between science, environment & technology. The wind turbine is a highly visible project that supports the mission. The Science Center will use the turbine to demonstrate wind power technology to create a greater public awareness of renewable energy sources.

When will the turbine start working? The wind turbine pole, nacelle (gearbox and generator) and blades were erected the week of May 1, 2006. For the next few weeks, teams responsible for completing the underground electrical work, interconnection to the facility and the start, testing and balancing of the system will be finishing their work. The official dedication will take place on June 9, 2006 when the turbine will officially be turned on and the blades will spin.

Will the turbine generate electricity? Yes. We expect the turbine to provide approximately 7% of GLSC’s annual electricity needs. The turbine is capable of producing 225 kilowatts of electricity (enough to power over 300 refrigerators), but the amount of electricity actually generated is dependent on the speed of the wind.

The turbine needs a breeze of 8 miles per hour (mph) to generate power. At 31 mph the turbine achieves its peak output (225 kilowatts). When winds reach 56 mph the turbine automatically turns off to prevent damage to itself.

What kind of turbine did the Science Center install? The Science Center purchased a remanufactured Vestas V27 225kW turbine. Vestas is one of the largest turbine manufacturers with turbines installed around the world. This model turbine was once their most widely used turbine and set them apart as a leader in the industry. Although this model turbine is widely used today, many are being replaced on wind farms with much larger turbines capable of producing more electricity. The decommissioned turbines are then refurbished and put back into use for smaller or intermediate-sized applications like ours.

Where did this refurbished turbine come from? The Science Center purchased the turbine from a company in Denmark that decided to install a larger wind turbine in its place. The turbine was shipped by sea to California where Enexco, a company that specializes in refurbishing turbines, refurbished it. White Construction out of Indiana erected the turbine.

Is the Science Center’s property a good location for a wind turbine? For our purposes, yes. The Science Center’s primary goal for installing a wind turbine is to create a highly visible exhibition to demonstrate wind power technology and raise public awareness about renewable energy, which makes the Science Center’s front lawn an ideal location. In terms of electrical generation, wind turbines are typically located in more open spaces to take advantage of higher wind speeds from a relatively consistent direction. Due to surrounding structures, GLSC’s wind turbine will not be as efficient as one situated in an open space.

How big is the turbine? The turbine weighs over 26 tons and its total height is about 150 feet. It stands about 60 feet taller than the Science Center and approximately 13 feet shorter than the Browns Stadium. The blades are each about 44 feet long.

Will the turbine be noisy? The decibel level for this turbine is rated in the low 40s, which is similar to the levels of a quiet suburban neighborhood or that of an average conversation.

Will the turbine be safe? The Science Center’s turbine will be publicly accessible to the base of the tower, as are many turbines, and has very few safety issues. Our turbine has several built-in safety considerations including automatic shut-off sensors for excessively high winds and other harsh conditions as well as the capability to be shut off manually.

Can ice form on the turbine and fall off? Ice can form on the blades but will likely not occur often, even in the harsh climatic conditions of Northeastern Ohio. If ice does form, it creates an imbalance in the blades which triggers an automatic shut-off. The turbine can also be shut off manually. Studies show that ice that may collect and fall is typically wafer thin and breaks into small pieces as it falls to the ground, usually landing near the base of the tower. The Science Center will have safety procedures in place if and when such conditions may occur.

Will the turbine pivot like a weather vane? Our turbine will not pivot or spin as quickly as a weather vane, but will slowly turn to face the wind once sensors indicate a change in wind direction over a given period of time.

Plain Dealer artist Stephen Beard produced a graphical description, which is very useful and can be found at http://www.cleveland.com/news/wide/index.ssf?/news/wide/wind0506.html

Will the turbine impact birds? Birds occasionally collide with wind turbines, as they do with other tall structures such as buildings. The Science Center will be working with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in partnership with the Cleveland Natural History Museum and another consulting agency to perform a bird study. No matter how extensively wind energy is developed in the future, bird deaths from wind energy are unlikely to ever reach as high as 1% of those from other human-related sources such as hunters, house cats, buildings, and autos. Avian deaths have become a concern at Altamont Pass in California, which is an area of extensive wind development and also has high year-round raptor use. Detailed studies and monitoring following construction at other wind development areas indicate that this is a site-specific issue that will not be a problem at most potential wind sites. See "Avian Collisions With Wind Turbines,” at http://www.nationalwind.org/pubs/aviancollisions.pdf for more information. -->

Search for similar urban/demonstration turbines:
 * Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand
 * WindShare
 * New Wind Turbine
 * WindShare
 * New Wind Turbine
 * New Wind Turbine

See also my notes in below.

08:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC): additional photos of this wind turbine are on Flickr, usually mistitled as "windmill" because the photographers are not wind power experts.


 * http://flickr.com/search/?l=5&q=windmill+cleveland&m=text We found 9 results matching windmill and cleveland, with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
 * http://flickr.com/search/?l=4&q=windmill+cleveland&m=text We couldn't find any results matching windmill and cleveland, with the Creative Commons Attribution License

19:17, 18 December 2008 (UTC): I found some more information about the display ground around the wind turbine. The base of the wind turbine tower has a sign with a caption that is less than perfectly coherent (and also displays a copyright notice - boo, hiss). Here is a photo from Flickr showing the sign (I can't use the Flickr photo because it has a noncommercial license):


 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/eggplant/2741129519/

This page from the GLSC site explains what the display is about, and in light of which the oddball struggling-to-be-artistically-cool sign caption becomes somewhat understandable:



I will upload this photo to Commons, since it features the wind turbine:


 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/goosegrease/2744261183/

Images of wind turbines in Ohio
00:29, 29 October 2008 (UTC): search for images of wind turbines in Ohio, and use them to dress up the Wind power in Ohio article, which is rather bleak at the moment with no photos. Using my search methods in User:Teratornis/Notes, I found these images: Here is an historical image of one of the world's first electricity-generating wind turbines, by Charles Brush in Cleveland, Ohio: 21:45, 14 December 2008 (UTC): I created commons:Category:Wind power in Ohio and I'm categorizing all the wind power in Ohio images I know of.
 * On Wikipedia:
 * Bowling Green, Ohio - Image:Bowling Green Wind Power.jpg
 * Great Lakes Science Center
 * Image:Cleveland's Great Lakes Science Center.jpg - a nice clear photo (I had to rename it to commons:File:Clevelands Great Lakes Science Center.jpg because CommonsHelper did not like the apostrophe in the original name)
 * Image:Cleveland at a glance by Lovleet.jpg - photo in which the wind turbine is barely visible on the right, showing the building clutter which disrupts the wind flow and must lower the capacity factor for this demonstration turbine
 * On Commons:
 * commons:Image:Great Lakes Science Center.jpg
 * commons:File:Brush-windmill.jpg (I'm also adding it to History of wind power.)

07:49, 14 January 2009 (UTC): here is a photo of the Vestas V27 at the Great Lakes Science Center, from 2006 shortly after installation, before the art display went in around the base:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/neeb/196412851/sizes/o/in/set-72157594209117279/

Cuyahoga County offshore wind project
08:44, 24 November 2008 (UTC): look into this:


 * http://www.offshorewind.net/OffshoreProjects/Cuyahoga.html

Eden Park wind turbine

 * 39.11701°N, -84.49393°W
 * "The 10 kW Bergey Excel wind generator was installed in April 2007 on a 120-foot-tall tower on a hill above the Administration building. The solar and wind energy systems were installed by Third Sun Solar and Wind Power and supply about 20 percent of the building’s electrical needs; the rest comes from Duke Energy."
 * I've seen the wind turbine from what I thought was fairly close, and I would never have guessed the tower is 120 feet tall. The wind turbine is barely higher than the surrounding trees, and I did not think the trees were huge. I will have to scout the site more accurately. I was only able to view the wind turbine from a locked gate at a parking lot entrance, which is a fair distance from the wind turbine. The Bergey site says: "The BWC EXCEL is a modern 6.7 meter (22 ft) diameter, 10,000W wind turbine". Since the wind turbine looks very small in proportion to the tower, I guess 120 feet for the tower (5.545 rotor diameters) is within reason. It's too bad they couldn't mount the wind turbine on top of the 192.3 m radio antenna next to it.
 * I've seen the wind turbine from what I thought was fairly close, and I would never have guessed the tower is 120 feet tall. The wind turbine is barely higher than the surrounding trees, and I did not think the trees were huge. I will have to scout the site more accurately. I was only able to view the wind turbine from a locked gate at a parking lot entrance, which is a fair distance from the wind turbine. The Bergey site says: "The BWC EXCEL is a modern 6.7 meter (22 ft) diameter, 10,000W wind turbine". Since the wind turbine looks very small in proportion to the tower, I guess 120 feet for the tower (5.545 rotor diameters) is within reason. It's too bad they couldn't mount the wind turbine on top of the 192.3 m radio antenna next to it.




 * 39.11417°N, -84.49222°W - a nearby 67 m cell phone tower on an adjacent ridge to the east
 * 39.11728°N, -84.49353°W - the 192.3 m radio antenna next to the wind turbine, which dwarfs it

Bergey wind turbines allegedly survive tornadoes.


 * - that finds no free images. But I did find an unfree (cc-by-noncommercial) image of another wind turbine in a park, in Jerome, Ohio.

Glacier Ridge Metro Park wind turbine

 * 40.1559°N, -83.1971°W
 * http://www.metroparks.net/MapGlacierRidge.aspx
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsbrown99/2890921374/
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsbrown99/2890920958/in/set-72157603598594908/ - Glacier Ridge solar and wind energy production chart
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsbrown99/2890921098/in/set-72157603598594908/ - close-up crop of the Bergey wind turbine at Glacier Ridge park
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsbrown99/2890921098/in/set-72157603598594908/ - close-up crop of the Bergey wind turbine at Glacier Ridge park

Buckeye Wind Project
18:17, 23 July 2009 (UTC): this seems to be progressing. See: Determine where this will be, with more precision, so I can add a pushpin to a locator map in the Wind power in Ohio article.
 * http://www.buckeyewindproject.com/ - official site for the project; main page is mostly nontechnical fluff
 * http://www.ohiowind.org/Ohio-Wind-Projects.cms.aspx

I see a bunch of sources, but none of them say exactly where the wind farm is going to be, other than in Champaign County. For now I'll put it on the locator map at the county center.

This source is somewhat more specific:


 * http://www.greenenergyohio.org/page.cfm?pageID=2476 First Ohio Wind Farm on the Books By Tony Logan

""The proposed wind farm will be located in Champaign County, East of Urbana on a high ridge of land oftentimes referred to as “the roof of Ohio.” Many of the turbines should be visible from St Route 33 near the popular ski area, Mad River Mountain.""


 * http://www.champaigncare.com/amy_g.htm Amy Gomberg Seminar, Environmentalist expands on Ohio's wind energy potential during local seminar, By SHAUN DUNLAP - Urbana Daily Citizen Staff Writer
 * Amy Gomberg works for The Environment Ohio Research & Policy Center

There seems to be an anti-wind group opposing the wind farm, and at least one pro-wind group supporting it. Here is a report evaluating the dispute:
 * http://www.champaigncare.com/WindReport.pdf Champaign County, Ohio, Wind Turbine Study Group, May 20, 2008

22:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC): this page from the application on file at the Ohio Power Siting Board has many details about the project: Date Filed:     4/24/2009 11:27:37 AM Document Type:   APP-Application Number of pages: 201 Case Numbers:   08-0666-EL-BGN Summary: Application for a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need for the Buckeye Wind Project in the Townships of Goshen, Rush, Salem, Union, Urbana, and Wayne, Champaign County, Ohio by H. Petricoff. (Part 1 of 7) Exhibit A of the application mentions Nordex N100, Nordex N90, and REpower MM92 wind turbines and copies manufacturer literature for the specifications.
 * http://dis.puc.state.oh.us/DocumentRecord.aspx?DocID=a97165f6-26b3-48ed-8d10-93355a7a0ac3
 * Table 06-2 on page 78 of this report shows the estimated reductions in annual emissions from the wind farm.
 * Another section of the application shows a lot of maps. However, they are mostly illegible photocopies, and they don't give coordinates.

Hardin Wind Project
21:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC): this appears to be the second proposed Ohio wind project currently with an application on file:


 * http://www.ohiowind.org/Ohio-Wind-Projects.cms.aspx
 * Hardin Wind Energy LLC (a project of Invenergy LLC)
 * Application (Case No.: 09-0479-EL-BGN) to the Ohio Power Siting Board on July 10, 2009. The proposed project will be on 23,000 acres in Hardin County, Ohio. It will consist of either 120 2.5 MW turbines or 200 1.5 MW turbines (300 MW total). Construction should begin in October 2010 and the project should be operational about one year later.
 * This page of the application links to a PDF of a poor quality scan of a paper document which shows the proposed wind farm layout on a map on page 10 of 46. The spatial coordinates are just legible along the map edges. They appear to center around 40.61667°N, -83.75°W.

Economy of Ohio
23:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC): Economy of Ohio has some information that overlaps with Wind power in Ohio. I linked the two articles together, with a See template in the former, and a See also link in the latter. Examine the Economy of Ohio section, and see that it properly summarizes the Wind power in Ohio article.

Some projects move ahead


Governor Ted Strickland and Senator Sherrod Brown appeared at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio to announce the approval of several wind farm projects in Ohio.

05:47, 3 October 2010 (UTC): more references:
 * - the model of wind turbine installed at Owens Community College
 * - the model of wind turbine installed at Owens Community College
 * - the model of wind turbine installed at Owens Community College

Fayette Schools
Also, update the Wind power in Ohio article with some additional small wind power projects. See the AWEA project page for Ohio.

North Dakota
08:52, 24 November 2008 (UTC): North Dakota is America's windiest state. Its wind power development lags several other states, probably due to its sparse population and lower industrial and infrastructural development, but eventually North Dakota could be the top wind producer in the U.S. A reference:



Wyoming Wind Energy Center
00:57, 4 December 2008 (UTC): while I was sorting images of wind turbines, I ran across an image that turns out to (probably) be of the Wyoming Wind Energy Center outside of Evanston, Wyoming in Uinta County:


 * commons:Image:Wyomingwindfarm.jpg

Other possibilities include two new wind farms in Fort Bridger, Wyoming, also in Uinta County:

To-do: make Cite web templates for the many sources I found for this wind farm. At the moment, Wikipedia does not appear to have an article about this wind farm:



I might just add a mention of the wind farm to either the city or the county article, rather than create a new standalone article. But I'll look at the sources and see if they justify a new article. Wind farm articles tend to attract message templates questioning their notability, unless you can write more than a paragraph of real content.


 * - article focuses on a wind turbine technician: Joseph “Blue” Nalder began working at Florida Power and Light’s Wyoming Wind Energy Center in Evanston in 2003.
 * - not about the Wyoming Wind Energy Center, but about proposed new wind farms in Wyoming (this was in 2007, so plans may have advanced since then)
 * - A new study claims that the best resource for clean energy is Wyoming's wind farms. Mentions a 2,000 MW wind farm under development in Carbon County, Wyoming, and a 3,000 MW transmission line a $3 billion, 3,000-megawatt high-voltage transmission line, 900 miles long, to connect southern Wyoming wind farms with distribution grids to population centers in California, Nevada and Arizona, planned for completion in 2014.
 * - mentions two recent wind farm completions in Uinta County: "Tasco has also been involved in the development of two wind farm operations in neighboring Uinta County. The company recently completed the construction of 28 wind turbines on Bridger Butte and in the Bigelow Bench area of Bridger Valley as part of its Mountain Wind 1 project."
 * - an article from 2003 about the construction of the Wyoming Wind Energy Center out of Evanston, Wyoming.
 * Climate change in Wyoming does not mention Wyoming's apparently booming wind power development.
 * The American Wind Energy Association's projects page for Wyoming:
 * - shows that Wyoming has a number of wind farms, ranking 14th in the U.S. by installed capacity, and 7th by wind power potential.
 * The American Wind Energy Association's projects page for Wyoming:
 * - shows that Wyoming has a number of wind farms, ranking 14th in the U.S. by installed capacity, and 7th by wind power potential.

Wind power in Texas
06:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC): I've made a few edits to Wind power in Texas. Make some more.

Commons only seemed to have about three photos of wind turbines in Texas. This is after I sorted through hundreds of photos on Commons, and I moved a few dozen wind power photos from the English Wikipedia to Commons. Texas seems oddly underrepresented, given its amount of wind power and the fact that Texans speak a dialect of English. The United Kingdom has less installed wind power capacity, yet commons:Category:Wind power in the United Kingdom has dozens of photos. I guess wind turbines in the U.K. are in much closer proximity to what we could call modern civilization than they are in Texas.

I made a new category on Commons: commons:Category:Wind power in Texas as a subcategory of the existing commons:Category:Wind power in the United States. I was able to find a few more images to recategorize into it, but still much fewer than in, say, commons:Category:Wind power in California. I added a Commonscat template to Wind power in Texas.

The Pickens Plan article has another photo I had not yet moved to Commons, so I moved it:
 * File:Windmills south of Dumas, TX IMG 0570.JPG

Still to do: maybe add a section: Wind power in Texas. Use information from the section I made earlier: Unconventional wind turbines.

Search the other language Wikipedias for images of wind power in Texas. Foreign companies built several wind farms in Texas, so maybe some engineers from Denmark, Germany, or Spain took some photos in Texas and uploaded them to their native language Wikipedias. If nothing else, see if Wind power in Texas has any other language versions we can add Interlanguage links to.

More photos of wind power in Texas are on Flickr. Figure out how to search Flickr for photos that have a Commons-compatible license. See my notes in User:Teratornis/Notes.



Those searches find quite a few interesting images, although the locations for some are not clear. But here are two with a clear location, they are architectural drawings of the Discovery Tower to be built in Houston:


 * http://flickr.com/photos/architectural-design/3061726922/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/architectural-design/3061707150/

I strongly suspect the uploader did not have permission to upload them under the license he/she used.

Here is a whole photoset of wind turbines in Texas, but not all are under a usable license:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/jcwade/sets/72157594383491988/

Here are some geocoded aerial photos of wind farms:


 * http://flickr.com/photos/fatguyinalittlecoat/3089777063/ Wind Farm by austrini
 * http://flickr.com/photos/fatguyinalittlecoat/3090615704/ Ridge by austrini

And a photo showing wind turbines unloaded at Corpus Christi, Texas, awaiting shipment to somewhere:


 * http://flickr.com/photos/qnr/3035615795/ Wind Turbines, some assembly required

09:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC): I found some photos from Muenster, Texas:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/lafaske/3133765926/in/set-72157611762147216/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/lafaske/3133765920/in/set-72157611762147216/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/lafaske/3133687706/in/set-72157611762147216/

This wind farm is evidently new:

and the name looks like the Wolf Ridge Wind Farm. Here's a YouTube video about it:

Flickr has quite a few more photos of wind farms in Texas, but unfortunately most of them have no information about their location that I can decode. It will be nice if cameras get GPS receivers and automatically geotag the camera locations in their EXIF data.

09:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC): some more photos from Flickr:
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/mi2starsfan/3163422941/in/set-72157611118127243/ Barton Chapel Wind Farm, Jack County, Texas, taken on January 2, 2009 (and see rest of set)

Wind power in Kansas
04:25, 3 January 2009 (UTC): I might start a Wind power in Kansas article. According to the AWEA, as of 2008-11-19, Kansas had 465 MW of wind power nameplate capacity installed, and 548.5 MW under construction. Kansas ranks third among U.S. states for wind resources, after North Dakota and Texas.

YouTube has some videos of wind farms in Kansas:


 * - probably of the Elk River Wind Project
 * - a low-quality shot-from-a-car video of the Smoky Hills Wind Farm

Flickr has some photos:




 * Photos most likely of the Smoky Hills Wind Farm:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/benclark/2708787524/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/benclark/2707969797/


 * Photos most likely of the Elk River Wind Project near Beaumont, Kansas:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/msisk/2620624762/ http://flickr.com/photos/msisk/2621723399/ (these are both videos)


 * Photos most likely of the Gray County Wind Farm near Montezuma, Kansas:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/28748264@N03/2712499024/in/set-72157608523149666/ - a blurry shot of the visitor center kiosk. I can just barely make out the words "Gray" and "County" in the metal lettering on the kiosk roof.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/28748264@N03/2987855955/in/set-72157608523149666/ - another shot that just clips the top of the kiosk.


 * I can't tell where these wind turbines are. Also, the large photo seems to be rotated 90 degrees, but I could fix that when I download it prior to uploading to Commons.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/22998211@N05/2695178240/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/respres/2736999459/in/set-72157600733971561/ http://flickr.com/photos/respres/2725884129/ (and several more in this photoset) - this may be of Smoky Hills Wind Farm, because the user uploaded it as part of a California to West Virginia road trip, which would imply taking Interstate 70 through Kansas.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/silverspirit/2826485120/in/photostream/ - I don't know where these are either. Maybe more of Smoky Hills, as it looks shot from a car.


 * Spearville Wind Energy Facility
 * http://flickr.com/photos/jennlynndesign/553084783/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/jennlynndesign/553085021/in/photostream/
 * http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.84875,-99.755318&spn=0.1,0.1&q=37.84875,-99.755318 - Google Maps shows the location of the wind farm, and two photos of it from Panoramio, including this copyrighted photo that mentions the information kiosk:
 * http://www.panoramio.com/photo/11925482

Some references:
 * - this reference looks really good. It lists all the existing and proposed wind power projects in Kansas. The site links to an excellent map:
 * - it would be nice to upload this to Commons. I don't see a clear statement of the copyright policy for the Kansas Energy Information Network.
 * - this reference looks really good. It lists all the existing and proposed wind power projects in Kansas. The site links to an excellent map:
 * - it would be nice to upload this to Commons. I don't see a clear statement of the copyright policy for the Kansas Energy Information Network.

Wikipedia has some stubby articles about wind farms in Kansas:


 * Elk River Wind Project
 * Smoky Hills Wind Farm
 * Gray County Wind Farm

and some missing articles:


 * Spearville Wind Energy Facility

Articles that mention :


 * Montezuma, Kansas - alludes to but does not link to Gray County Wind Farm.
 * Kansas - mentions wind power only slightly, apparently alluding to the Gray County Wind Farm.

Articles that should mention wind power in Kansas:
 * Interstate 70 in Kansas (the Smoky Hills Wind Farm is visible from I-70 about 20 miles west of Salina, Kansas)

09:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC): I made a commons:Category:Wind power in Kansas, but I did not find any photos already in commons:Category:Wind power in the United States nor in commons:Category:Wind farms in the United States depicting wind power in Kansas. Therefore, any such images I upload may well be the first on Commons (unless I missed them in my recent search through all the wind power photos).

Wind power in Hawaii
04:25, 3 January 2009 (UTC): I might start a Wind power in Hawaii article. According to the AWEA, as of 2008-11-19, Hawaii had 63.12 MW of wind power nameplate capacity installed, and 0 MW under construction.

YouTube has some videos of wind farms in Hawaii:


 * - almost certainly shows the Hawi Wind Farm.
 * - shows the decommissioned Kama'oa Wind Farm.

Flickr has some photos:




 * Photos of the decommissioned Kama'oa Wind Farm (this must be on a tourist route, because lots of people photograph the rusting old wind turbines):
 * http://flickr.com/photos/rstanek/258089172/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/hellochris/598702649/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/hellochris/598686907/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/smacnhawaii/2057038/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/hellochris/598712073/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/mccready/328691271/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/mccready/328691272/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/lord_yo/3151687012/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/lord_yo/219759140/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/cyrusbulsara/2145124666/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/cyrusbulsara/2145124540/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/2122884192/ (and more by this user)
 * http://flickr.com/photos/nogwater/203597936/


 * Photos most likely of the Hawi Wind Farm near Hāwī, Hawai'i:
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/15458583@N00/302986813/
 * I uploaded that photo to Commons: File:Hawi wind farm 302986813 13df18323b o.jpg
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/ihardlyflickr/301327793/


 * Photos most likely of the Kaheawa wind farm on Maui:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/dnorman/428371965/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/12453467@N00/837674964/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/dnorman/428369812/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/integralawakening/347943870/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/dlytle/2410092423/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/artlung/2720155651/

Some references:
 * - has some information about the history of wind power in Hawaii.

Wikipedia has no articles specifically about wind farms in Hawaii yet. Other articles that mention :


 * Ka Lae - mentions the decommissioned Kama'oa Wind Farm, and its replacement, the Pakini Nui wind farm at the Hawaii (island)'s Ka Lae (a.k.a. South Point).
 * Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative - I added an image of the Hawi Wind Farm I uploaded from Flickr.
 * Climate change in Hawaii

09:16, 4 January 2009 (UTC): I created: commons:Category:Wind power in Hawaii. It's a little lonely just yet with only two photos that I could find already on Commons. I will upload some more.

Wind power in Iowa, Maine, Oregon
05:31, 4 January 2009 (UTC): these articles already exist:


 * Wind power in Iowa
 * Wind power in Maine
 * Wind power in Oregon

but they don't have all of the nice features as Wind power in Ohio and Wind power in Texas. Work on bringing up the other articles to the same standard. On the other hand, Wind power in Maine has a locator map; I could add similar maps to the other Wind power by state articles. Here are the AWEA references for wind power projects in those three states:



I created the corresponding categories for photos on Commons:


 * commons:Category:Wind power in Iowa
 * commons:Category:Wind power in Maine
 * commons:Category:Wind power in Oregon

I found some photos already on Commons for Iowa and Oregon, but none for Maine. See if Flickr has any:



Those searches find a total of 8 relevant photos, all by the same user, and all of the Mars Hill Wind Farm:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/672287817/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/672297887/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/673154546/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/672346255/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/673193116/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/672336669/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/673194644/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/672325797/

07:49, 5 January 2009 (UTC): The Flickr user did not geotag his photos, but the location of Mars Hill (the mountain) is: 46.52111°N, -67.81361°W. Wikipedia already had a photo of Mars Hill (Maine) (the mountain) near the town of Mars Hill, Maine before the wind farm went up:
 * File:Marshillmountain.jpg

I uploaded all of those Mars Hill photos to: commons:Category:Wind power in Maine.

I might as well see what Flickr has for Iowa and Oregon:



Lots of photos for Iowa for me to sort through. Here's one that clearly shows the visitor kiosk of the Hancock County Wind Center (which looks suspiciously similar to the visitor kiosk for the Gray County Wind Farm near Montezuma, Kansas, also owned by FPL Energy):


 * http://flickr.com/photos/timtimes/3059998289/
 * 20:47, 4 January 2009 (UTC): I uploaded this to: File:Hancock County Wind Energy Center visitor kiosk 3059998289 e60b6b5a09 o.jpg

So I guess FPL Energy uses a standard visitor kiosk design for at least two of its wind farms. Therefore, it probably has more like these.

20:21, 10 May 2009 (UTC): Here are some photos of (probably) Storm Lake I (145 * 750 kW = 108.75 MW) and/or Storm Lake II (106 * 750 kW = 79.5 MW), with old Zond wind turbines on lattice towers, from 1999:
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/hammer51012/470038981/
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/hammer51012/470038983/in/photostream/
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/hammer51012/470038989/in/photostream/

The Flickr captions say:
 * "A portion of the World's largest windfarm. 259 wind turbines over 200 feet tall located in Cherokee and Buena Vista Counties in Northwestern Iowa. Together they produce 192,750 kW of energy (sic)."

That does not quite agree with the numbers from the American Wind Energy Association site. Maybe the farm has decommissioned some of its old wind turbines since the 1999 installation date, and not replaced them with newer wind turbines (Zond is no longer in business).

Reference:



Flickr also has some photos from Oregon, such as this one which the uploader even geocoded: and these others with no geocoding:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/stopdown/3057336347/ West of Condon by jesse.millan
 * http://flickr.com/photos/jotor/2641368187/ Windmills--Union County, Oregon by jotor
 * http://flickr.com/photos/kables/6323695/ Windmills in Oregon by Kables
 * http://flickr.com/photos/green4all/2899461706/ Green Jobs Now for Oregon! - Portland, OR
 * http://flickr.com/photos/sburt/151257309/ Wind Power by Steve Burt "South of the Columbia Gorge are a number of wind-power generators" - location is unclear, but may be around Fossil, Oregon, since it is in a photoset with that name. However, you never know with these Flickr users; sometimes they put photos in a set that they took on their way to the location that the photoset is primarily about, so the photos could be from anywhere. However, this might be a photo of the Stateline Wind Project.

I'm guessing this photo is also of the Stateline Wind Project:

The photo of wind turbines is between a photo in Idaho and a photo in Oregon, and the Stateline Wind Project is in the right location to be on the road trip map in the photo set sequence.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/sebastian_bergmann/2946100845/ - the image description gives no clue about where this is, but it came up with the Oregon search. The image is in a set that the user says depicts a road trip in this map:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/sebastian_bergmann/2932173344/in/set-72157607932372582/

Wind power in Nebraska
08:59, 6 January 2009 (UTC): see what photos Flickr has for the remaining Great Plains states. Three with large wind power potential:



Rather amazingly, the above searches only show one photo with a modern wind turbine, and not very many photos with old windmills either.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/winslowkr/2126307391/ Windmills in Nebraska



Wind power in New York
20:51, 26 September 2009 (UTC): See what photos Flickr has:




 * Dutch Hill/Cohocton Wind Farm is a red link in at least two Wikipedia articles. I saw a YouTube video about it, which amazingly gives coordinates:
 * Which I can convert with: http://www.earthpoint.us/Convert.aspx
 * Which I can convert with: http://www.earthpoint.us/Convert.aspx

Latitude	42 32.788 Longitude	-077 30.108 Calculated Values Position Type	Lat Lon Degrees Lat Long 	42.5464667°, -077.5018000° Degrees Minutes	42°32.78800', -077°30.10800' Degrees Minutes Seconds 	42°32'47.2801", -077°30'06.4800" GEOREF	GJNN29893278 UTM	18T 294583mE 4713486mN MGRS	18TTN9458313486 Grid North	-1.7°


 * 42.54647°N, -77.5018°W

Here are some wind power in New York photos I can upload from Flickr:


 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/40765798@N00/2802139997/ Cohocton, New York
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndan/2454535631/ Wind farm near Churubusco, New York
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndan/2454534827/ Wind farm near Churubusco, New York
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndan/2454536327/ Wind farm near Churubusco, New York
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/saiberiac/3313635787/ Taken in Franklin County , New York   (map)
 * That's probably the Noble Environmental Power wind farm at Chateaugay. 71 GE Energy 1.5 MW wind turbines, total nameplate capacity 106.5 MW. Year online: 2009.
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/salim/2824822448/ New York Science Barge
 * See: Science Barge for some wind turbines on public display. My notes on the Science Barge photo are at:
 * Commons:User:Teratornis/Flickr examples
 * Commons:User:Teratornis/Flickr examples

Steel Winds, Clipper Windpower
08:04, 9 October 2008 (UTC): Steel Winds had problems with its Clipper Windpower turbines: Neither article mentions these problems; WP:NPOV requires that we present unflattering facts as well as press-release material.

Maple Ridge wind farm
05:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC): here's an interesting video about the Maple Ridge wind farm in Lewis County, New York:



The video features the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers linemen and electricians who installed the wiring for the turbines.

The farm is a project of Horizon Wind Energy and PPM Energy. Look up the specific model of turbines on the farm. They sound like Vestas V80s, except that their nameplate rating of 1.65 MW according to the Maple Ridge wind farm article does not match with the capacities for V80s in Vestas.

Currently, Vestas offers a V82-1.65 MW model:


 * 1.65 MW - creating more from less
 * Results – wind turbine by wind turbine

That sounds like what the Maple Ridge wind farm is running.


 * Owned and operating wind farms - Horizon Wind's page about the Maple Ridge wind farm; this page does not identify the specific wind turbine model
 * Major US order for Vestas Wind Systems - this page from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Denmark) identifies the first 120 turbines as V82-1.65 MW models.
 * Wind Turbine Blade for Maple Ridge Wind Farm - an interesting blog page with photos of a replacement blade on a truck heading to the wind farm. Evidently the blades can hit the towers in certain wind conditions, and when the weather is cold, the fiberglass-epoxy blades shatter on impact with the steel towers.
 * Wind Turbine Blade for Maple Ridge Wind Farm - an interesting blog page with photos of a replacement blade on a truck heading to the wind farm. Evidently the blades can hit the towers in certain wind conditions, and when the weather is cold, the fiberglass-epoxy blades shatter on impact with the steel towers.
 * Wind Turbine Blade for Maple Ridge Wind Farm - an interesting blog page with photos of a replacement blade on a truck heading to the wind farm. Evidently the blades can hit the towers in certain wind conditions, and when the weather is cold, the fiberglass-epoxy blades shatter on impact with the steel towers.

Wind power in South Dakota




The above searches find only one photo with a modern wind turbine, and it contains zero clues about the location: As usual, the non-free photo versions of the above searches find dozens of results. More than 50 for the wind farm South Dakota search. This is yet another instance of how the vast majority of people who upload wind turbine photos to Flickr do not use a free license.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/tinney/259764912/

08:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC): I found some U.S. government photos about a wind turbine on the Rosebud Indian Reservation I can upload:
 * On February 27, 2003, the first utility-scale Native American 750 kW NEG Micon wind turbine was installed on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation.
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/rosebud.jpg
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/rosebud2.JPG

Wind power in North Dakota




The above searches only find 3 or 4 usable photos, including one that was already on Commons, but in a lower resolution:


 * File:LMGlasfiberBlade.jpg
 * Original photo: http://flickr.com/photos/tuey/332361446/ which by the way is geotagged, but the Commons photo does not have the commons:Template:Location, so I will add it. 22:27, 6 January 2009 (UTC): except that Flinfo is down right now, making it slightly harder than necessary to recover the location information from the photo. Actually it wasn't bad; clicking on the Flickr "map" link displays a Yahoo map, which nicely displays coordinates in DMS and decimal degrees formats, which I could copy and paste.

These other photos from North Dakota look possibly usable:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/thalling/268139549/ Wind turbines in North Dakota (no specific location specified, but the upload date was in 2003 which limits the possibilities)
 * http://flickr.com/photos/tuey/332381877/ TV reporter at LM Glasfiber plant, Grand Forks, N.D.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/magnusdigity/33968817/ windmillnd "there in nothing in north dakota except that giant cow and this giant windmill."

Evidently the northern Plains states don't have a lot of computer-savvy people to take pictures and upload them to Flickr.

Ashtabula Wind Farm
21:25, 13 December 2008 (UTC): Ashtabula Wind Farm is a red link in List of wind farms at the moment. Here is some information about it:


 * http://www.otpco.com/AboutCompany/WindAshtabula.asp
 * http://wcco.com/energy/wind.farm.transmission.2.737251.html

and a YouTube video about it:



Wind power in Pennsylvania
✅ I'm trying to figure out what wind farm this is a picture of:


 * File:Wind Farm PA.jpg

The photo shows a long line of at least 19 wind turbines on a ridge. According to the original uploader's caption:
 * "Aerial photo of a wind farm along the Allegheny Front in southern Pennsylvania in the United States. Photo taken by me from a glider in flight on April 28, 2007"

Here are the possibilities:


 * - an out-of-date page that lists some wind farms completed by 2003 and earlier, along with more wind farms that various people had proposed at that time, some of which are since complete.
 * - an out-of-date page that lists some wind farms completed by 2003 and earlier, along with more wind farms that various people had proposed at that time, some of which are since complete.
 * - an out-of-date page that lists some wind farms completed by 2003 and earlier, along with more wind farms that various people had proposed at that time, some of which are since complete.

There were four wind farms in Pennsylvania with 20 or more wind turbines in 2007:


 * Casselman Wind Project, Somerset County, Pennsylvania (23 turbines) - Somerset County is south of Cambria County, and also on the Allegheny Front.
 * Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm	Cambria and Blair (40 turbines)
 * Meyersdale, Somerset County, Pennsylvania (20 turbines)
 * Waymart Wind Farm, Wayne County, Pennsylvania (43 turbines) - this is in extreme northeastern PA, so rule that out.

At first, the mention of Allegheny Front had me thinking Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm, but that's in Cambria and Blair counties near Altoona, which is not exactly "southern" Pennsylvania, but more like "western central". Also, this video shows a very different wind turbine layout:



Thus the photo is probably of the Casselman or Meyersdale wind projects. Meyersdale is looking somewhat probable, as it is near the southern border of Pennsylvania:

"The 30 MW Meyersdale Wind Power Project, developed in partnership with Atlantic Renewable Energy (now Iberdrola), is located in the Casselman River Valley in the shadow of Mt. Davis, the highest point in Pennsylvania. The geography of Meyersdale makes it the most energetic wind sites in Pennsylvania.
 * http://www.horizonwind.com/projects/whatwevedone/meyersdale.aspx

The 20 1.5 MW GE sle turbines are spread across nearly 3000 acres on top of a ridgeline populated with trees in Somerset County, in an area known for especially good wind resource. Each tower is 262 feet tall, with the three blades each measuring 116 feet long. The project provides enough power for 15,000 Pennsylvania homes."

Here's a copyrighted photo on Flickr, among several nice photos of the Meyersdale Wind Project:


 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/kftcphotos/2852579938/ Meyersdale Wind Project
 * The Meyersdale Wind Project sits on Mt. Hunsrick above the Town of Meyersdale, Somerset County Pennsylvania - population 2500.

The Google Maps aerial photo of the Meyersdale Wind Project makes it pretty clear that this is what File:Wind Farm PA.jpg depicts.


 * 39.80445°N, -78.99101°W

See if anyone on Flickr has uploaded wind farm photos with coordinates, under free licenses:



The city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania in Somerset County has a Gamesa wind turbine blade manufacturing plant. That would explain all the Gamesa wind turbines in wind farms in the area. Evidently Gamesa had some problems with the glue on their blades failing in 2007.

More references:

03:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC): identifying some poorly labeled wind farm photos from Flickr:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/jenniferboyer/2886015058/ creepy wind farm across the mountain
 * This photo and several more are part of a photoset with the title "Centralia". Centralia, Pennsylvania is a ghost town that fell victim to a coal mine fire. The Locust Ridge Wind Farm is nearby in neighboring Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, which Google finds with this search:
 * - it's unfortunate that many of Google's satellite photos are years out of date, causing many of these wind farms from the last few years not to appear. Thus I can't determine the exact coordinates of them. However, a mountain ridge a few miles to the south of Centralia has names such as "Locust Gap" and "Locust Summit" on it, suggesting that "Locust Ridge" is probably nearby. I can search Flickr without restricting the search to free photos. That finds at least one copyrighted photo with coordinates:
 * http://flickr.com/search/?q=locust%20ridge%20wind%20farm&w=all
 * http://flickr.com/photos/mikemcpheeters/2962020923/ 40.6931°N, -76.4428°W
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikemcpheeters/2962868912/in/photostream/ a sign for the wind farm
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikemcpheeters/2962022429/in/photostream/ another sign for the wind farm

This photo is most likely of the Waymart Wind Farm, near Waymart, Pennsylvania:


 * http://flickr.com/photos/nicholas_t/1466191560/ Honesdale, Wayne County, as seen from Irving Cliff. (The largest photo size makes the wind farm barely visible along the ridge in the distance: http://flickr.com/photos/nicholas_t/1466191560/sizes/o/ )

21:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC): User:Kubina uploaded a photo of wind turbines in Pa. and he geocoded his photo: I don't see the photo in Commons:Category:Wind power in Pennsylvania yet, so I might upload it later. The location of the photo suggests it is of the Somerset Wind Farm.
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/845484106/in/photostream/

19:03, 6 March 2010 (UTC): here is a KML file which might show the wind farms in Pennsylvania as of sometime in 2008:

This is the html version of the file http://tech.reumer.net/images/PennsylvaniaWindFarmMap.kml. Google automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web.


 * http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:k9i4j873pM0J:tech.reumer.net/images/PennsylvaniaWindFarmMap.kml+%22Green+Mountain+Wind+Farm%22+coordinates&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Copy the data about wind farms from it:

Name = Forward Wind Farm Location = Stoystown Latitude = 40 05'30.59"n Longitude = 78 51'49.02"w MWe = 29.4 Units = 14 Turbines = Suzlon Developer = Edison Mission Group Owner = Edison Mission Group Power_Purchaser = Unk Year_Online = 2008

Name = Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm Location = Ebensburg Latitude = 40 29'09.52"n Longitude = 78 45'57.93"w MWe = 80 Units = 40 Turbines = Gamesa Developer = Gamesa Owner = Babcock & Brown Power_Purchaser = First Energy Corp Year_Online = 2007 Web_Links = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_Ridge_Wind_Farm

Name = Casselman Wind Project Location = Garrett Latitude = 39 52'21.95"n Longitude = 79 08'09.46"w MWe = 34.5 Units = 23 Turbines = GE Developer = PPM Energy Owner = Iberdrola Renewables Power_Purchaser = First Energy Corp Year_Online = 2007 Web_Links = http://www.ppmenergy.com/cs_casselman.html

Name = Locust Ridge Wind Farm Location = Mahanoy City Latitude = 40 50'44.76"n Longitude = 76 08'50.87"w MWe = 26 Units = 13 Turbines = Gamesa Developer = Community Energy Owner = Noble Environmental Power_Purchaser = PPL Corp Year_Online = 2006

Name = Bear Creek Wind Farm Location = Bear Creek Latitude = 41 10'30.08"n Longitude = 75 46'09.60"w MWe = 24 Units = 12 Turbines = Gamesa Developer = CEI Iberdrola Owner = Babcock & Brown Power_Purchaser = PPL Corp Year_Online = 2006

Name = Meyersdale Wind Farm Location = Meyersdale Latitude = 39 47'22.07"n Longitude = 79 00'13.43"w MWe = 30 Units = 20 Turbines = NEG Micon Developer = Atlantic Renewable Energy Owner = FPL Energy Power_Purchaser = First Energy Corp Year_Online = 2003

Name = Waymart Wind Farm Location = Waymart Latitude = 41 33'40.21"n Longitude = 75 26'51.93"w MWe = 64.5 Units = 43 Turbines = GE Developer = Atlantic Renewable Energy Owner = FPL Energy Power_Purchaser = Exelon Year_Online = 2003

Name = Mill Run Wind Power Project Location = Mill Run Latitude = 39 56'58.05"n Longitude = 79 26'34.61"w MWe = 15 Units = 10 Turbines = GE Developer = Atlantic Renewable Energy Owner = FPL Energy Power_Purchaser = Exelon Year_Online = 2001

Name = Somerset Wind Power Project Location = Somerset Latitude = 39 58'52.34"n Longitude = 79 00'32.68"w MWe = 9 Units = 6 Turbines = GE Developer = Atlantic Renewable Energy Owner = FPL Energy Power_Purchaser = Exelon Year_Online = 2001

Name = Green Mountain Wind Farm Location = Garrett Latitude = 39 50'58.13"n Longitude = 79 04'06.11"w MWe = 10.4 Units = 8 Turbines = Nordex Developer = Atlantic Renewable Energy Owner = FPL Energy Power_Purchaser = Green Mountain Energy Year_Online = 2000

I tried to open the KML file in Quantum GIS. Supposedly this is possible with OGR converter plug-in. But I could not get it to work.

Wind power in Michigan
04:11, 19 January 2009 (UTC): just now, commons:Category:Wind power in Michigan has no images. See if Flickr has any:






 * http://flickr.com/photos/bengarrison/651515643/
 * Traverse City, Michigan installed one Vestas V44-600 kW wind turbine in 1996. At the time, it was the largest wind turbine in the U.S.; today it is smaller than the smallest wind turbine Vestas still sells (the V52-850 kW, according to the Vestas Web site).
 * http://flickr.com/photos/green4all/2894522393/
 * Mackinaw City, Michigan has two NEG Micon 900 kW wind turbines. The above photo, unfortunately, is not suitable for Commons as it has two random non-notable individuals appearing too largely in front of one of the wind turbines.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/notramstolimestreet/2962967700/
 * Wind turbines near Ubly, Michigan. Which would be in Huron County, Michigan in The Thumb. That makes these wind turbines part of either of the two wind farms in Huron County:
 * Noble Thumb Wind Park in Huron County, under construction as of 11/19/2008, to have 40 GE Energy 1.5 MW wind turbines.
 * Harvest Wind Farm in Oliver and Chandler Townships, Huron County, with 32 Vestas V82-1.65MW MW wind turbines.
 * http://www.greatlakeswiki.org/index.php/Harvest_Wind_Farm_in_Huron_County,_Michigan
 * Michigan Wind 1 is part of the former Noble Thumb Windpark (NTW), which John Deere Renewables acquired from Noble Environmental Power in October. The project consists of 46 GE SLE wind turbines and has a total capacity of 69 megawatts.
 * Michigan Wind 1 is part of the former Noble Thumb Windpark (NTW), which John Deere Renewables acquired from Noble Environmental Power in October. The project consists of 46 GE SLE wind turbines and has a total capacity of 69 megawatts.
 * Michigan Wind 1 is part of the former Noble Thumb Windpark (NTW), which John Deere Renewables acquired from Noble Environmental Power in October. The project consists of 46 GE SLE wind turbines and has a total capacity of 69 megawatts.

Stoney Corners wind farm
02:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC): here are some links about the Stoney Corners wind farm in McBain, Michigan:

The American Wind Energy Association maintains a database of wind power projects. Here is the page for Michigan: but it does not seem to list the Stoney Corners wind farm.
 * http://www.heritagewindenergy.com/projects.html
 * http://www.heritagewindenergy.com/projects.html
 * http://www.heritagewindenergy.com/projects.html
 * http://www.heritagewindenergy.com/projects.html
 * http://www.heritagewindenergy.com/projects.html
 * http://www.heritagewindenergy.com/projects.html
 * http://www.awea.org/projects/projects.aspx?s=Michigan

Wind power in Colorado


23:28, 20 January 2009 (UTC): those searches do not find much. I only see two photos of modern wind turbines in Colorado. Neither one gives the precise location, but both probably depict wind turbines somewhere in the southeast quadrant of Colorado which has seen some wind power development. One or both photos might be of the Twin Buttes Wind Farm or the Colorado Green Wind Farm near Lamar, Colorado.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/mplemmon/2716429294/ Windmills in Southern Colorado
 * http://flickr.com/photos/phillipstewart/496570433/ Rest area on U.S. Route 287 south in Colorado

I found some other photos of wind turbines probably in Colorado, in the results of other searches (such as for wind power in Oklahoma):
 * http://flickr.com/photos/shog9/2177355444/ Wind farm at Twin Buttes, CO 002 (and several more in a set)
 * http://flickr.com/photos/shog9/2177355452/in/photostream/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/shog9/2177355462/in/photostream/

This photo shows wind turbines with Suzlon on their nacelles, and the caption claims the photo is in Colorado, but I don't see any wind farms listed on the AWEA Colorado page that have Suzlon wind turbines. A Google search was also fruitless. Maybe the photo is really in Texas. Suzlon's site does not mention any projects in Colorado, but I don't know whether the site tries to be exhaustive:

"... agreements with Edison Mission Group (EMG) of Irvine, California and after repeat orders EMG holds more than 630 MW of Suzlon wind turbine capacity in the United States. Similarly Suzlon's relationship with John Deere Wind Energy (JDWE) started with its investment in several Minnesota wind power projects, but quickly expanded to Texas and recently Missouri. We have also signed a contract with Tierra Energy of Austin, Texas to provide 42 units of the S88-2.1 MW wind turbine for projects located in Wyoming and Texas. Suzlon’s contract with PPM Energy, a leader in optimized wind energy solutions, calls for delivery of 700 MW over the next few years."
 * http://www.suzlon.com/Clients.html?cp=2_5

Wind power in Montana


The searches find two photos, neither is clear about the location:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/mahalie/2747878301/in/photostream/ Hooterites Eco Village
 * The above photo might be one of Dave Healow's projects near Harlowton, Montana. Montana's largest wind farm is north of Harlowton near Judith Gap, Montana. I count 19 older-looking wind turbines in the above photo; the AWEA project page for Montana says Dave Healow has installed 23 refurbished Nordtank wind turbines at various sites in Montana. Googling for Healow doesn't find much. He seems to buy refurbished wind turbines from California's wind farms, and set them up to power irrigation pumps in Montana. His company is Montana Marginal Energy - it's pretty marginal all right, it doesn't even seem to have its own Web site, but it does show up in entries on a Google search. I could write to Mr. Healow and ask if the photo shows one of his projects.
 * I googled some more and I think this photo is of the Martinsdale, Montana Hutterite colony's wind farm. See:
 * http://www.coloradocollege.edu/stateoftherockies/07fieldtrip/wind%20farm.pdf
 * http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-10-30-50states-montana_N.htm
 * http://flickr.com/photos/capricious/194549649/ windmill farm.
 * The image tags include the word "glacier". This might be the Glacier I wind farm under construction near Ethridge, Montana. Except that the photo date is July 20, 2006, making it too early (probably) to be a wind farm under construction in 2008-2009. If the photo is really from Montana, the only wind farm of that size in Montana in 2006 was the Judith Gap Wind Farm. See if it is on a road that links to Glacier National Park; maybe the photographer saw the wind farm on the way to Glacier.
 * http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20090104/NEWS01/901040302/1002/news01
 * http://www.panoramio.com/photo/8879796 - according to this (non-free) photo, Judith Gap Wind Farm is on US-191 south of the town of Judith Gap.

Flickr has 34 images of the Judith Gap Wind Farm when I search for the name with no license restrictions:
 * http://flickr.com/search/?q=judith%20gap%20wind%20farm&w=all&s=int

See if any are free:

The search for free images finds zero. What is wrong with people? Why do they copyright photos that they upload to Flickr? All that does is prevent some people from seeing their photos. They are already giving away their work. Why gum it up with pointless copyright restrictions?

Wind power in Oklahoma




Those searches find quite a few photos; some are even geotagged. I like these photos of a wind turbine blade on public display at Weatherford, Oklahoma:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/49024304@N00/2642750096/ One Turbine Blade
 * http://flickr.com/photos/49024304@N00/2641925283/ Poster at the blade display

Wind power in Rhode Island


According to the AWEA site, the only utility-scale wind power installation in Rhode Island is at the Portsmouth Abbey School, a Vestas wind turbine with 660 kW nameplate capacity, which means it is probably a V47, like the one at Hull, Massachusetts. I wouldn't expect to find photos on Flickr with only one possible wind turbine to photograph in the whole state, but it's worth a look. If nothing else, I can address the Fact template that someone stuck in the article by adding a reference. Here are some non-free photos of the wind turbine:
 * - look for some more links
 * http://www.jonathanhaynes.com/picture-of-the-day/picture-of-the-day/2006/11/25/
 * http://www.jonathanhaynes.com/picture-of-the-day/picture-of-the-day/2006/11/25/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/coollibrarian/386108144/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/coollibrarian/391205016/in/set-767463/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/spencekarl/212138357/ (the photographer even geocoded this one...and yet copyrighted it. Why God why?)

Ah, but then the U.S. Federal Government comes to the rescue with an image I can upload to Commons with PD-USGOV:
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/newengland/26_portsmouth_abbey.jpg
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/newengland/26_portsmouth_abbey.jpg

Wind power in Massachusetts
08:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC): I've already uploaded some photos relating to Wind power in Massachusetts. See commons:Category:Wind power in Massachusetts. See if I can find any more.






 * Holy Name Central Catholic High School has a Vestas RRB PS47-600kW wind turbine. Vestas RRB is a wholly independent licensee of Vestas, based in India. The PS47 is basically the Vestas V47 model, which Vestas Wind Systems proper no longer manufactures.

"Vestas RRB India Ltd. has been pioneering the cause of wind power in India since 1987. Vestas RRB is a 100% independent manufacturer of wind turbines, in India. It has a license from Vestas Denmark and a technology transfer agreement for this successful wind turbine type.
 * http://www.worldwidewindturbines.com/en/wind-turbines/wind-turbine-manufacturers/vestas-rrb/250-700kw/ps47-600/

This turbine type, basically the Vestas V47, pitch regulated, is continuously produced and therefore almost single in its kW-range. World Wide Wind Turbines (WWWT) has a clear and open supply line for this product. Call us for more information."

Massachusetts seems to have an unusual number of sizable customer-sited wind power projects, I guess because the state is densely populated and thus has little room for onshore wind farms.



02:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC): here are some reasonably good photos of the IBEW wind turbine in Boston: However, the photo is on Photobucket which probably means we cannot upload it to Commons. I would have to convince the photo's owner to post it on Flickr under a suitably free license, so I could upload it from there to Commons.
 * http://media.photobucket.com/image/boston%20wind%20turbine/alexeichler/ny%20trip/14bostonwindturbine02.jpg?o=1
 * http://media.photobucket.com/image/boston%20wind%20turbine/alexeichler/ny%20trip/14bostonwindturbine03.jpg?o=2

22:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC): a source about the Vestas wind turbines in Hull, Massachusetts:
 * http://www.hullwind.org/

Wind power in Indiana




Some links about wind power in Benton County, Indiana (e.g., the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm and the Benton County Wind Farm):
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/filter_detail.asp?itemid=2123 Growing Wind Industry Great, But Have to Grow a Workforce
 * Date: 1/19/2009; Location: IN; Stacia Cudd, National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/filter_detail.asp?itemid=2120 One County, 646 Wind Turbines: Electricity an Exported Commodity
 * Date: 12/10/2008; Location: IN; Stacia Cudd, National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.

Here are some photos to upload from Flickr to Commons:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/indywriter/2463496391/ Installing a wind turbine @ The Time Factory
 * http://flickr.com/photos/indywriter/2464325612/in/photostream/ Installing a wind turbine @ The Time Factory, plus see the image pages for more information about this wind turbine at the Time factory in Indianapolis.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/vax-o-matic/sets/72157605884934129/ Benton County Wind Farm
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/glouis/sets/72157606797431199/ and another
 * Unfortunately, that second photo set is licensed as "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License" which is not a free license. So I cannot upload its photos to Commons.

21:29, 21 June 2009 (UTC): I edited these articles a little: I asked to clarify the camera location of File:Benton County wind turbines.png. I think that is a photo of the Benton County Wind Farm, but at the moment the photo illustrates the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm article. I uploaded some photos of Fowler Ridge from Flickr, and I found some more to upload. See Commons:Category:Fowler Ridge Wind Farm. I will straighten out the photos later.
 * Benton County, Indiana
 * Benton County Wind Farm
 * Fowler Ridge Wind Farm

Meadow Lake Wind Farm
19:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC): I found a map showing the layout of the Meadow Lake Wind Farm in a PDF file linked from this page:

The PDF file looks like a scan of a printed document from Horizon Wind Energy, the wind farm developer: The document and the site display no notice of copyright, so assume they are copyrighted. Maybe I could draw my own version of the map in Quantum GIS, which I have been looking at recently. Steps:
 * 1) Figure out how to print the map to a PNG from the PDF file, perhaps using Ghostscript under Cygwin, or perhaps it would be easier to just take a screenshot of the page with the map.
 * 2) Rotate the map 90 degrees since it is printed sideways in the PDF file.
 * 3) Load the map into a raster layer in QGIS, somehow.
 * 4) Install the OpenStreetMap plug-in in QGIS.
 * 5) Download OpenStreetMap data for Indiana, or at least for the subset of Indiana covered by the map.
 * 6) Line up the raster map layer over the OpenStreetMap layer in a compatible projection (maybe equirectangular projection since that is standard for online mapping software, and the map region spans only a few counties so spatial distortions are likely to be minor).
 * 7) Edit a new vector map layer, digitizing from the windfarm layout polygons on the PNG from the PDF file.
 * 8) Generate an SVG map combining my vector layer with the OpenStreetMap layer as a base map.
 * 9) Maybe pretty up the SVG map in Inkscape.

Wiser Indiana
Wiser Indiana is a renewable energy advocacy group. Study their site and see if it contains any information useful in Wikipedia articles.


 * http://www.wiserindiana.org/about-us

Dry Lake Wind Power Project
09:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC): Some notes about an article I'm starting:

That news article suggests the wind farm might be somewhere along Arizona State Route 377 between Holbrook, Arizona and Heber-Overgaard, Arizona in Navajo County. That would put the location roughly here: 34.62855°N, -110.36591°W, where there happens to be a feature called Dry Lake. The article seems to suggest that the wind farm is close enough to the Cholla Power Plant for the wind turbines and the power plant smokestacks to be visible on the horizon together. Given that these structures are tall enough to be visible for miles across a plain, this is plausible.

This user might be working on the same article: User:Calmer Waters/text user page2.

06:52, 6 May 2010 (UTC): Look for freely-licensed photos with Flickr free:

Nothing so far.

This reference gives a better idea of the location (wouldn't it be great if journalists could figure out what coordinates are, so they could specify locations precisely and unambiguously?):



Excerpt:
 * "When permitted, the Dry Lake 2 Wind Project will be located approximately seven miles northwest of Snowflake on a combination of private and state lands. The project will be just west of Arizona State Highway 77 three miles east of Dry Lake 1, south of Holbrook and the I-40 corridor."

That would put phase 2 about here:


 * 34.60467°N, -110.16128°W

and phase 1 about here:


 * 34.6017°N, -110.23441°W

Offshore
21:28, 29 April 2010 (UTC): the US still has no offshore wind farms, but Cape Wind just got approved.

This map shows the US offshore wind projects in planning: We have a Location map USA West but no Location map USA East yet. I might create the latter so I can show the locations of these wind farm projects on Wikipedia.
 * http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/04/26/business/20100427_WIND_map.html?ref=us

Wind power on campus
04:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC): a list of universities in the US and Canada (mostly) which have wind turbines on campus, or are associated with wind farm projects:



The page does not list this wind turbine: File:North American Wind Research and Training Center 3483764965.jpg of the Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

Categories
22:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC): Category:Wind power in the United States by state only had subcategories for two states just now. I added Category:Wind power in Vermont. We should have a subcategory for each state that has wind power articles. That would make it easier to write the remaining "Wind power in state" articles that do not exist yet.

Interactive Map of Renewable and Alternative Energy Projects in the UK
21:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC): here is a very nice interactive map of (apparently) all the major renewable energy projects in the UK:


 * http://www.renewables-map.co.uk/index.asp

This is useful for identifying otherwise mysterious photos of wind turbines in the UK that various users on Wikipedia and Commons upload without specific information. For example:


 * File:Benkid77 Promenade, Wallasey 1 090809.JPG depicts the following:
 * http://www.renewables-map.co.uk/details.asp?pageid=327 Royal Seaforth Dock (Wind, Operating)

The site links to Wikipedia articles, too, such as Royal Seaforth Dock. Some of these articles lack complete information about the renewable energy facilities in or near their locations. So check the articles and beef up their coverage. That way we can improve the value of the Interactive Map, by giving it better Wikipedia articles to link to.

Special:Linksearch shows nobody besides me linking to this site as of 03:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC).

Wind power in Scotland
08:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC): The following searches are productive:



A few of these photos are already on Commons, but not most of them. See commons:Category:Wind power in Scotland.

St John Bosco Primary School
While sorting more wind turbine photos on Commons, I ran across an article (St John Bosco Primary School) that should contain one of the photos, but does not yet. The article already has some cleanup templates that someone else placed on it. I might get around to cleaning up the article with these resources:
 * commons:Image:St John Bosco's Wind Turbine.JPG - an image of the wind turbine at this school.
 * - describes the school and its wind turbine installation.

George Monbiot grills the wind-NIMBY
09:36, 18 December 2008 (UTC): George Monbiot asks Shaun Spiers of the Campaign to Protect Rural England why his organization has opposed more than half of wind farm projects in the United Kingdom, but has not protested once against an opencast coal mine in the past five years:
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/dec/18/monbiot-cpre-wind-coal

Template:Infobox wind farm
I'm thinking about making a Infobox wind farm. Currently there isn't one. (20:22, 5 September 2010 (UTC): another user created the template.) There is a Infobox power station which comes close, and appears in some wind farm articles. Maybe wind farms could use their own infobox. The infobox wind farm fields could include:


 * Name
 * Image
 * Owner
 * Location (lat/lon)
 * City
 * State
 * Country
 * Start date
 * Completion date
 * Nameplate capacity, MW
 * Annual output, MW·h
 * Capacity factor
 * Number of wind turbines
 * Wind turbine manufacturer(s)
 * Wind turbine model(s)
 * Energy storage system

But first I will look at examples of Infobox power station in these wind farm articles:


 * Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox power station
 * Nygårdsfjellet wind farm
 * Hundhammerfjellet wind farm
 * Smøla Wind Farm
 * Hitra Wind Farm

User:Arsenikk started all of those articles. It does look like Infobox power station lacks some fields we might like to include for a wind farm. There are dozens of wind farms in the world, the number is growing rapidly, and we could ultimately have thousands of wind farm articles. Therefore, a separate infobox for wind farms seems justifiable, since it would add some value.

Template:Wind power
The wind power articles could use more navigation templates. There is no navigation template in Category:Energy templates specifically for Wind power. I will start by making a general one: Wind power to add to the major wind power articles. Existing templates which are similar or overlapping:
 * Wind turbines
 * Renewable energy sources
 * Energy in the USA (and various other country-specific energy templates)
 * Renewable energy by country

Later I might make additional navigation templates, for example to list the wind farms in various geographic areas, breaking it down into whatever regions can fit on a single template. That will depend on how many wind farms exist in a given continent, country, or state/province. As the wind industry continues to boom, the number of wind farms must eventually become enormous. The U.S. needs at least a million large wind turbines to make a dent in electricity demand and displace some significant amount of fossil fuel consumption.

As usual, start editing the template in User:Teratornis/Sandbox2. The categories to consider:
 * Category:Wind power
 * Category:Wind power by country
 * Category:Wind farms
 * Category:Wind farms by country
 * Category:Offshore wind farms
 * Category:Wind turbines
 * Category:Vertical axis wind turbines
 * Category:Wind turbine manufacturers
 * Category:Kites

Naturally, while looking around the wind-related categories, I find a lot of articles that need work:


 * OPG 7 commemorative turbine (miscategorized; poor wording; needs standard sections; proper references)

The Wind power article does not mention Kites currently. Kites have applications in load-lifting and ship propulsion. These are of course technologies for harnessing wind power.

19:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC): I got Wind power into preliminary shape so I created the template proper.

Baseload power
18:19, 3 September 2008 (UTC): a common objection to wind power is its intermittency. Wind power cites this source:



which mentions a journal paper. Find the journal reference, if possible, with Google scholar cite:


 * Search in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology for: wind power

That finds the result:



Cranes
07:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC): does Wikipedia document the cranes for erecting wind turbines? I stumbled across this Web page about the Manitowoc GTK1100 crane, specifically designed for wind farm construction and maintenance:


 * "Wind power is one of the fastest-growing areas for the lifting industry."
 * "Wind power is one of the fastest-growing areas for the lifting industry."

I already added that reference to The Manitowoc Company. See what else Wikipedia already says, or might yet need to say, about cranes for wind farm construction.



Replacing petroleum with wind power
18:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC): a common objection to wind power by wind power opponents is that wind power does not significantly reduce petroleum consumption. For example: The above essay appeared several years before the Pickens Plan, a proposal to use wind power to reduce natural gas for power generation, allowing the saved natural gas to power transportation.

The Environmental effects of wind power section does not address this objection, because it muddies the practical distinctions between different kinds of energy by taking them all as equivalent. Net energy gain analysis seems to be a crude first-order comparison, because it does not consider whether the form(s) of energy produced by a given technology can actually replace (and therefore "pay back") the specific forms of energy required to implement the technology. In practice, not all forms of energy are mutually fungible because of thermodynamic and engineering limitations. For example, there are many practical technologies for converting various forms of energy into electricity, but only a few sources of energy have the energy density and portability to make them practical to power transportation. Thus the transportation sector overwhelmingly depends on liquid fuels as of 2008, and most of these liquid fuels come from petroleum (with a small but growing fraction from biofuels). Since every form of commercial-scale power generation requires transportation of parts, equipment, and skilled labor during its construction and operation, every form of commercial-scale power generation is a net consumer of petroleum. When petroleum was cheap and abundant, this wasn't much of a concern, but as of 2008 petroleum has grown increasingly scarce, expensive, and insecure. Petroleum might be the form of energy one most wants to conserve, and the net energy gain for a particular technology won't necessarily say anything about that technology's impact on petroleum use.

Of course it is somewhat inconsistent for wind power opponents to single out wind power as being a net petroleum consumer, because the same is true of nuclear power, hydropower, coal, and every other form of power generation. They all require petroleum to power the cranes, trucks, shovels, ships, etc. necessary to mine the raw materials and haul and construct the finished equipment.

For any form of electric power generation to pay back its petroleum investment, there must be some mechanism for using the electricity generated to reduce petroleum consumption. In addition to the Pickens Plan, other possible mechanisms include:


 * Hydrogen economy (generate hydrogen from electricity, and use the hydrogen as an energy carrier to power vehicles)
 * Plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles
 * Telecommuting (use electricity to displace (some) personal transportation altogether)
 * Ultracapacitor technology such as from EEstor which, if it lives up to the hype, could provide sufficiently energy-dense storage of electrical energy, along with fast recharge times, to power heavy-duty vehicles (yes, this sounds too good to be true - not holding our breath on this)

A more rigorous definition of "net energy gain" would be to consider whether an energy technology can power its own construction. For example, can we use wind power to build more wind power (or nuclear power to build more nuclear power, etc.), without requiring other forms of energy? At the moment, no one seems to be doing this yet.

Bird kills
21:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC): another reference about bird kills, to add to Environmental effects of wind power: Find the paper that the above article alludes to, with Google scholar cite: That finds no results yet. Maybe Google hasn't indexed the paper yet. Google finds many papers by this author in the.
 * "The study, published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology" "Dr Mark Whittingham and colleagues from Newcastle University conducted bird surveys on arable farmland around two wind farms in the East Anglian fens."
 * author: Whittingham; publication: Journal of Applied Ecology; yearlow:yearhigh: 2008

Here's an online reference: Article Information Minimal effects of wind turbines on the distribution of wintering farmland birds Claire L. Devereux, Matthew J. H. Denny, Mark J. Whittingham Journal of Applied Ecology Volume 9999, Issue 9999, Pages - Journal compilation © 2008 British Ecological Society Abstract Received 8 April 2008; accepted 16 August 2008 Handling Editor: Chris Elphick DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI) 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2008.01560.x About DOI
 * http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/user/accessdenied?ID=121427776&Act=2138&Code=4717&Page=/cgi-bin/fulltext/121427776/HTMLSTART
 * http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121427776/abstract

from which I can piece together the citation with the Universal Reference Formatter:

20:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC): another reference which finds offshore wind farms to have a net benefit for marine life:

Bat kills
Several sections of Wikipedia have discussion of bats and wind farms:


 * Barotrauma (the lead section mentions bats and wind farms)
 * Bat
 * Environmental effects of wind power
 * Talk:Environmental impact of wind power/Archive 1
 * Talk:Environmental impact of wind power/Archive 1

If the mechanism of bat death is in fact barotrauma, and the pressure changes are caused by Wingtip vortices from the turbine blades, then adding wingtip devices to the turbine blade tips may reduce the vortices and associated pressure gradients, possibly mitigating barotrauma, reducing blade noise, and increasing turbine efficiency. See:



A Swedish study examined impacts of offshore wind on bats and found some bat species flew 10 km offshore.
 * http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Documents/publikationer/620-5571-2.pdf

A short article on bats foraging in offshore areas and even perching on the turbines, but some of this info could be resulting from the same study above:
 * http://www.bsg-ecology.com/newsandresources/index.php/2011/03/01/bats-forage-over-the-sea-implications-for-off-shore-wind-farms/

A paper about barotrauma in bats:
 * http://www.naturvardsverket.se​/Documents/publikationer/620-5​571-2.pdf

Wind power tourism
05:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC): find more references about wind power tourism. Wind power opponents like to circulate scare stories about wind power decimating tourism. However, some wind farms have actually become tourist attractions, to the surprise of their developers.


 * - the article claims that most of Australia's wind farms have visitor centers, and several tour companies bring tourists to see them on petroleum-powered buses (a bit of irony there, to burn up the scarcest fossil fuel so people can look at renewable energy being made - too bad it can't power their trip to see it yet).
 * - the article claims that most of Australia's wind farms have visitor centers, and several tour companies bring tourists to see them on petroleum-powered buses (a bit of irony there, to burn up the scarcest fossil fuel so people can look at renewable energy being made - too bad it can't power their trip to see it yet).
 * - the article claims that most of Australia's wind farms have visitor centers, and several tour companies bring tourists to see them on petroleum-powered buses (a bit of irony there, to burn up the scarcest fossil fuel so people can look at renewable energy being made - too bad it can't power their trip to see it yet).
 * - the article claims that most of Australia's wind farms have visitor centers, and several tour companies bring tourists to see them on petroleum-powered buses (a bit of irony there, to burn up the scarcest fossil fuel so people can look at renewable energy being made - too bad it can't power their trip to see it yet).

Peak oil proponents predict drastic reductions in tourism, since it is the least essential use of petroleum and thus the first that is likely to go away as oil extraction declines. If this turns out to be true, then wind turbines may have little net effect on tourism, because the tourism industry is going to downsize drastically.

Wind turbines on public display
07:49, 18 October 2008 (UTC): it would be fun to start building a list somewhere of wind turbines on public display. The closest section I have seen is Unconventional wind turbines, which lists two wind turbines that have observation decks open to the public. Make a list of the wind turbines on public display as I find them, and eventually I might find an article in which to list them: Technical data: Commissioned: May 1997 Hub height: 50m Rotor diameter: 30m Rated capacity: 230 kW Theoretical annual output: 350–400 MWh/a "In mid 1996, a new call for tenders was put out for the location that had been identified on the Danube island near the Steinspornbrücke bridge. Contracts were awarded in August 1996, and construction completed in October 1997."
 * Lamma Winds on Lamma Island in Hong Kong
 * A wind turbine at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio
 * Toronto Hydro - WindShare
 * Swaffham in the United Kingdom - has a wind turbine with an observation deck open to the public, owned by Ecotricity
 * Windpark Holtriem in Germany - has a similar wind turbine with an observation deck
 * Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand
 * Holy Name Central Catholic High School has a wind turbine, but I don't know yet whether it is on public display.
 * Wattle Point Wind Farm, South Australia has an information centre.
 * Great River Energy - search for mentions of the wind turbine on this site:
 * - claims that when it was installed in 2007, it was one of only five wind turbines running in a North American metro area, but does not name them. However, this next article does name them as Toronto, Cincinnati, and Boston (with two) (note that the article does not mention Cleveland with its Great Lakes Science Center turbine, nor does it mention the sustainable Wal-Mart in McKinney, Texas):
 * McKinney, Texas - has a "sustainable Wal-Mart" with 50 kW and 1 kW wind turbines by Bergey Windpower.
 * Boston, Massachusetts has several wind turbines:
 * - an article about the Local 103 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers which installed the first commercial-scale wind turbine within the City of Boston. The turbine is a 100 kW unit from Fuhrlaender and stands on a 35-meter tower with a rotor diameter of 21 meters. The turbine is visible on Google Maps at coordinates: 42.315892,-71.034086.
 * http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/images/newengland/22_ibew.jpg - a collage of some low-resolution photos of the IBEW wind turbine, from a U.S. Government site, so it's a free photo that I could upload.
 * http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9079161 - an article that mentions the IBEW wind turbine, and another project that someone is planning.
 * Hull, Massachusetts has two large (and one small) wind turbines: Hull 1, a Vestas V47-660kW installed in 2001; Hull 2, a Vestas V80-1.8MW installed in 2006.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/efsavage/2842389934/in/set-72157607194136907/ - a Flickr photostream showing several views of the Hull 1 wind turbine.
 * Kittery, Maine
 * Texas State Technical College in Sweetwater, Texas has a 2MW wind turbine from DeWind it uses for teaching.
 * Huitengxile Wind Farm in Inner Mongolia, China has 14 visitor centers to accommodate wind power tourism. I cited it in Wind farm:
 * Renewable Energy Systems at Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, has a Vestas V29 225kW wind turbine at its headquarters.
 * The European Wind Energy Association held a Wind Day 2007 in locations across Europe. The exhibition in Brussels, Belgium included the temporary installation of a used 100 kW wind turbine in the Schuman roundabout, facing the headquarters of the European Union.
 * As part of a series of events to mark the first European Wind Day, wind power came to the centre of the EU with the temporary installation of a 25 metre high wind turbine on Schuman roundabout in the administrative district of Brussels.
 * |%20%3C%2Fa%3E&md5=38d58d059692001b6b278af4570bd315 a nice picture that is probably under copyright. It shows the wind turbine at night, but photographed from atop an obviously much taller building, which highlights the utter impracticality of the Schuman roundabout as a promising location for a wind turbine of this height (taller nearby buildings would create severe wind shadow).
 * Mesalands Community College planned to install a General Electric 1.5 MW wind turbine for instruction.
 * I found a photo of this wind turbine on Flickr and I uploaded it to Commons:
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/49024304@N00/3483764965/
 * File:North American Wind Research and Training Center 3483764965.jpg
 * commons:Image:Enercon E32 Windenergieanlage.jpg - this photo depicts an Enercon E-32 wind turbine with what appears to be an observation platform below the nacelle. However, the photo caption does not mention the observation platform. Access appears to be by an outside, unprotected ladder. Yikes.
 * http://www.auswind.org/visit/ lists several wind farms in Australia that have visitor centers or guided tours.
 * commons:Image:BlayneyWindfarm.jpg depicts the visitor center at Blayney Wind Farm, New South Wales.
 * I noticed while browsing the map of installed wind power projects on the World Wind Database site that Vienna, Austria has an urban wind turbine (an Enercon E30), and may have been the first large city to install one. References:
 * Renewable Energy Systems at Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, has a Vestas V29 225kW wind turbine at its headquarters.
 * The European Wind Energy Association held a Wind Day 2007 in locations across Europe. The exhibition in Brussels, Belgium included the temporary installation of a used 100 kW wind turbine in the Schuman roundabout, facing the headquarters of the European Union.
 * As part of a series of events to mark the first European Wind Day, wind power came to the centre of the EU with the temporary installation of a 25 metre high wind turbine on Schuman roundabout in the administrative district of Brussels.
 * |%20%3C%2Fa%3E&md5=38d58d059692001b6b278af4570bd315 a nice picture that is probably under copyright. It shows the wind turbine at night, but photographed from atop an obviously much taller building, which highlights the utter impracticality of the Schuman roundabout as a promising location for a wind turbine of this height (taller nearby buildings would create severe wind shadow).
 * Mesalands Community College planned to install a General Electric 1.5 MW wind turbine for instruction.
 * I found a photo of this wind turbine on Flickr and I uploaded it to Commons:
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/49024304@N00/3483764965/
 * File:North American Wind Research and Training Center 3483764965.jpg
 * commons:Image:Enercon E32 Windenergieanlage.jpg - this photo depicts an Enercon E-32 wind turbine with what appears to be an observation platform below the nacelle. However, the photo caption does not mention the observation platform. Access appears to be by an outside, unprotected ladder. Yikes.
 * http://www.auswind.org/visit/ lists several wind farms in Australia that have visitor centers or guided tours.
 * commons:Image:BlayneyWindfarm.jpg depicts the visitor center at Blayney Wind Farm, New South Wales.
 * I noticed while browsing the map of installed wind power projects on the World Wind Database site that Vienna, Austria has an urban wind turbine (an Enercon E30), and may have been the first large city to install one. References:
 * I found a photo of this wind turbine on Flickr and I uploaded it to Commons:
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/49024304@N00/3483764965/
 * File:North American Wind Research and Training Center 3483764965.jpg
 * commons:Image:Enercon E32 Windenergieanlage.jpg - this photo depicts an Enercon E-32 wind turbine with what appears to be an observation platform below the nacelle. However, the photo caption does not mention the observation platform. Access appears to be by an outside, unprotected ladder. Yikes.
 * http://www.auswind.org/visit/ lists several wind farms in Australia that have visitor centers or guided tours.
 * commons:Image:BlayneyWindfarm.jpg depicts the visitor center at Blayney Wind Farm, New South Wales.
 * I noticed while browsing the map of installed wind power projects on the World Wind Database site that Vienna, Austria has an urban wind turbine (an Enercon E30), and may have been the first large city to install one. References:
 * commons:Image:Enercon E32 Windenergieanlage.jpg - this photo depicts an Enercon E-32 wind turbine with what appears to be an observation platform below the nacelle. However, the photo caption does not mention the observation platform. Access appears to be by an outside, unprotected ladder. Yikes.
 * http://www.auswind.org/visit/ lists several wind farms in Australia that have visitor centers or guided tours.
 * commons:Image:BlayneyWindfarm.jpg depicts the visitor center at Blayney Wind Farm, New South Wales.
 * I noticed while browsing the map of installed wind power projects on the World Wind Database site that Vienna, Austria has an urban wind turbine (an Enercon E30), and may have been the first large city to install one. References:

I see a commons:Category:Steinspornbrücke, but none of the four photos of the bridge show the wind turbine. Here is a newer wind turbine in Vienna:
 * American Wind Power Center seems to have this Vestas wind turbine at its museum in Lubbock, Texas:
 * commons:File:Vestasturbine.jpg; compare to:
 * http://www.windmill.com/images/AWPC_Arial.jpg
 * http://www.windmill.com/images/100_1288.JPG
 * Scout Moor Wind Farm is becoming a tourist attraction, according to the caption on the photo from Geograph (UK):
 * http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/989899
 * http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/989899

See also my notes on above.

07:35, 2 November 2008 (UTC): I created a Category:Wind turbines on public display as a subcategory of Category:Wind power, so I can group these various wind farms that have visitor centers and public tours. I also started a new section: which might eventually spin off to a separate article if this list becomes large.
 * Unconventional wind turbines

10:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC): while searching for free images on Flickr, I came across photos of visitor kiosks at two wind farms owned by FPL Energy. The visitor kiosks use the same design.


 * Photos most likely of the Gray County Wind Farm near Montezuma, Kansas:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/28748264@N03/2712499024/in/set-72157608523149666/ - a blurry shot of the visitor center kiosk. I can just barely make out the words "Gray" and "County" in the metal lettering on the kiosk roof.
 * http://flickr.com/photos/28748264@N03/2987855955/in/set-72157608523149666/ - another shot that just clips the top of the kiosk.
 * A photo of the Hancock County Wind Center's visitor kiosk (apparently somewhere in Hancock County, Iowa), this time the photo is pretty clear:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/timtimes/3059998289/
 * 20:49, 4 January 2009 (UTC): I uploaded this to: File:Hancock County Wind Energy Center visitor kiosk 3059998289 e60b6b5a09 o.jpg
 * - finds more mentions on the Web about FPL Energy's visitor kiosks at other wind farms. Cool.


 * St. Olaf College has this wind turbine: commons:File:StOlafTurbine1WEB.jpg.
 * Portsmouth Abbey School has this wind turbine: commons:File:26 portsmouth abbey.jpg.
 * Whitelee Wind Farm has some visitor amenities:
 * http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/4951236.stm "Facilities will include a visitor centre and cycle and walking routes."


 * Schafer Systems in Adair, Iowa installed a Vestas V29-225kW wind turbine at its plastic-molding plant off Interstate 80 in 1995 (41.49415°N, -94.64576°W (the wind turbine is visible in this satellite photo)).

04:36, 19 January 2009 (UTC): Here is information about wind power at schools in the U.S.:

That lists a huge number of wind turbines. For example, here's one I didn't know about, a Vestas V47-660kW at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy: Unfortunately, Flinfo is down yet again just now. I like this photo enough to upload it by hand. That is, just edit the commons:Template:Information myself to be like Flinfo would automatically fill out. I always have to edit the template anyway, since Flinfo doesn't get things right. Actually I don't see how to get all the fields that Flinfo gets for a photo, including the date and time of the photo, and information about the person who uploaded it. I can see a date of the photo, but no time, and when I go to the author's page, it's not clear what I'm seeing. I will wait for Flinfo to come back so I can be sure I'm putting the right information on the photo.
 * - this search finds one usable photo of the wind turbine, clearly showing the MMA insignia on the nacelle:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/dawnzy/2629146705/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/dawnzy/2629146705/

06:48, 8 August 2009 (UTC): the AWEA projects list for Illinois lists a 2.5 MW Clipper wind turbine at a "Sustaiable (sic) Technologies Museum", but I am not able to find any more information about it. That would be one of the biggest wind turbines at a museum I have heard of yet. Google for it: "Sustainable Technologies Museum" may be a garbling of the Sustainable Discover Center in Sublette, Illinois. More references: However, the Sustainable Discovery Center does not list a Clipper 2.5 MW wind turbine in its arsenal:
 * Name: Sustainable Technologies Museum
 * Power capacity: 2.5 MW
 * Units: 1
 * Turbine mfr.: Clipper
 * Developer: FPC/GSG wind
 * Owner: GSG 3, LLC
 * Power purchaser: ComEd
 * Year online: 2007
 * - finds nothing appropriate
 * http://www.svcc.edu/news/RotatingHeadlines/2009-04-Wind-Energy-Open-House.html Open House to Launch Sauk’s New Wind Energy Program on April 30
 * Sauk Valley Community College
 * http://www.sustainablediscoverycenter.org/about/building.html

20:48, 18 April 2010 (UTC): the Sénart Square shopping center in France has this wind turbine: File:Eolienne du Carré Sénart.jpg. Google is not being helpful for finding information about this wind turbine. Search in French:
 * http://www.unibail-rodamco.com/unibail-rodamco/pdf/Corporate_Sustainability_Report_2007.pdf - says:
 * "Carré Sénart has the first wind turbine installed on a shopping center in France (2001). In 2007 this wind turbine produced 84 MWh. The electric power is provided to the EDF network." (I'm unable to copy text from this "secured" PDF file - I hate PDFs.)
 * http://www.thewindpower.net/wind-farm-691-carre-senart-nd-nd.php - gives no data about the wind turbine. Such as the maker. None of the photos of the wind turbine give a clue.

Wind turbine webcams
09:26, 5 December 2008 (UTC): some wind turbines have webcams mounted on their nacelles. The images are accessible over the Internet, and change as the nacelle rotates on the tower to keep the rotor facing the wind. For example:


 * http://www.meteotest.ch/cost727/webcam_e40.html - some photos from the (formerly) world's highest-situated wind turbine at Alpine Test Site Gütsch, Switzerland (Enercon E40).
 * http://www.meteotest.ch/cost727/webcam_e40.html - some photos from the (formerly) world's highest-situated wind turbine at Alpine Test Site Gütsch, Switzerland (Enercon E40).
 * http://www.meteotest.ch/cost727/webcam_e40.html - some photos from the (formerly) world's highest-situated wind turbine at Alpine Test Site Gütsch, Switzerland (Enercon E40).

Images of wind turbines
20:31, 4 November 2008 (UTC): Commons has many images of wind turbines, but sometimes it is difficult to start with an article and find am image to illustrate it. Sometimes a more fruitful strategy is to browse through the photos, and then look for articles to put some of the photos in. That is, it's easier to find an article to go with a photo than to find a photo to go with an article. That has to do with the better organization and searchability of articles. See User:Teratornis/Notes.


 * On Wikipedia:
 * &ns6=1&fulltext=Search
 * &ns6=1&fulltext=Search
 * &ns6=1&fulltext=Search
 * &ns6=1&fulltext=Search
 * On Commons:
 * Mayflower - a third-party search tool that seems to work pretty well, depending on how uploaders have labeled their images.
 * commons:Special:Categories lets you look up images by category. For example, these are some categories with photographs of wind turbines:
 * commons:Category:Wind farms
 * commons:Category:Wind power
 * commons:Category:Wind turbines
 * Commons has gallery pages that users edit manually. I could add images to these pages, to help organize the wind turbine images, some of which are somewhat scattershot at the moment, i.e., not listed on the gallery pages that could use them.
 * Wind turbine
 * To-do: list some more
 * Commons has user pages also, for example:
 * commons:User:SPBer

I could make a gallery of images for wind turbines on public display.

I made a single-signon account with Special:MergeAccount so I can edit on Commons. See WP:EIW and commons:User:Teratornis.

00:13, 26 November 2008 (UTC): I have been looking through the many wind power photos on Commons recently, categorizing them by country (where they aren't already, and I can determine the country). I'm also categorizing some of the photos by wind turbine vendor, when I can recognize the vendor. There are some nice photos which can go in our wind-power-related articles. I find it is generally easier to browse through collections of photos, and then find articles to put them in, rather than start with some arbitrary article and try to find photos for it. The current technology for searching text is much better than for searching photos, so once you have recognized a promising photo by viewing it, you can easily look up articles on Wikipedia to put it in. I have found some photos to add to various places: In addition to Commons, some of the other language Wikipedias have wind power photos that are not on Commons yet, such as from the Italian Wikipedia: and from the Danish Wikipedia: Flickr has some interesting photos too. For example, Flickr has a clearer version of an existing photo on Commons:
 * Enercon
 * Unconventional wind turbines
 * Wind power in Austria
 * Wind power in Italy
 * it:Immagine:Passo Monte Croce Carnico 1.jpg
 * it:Immagine:Poggi Alti 10(3).jpg
 * da:Billede:Rødsand og Nysted Havmøllepark.gif
 * commons:Image:Reschenpass Suedrampe.jpg
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/59683764@N00/2058125860/

07:51, 26 November 2008 (UTC): while browsing through commons:Category:Wind farms I saw this image: which links to this user page on the Dutch Wikipedia: which is a bit tough for me to read because I don't speak Dutch. See what Google translation can do: The translation is almost readable. I looked at the site of Victor Bos and it doesn't seem he focuses on wind power. He had one or two photos that the Dutch Wikipedia uses. The Dutch Wikipedia does, however, have some information about wind power in the Netherlands which I might use in a Wind power in The Netherlands article. See:
 * commons:Image:Windmolens Eempolder bij Eemdijk foto Victor Bos.jpg
 * nl:Wikipedia:Victor Bos
 * nl:Windenergie

09:10, 15 January 2009 (UTC): look for images of the two Enercon E-30 wind turbines in Antarctica that Wind turbine mentions: No luck there. This page from the Australian Antarctic Division Web site has a nice picture showing the Mawson Wind Farm, but I don't know the copyright status of Australian Government works. I'll assume they aren't as nice as the U.S. Government. Almost nobody is. Google Image search has lots of photos of these wind turbines, but Google does not provide any way I know of to search for free images, and most of what you find on the Web is not free:
 * http://images.google.com/images?q=mawson%20wind%20farm&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

10:03, 22 January 2009 (UTC): here is an image like one I would like to make a free version of it in a larger pixel size (actually it would be better as an SVG file and thus scaleable to any size with no loss of resolution): The image is a diagram showing the scale of a series of wind turbines. It would be cool to make a similar image showing a series of old, modern, and future proposed wind turbines. 21:55, 22 January 2009 (UTC): later I found this source which says the image is from NREL:
 * http://cleantechlawandbusiness.com/cleanbeta/wp-content/gallery/stuff/windturbineonscalesize.jpg

Murdochville
03:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC): expand the wind farm description in Murdochville. References:
 * - TechnoCentre éolien has established a research unit that will focus on wind power operations in cold climates and encourage economic stability.
 * - The Copper Interpretation Centre is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to promote the mining, metallurgy and social spheres of Murdochville. In 2005 the Centre began featuring tours of a wind turbine on Miller Mountain (not the same Miller Mountain for which we have an article; that one is in Pennsylvania).
 * - The Copper Interpretation Centre is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to promote the mining, metallurgy and social spheres of Murdochville. In 2005 the Centre began featuring tours of a wind turbine on Miller Mountain (not the same Miller Mountain for which we have an article; that one is in Pennsylvania).

Images: This is an interesting image; too bad it's under copyright:
 * commons:Image:Murdocville ski eolienne.JPG
 * commons:Category:Gaspésie - contains the above image, but no more images of wind turbines in Gaspésie.
 * http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6658058
 * http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/6658058.jpg
 * http://www.panoramio.com/photos/original/6658058.jpg - large panorama

Wind power in Italy
10:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC): as of that date, Italy was the largest producer of wind power (7th in the world in 2007) still without a "Wind power in..." article on Wikipedia. Therefore, I started a Wind power in Italy article. I have not started many articles yet on Wikipedia, preferring to improve the existing articles, but this is a bothersome gap. I don't speak Italian, but many words are cognates with English, and in a technical area such as wind power where I am familiar with the topic, I can get by with machine translation.

Wind power in Italy references
Some references:


 * On the Italian Wikipedia:
 * it:Energia eolica - the Wind power article on the Italian Wikipedia, which may have some useful information.
 * - the article is pretty general and doesn't say much about wind power in Italy that I didn't already know.
 * it:Immagine:Market share eolico.JPG - a graph with a caption in Italian:
 * Market share dei produttori di energia elettrica da fonte eolica (Italia, 2006)
 * Google translated to English: Market share of producing electricity from wind power source (Italy, 2006)
 * it:Centrale eolica - this is just a redirect to the main it:Energia eolica article.
 * it:Associazione nazionale energia del vento - the Italian Wind Energy Association
 * it:Categoria:Energia eolica
 * it:Categoria:Parchi eolici
 * it:Categoria:Impianti eolici della Toscana
 * it:Parco eolico di Montemignaio
 * it:Parco eolico dei Poggi Alti
 * it:Immagine:Parco eolico dei Poggi Alti Scansano (GR).jpg
 * it:Immagine:Poggi Alti 10(3).jpg
 * it:Portale:Energia
 * search for: parco eolica (Italian for "wind farm")
 * it:Centrali elettriche in Italia - lists some wind farms in the large table of power plants in Italy; below is an excerpt of just the wind farm entries, with a second copy of the header row after I ran it through Google translation:

Lista di centrali elettriche presenti in Italia.


 * On the English Wikipedia:
 * Energy in Italy
 * Economy of Italy
 * Topic outline of Italy - lists Renewable energy in Italy as a red link
 * Global Wind Energy Council
 * European Wind Energy Association
 * Italian Wind Energy Association - no article on the English Wikipedia yet, but it exists in the real world as Associazione Nazionale Energia del Vento (ANEV)
 * List of renewable energy topics by country
 * Renewable energy in the European Union - has the usable Image:European-union-renewables-fr.svg
 * Wind power in the European Union - has the usable Image:Wind power installed in Europe by end of 2007.svg
 * Wind power - gives some overall statistics of Italy's wind power capacity
 * Category:Renewable energy by country
 * Category:Wind power by country
 * Category:Italy
 * Category:Energy in Italy
 * Category:Power stations in Italy
 * Category:Nuclear power stations in Italy
 * Category:Solar power stations in Italy
 * Category:Solar power stations in Italy


 * External links:
 * - GE Energy's latest wind turbine technology has been selected to support the expansion of Wind Farm Serre in southern Italy. According to the European Wind Energy Association, Italy had more than 2,700 megawatts of installed wind capacity by the end of 2007, a 30% increase over the previous year. To help enhance its renewable portfolio, Italy has a set a goal to generate 12,000 megawatts using wind energy by 2020, which could be met as early as 2015 if the present growth rate continues.
 * - GE Energy's latest wind turbine technology has been selected to support the expansion of Wind Farm Serre in southern Italy. According to the European Wind Energy Association, Italy had more than 2,700 megawatts of installed wind capacity by the end of 2007, a 30% increase over the previous year. To help enhance its renewable portfolio, Italy has a set a goal to generate 12,000 megawatts using wind energy by 2020, which could be met as early as 2015 if the present growth rate continues.
 * - GE Energy's latest wind turbine technology has been selected to support the expansion of Wind Farm Serre in southern Italy. According to the European Wind Energy Association, Italy had more than 2,700 megawatts of installed wind capacity by the end of 2007, a 30% increase over the previous year. To help enhance its renewable portfolio, Italy has a set a goal to generate 12,000 megawatts using wind energy by 2020, which could be met as early as 2015 if the present growth rate continues.
 * - GE Energy's latest wind turbine technology has been selected to support the expansion of Wind Farm Serre in southern Italy. According to the European Wind Energy Association, Italy had more than 2,700 megawatts of installed wind capacity by the end of 2007, a 30% increase over the previous year. To help enhance its renewable portfolio, Italy has a set a goal to generate 12,000 megawatts using wind energy by 2020, which could be met as early as 2015 if the present growth rate continues.
 * - GE Energy's latest wind turbine technology has been selected to support the expansion of Wind Farm Serre in southern Italy. According to the European Wind Energy Association, Italy had more than 2,700 megawatts of installed wind capacity by the end of 2007, a 30% increase over the previous year. To help enhance its renewable portfolio, Italy has a set a goal to generate 12,000 megawatts using wind energy by 2020, which could be met as early as 2015 if the present growth rate continues.
 * - GE Energy's latest wind turbine technology has been selected to support the expansion of Wind Farm Serre in southern Italy. According to the European Wind Energy Association, Italy had more than 2,700 megawatts of installed wind capacity by the end of 2007, a 30% increase over the previous year. To help enhance its renewable portfolio, Italy has a set a goal to generate 12,000 megawatts using wind energy by 2020, which could be met as early as 2015 if the present growth rate continues.


 * http://www.anev.org/modules/Documents/eodocuments/Potenziale_Eolico.pdf - it's in Italian, and too large for Google to translate, but seemingly very informative about Italy's wind power potential
 * http://www.gse.it/attivita/statistiche/Documents/Eolico2008%20condativento.pdf - Google says: The page you requested was too large to translate.
 * Title in English: Wind energy Statistical data December 31, 2008 by Statistics Office

Images of wind power in Italy on the Italian Wikipedia
Look for images of wind turbines, wind farms, etc. on the Italian Wikipedia. Images that are not already on Commons appear in bold:


 * it:Immagine:Market share eolico.JPG - a graph with a caption in Italian:
 * Market share dei produttori di energia elettrica da fonte eolica (Italia, 2006)
 * Google translated to English: Market share of producing electricity from wind power source (Italy, 2006)
 * it:Immagine:Parco eolico dei Poggi Alti Scansano (GR).jpg
 * This file and its description page (Amendment debate) are on Wikimedia Commons. If you are unfamiliar Commons, visit the Welcome page, or read the FAQ.
 * it:Immagine:Poggi Alti 10(3).jpg
 * it:Immagine:Passo Monte Croce Carnico 1.jpg - someone already appears to have templated this image to move to Commons. Or maybe that was automatic. I translated the text:
 * A file with this license can be made available in other languages in Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects if loaded on Wikimedia Commons. Any user can make the transfer. List of transferable images. You can get help from CommonsHelper. Once transferred the file, enter on this page: ((NowCommons | on behalf of the Commons))
 * The image looks really good, showing a wind turbine in the Plöcken Pass, I guess. Move it to Commons.
 * it:Passo di Monte Croce Carnico has the caption for this photo (Google translated to English): Wind power plant on the Austrian side of the pitch Monte Cross Carnico

This is a productive search, it finds several articles that mention wind farms in Italy, a few having photos I did not previously find:
 * http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciale:Ricerca?search=parco+eolica&go=Vai (search for: wind farm in Italian)

Figure out how to transfer images to Commons from the Italian Wikipedia.

Images of wind power in Italy on Commons
08:55, 21 November 2008 (UTC): several useful images are on the Italian Wikipedia that I would like to use in Wind power in Italy. To use them, I need to move them to Commons. See: Moving images to Commons. Make a list here of all the images I would like to re-use. When I figure out how to move the images, add them to a suitable category on Commons, for example:


 * commons:Category:Wind power in Italy - which already exists, with one member:
 * commons:Image:Buccheri-Panorama.JPG - shows a wind farm in the background of the town of Buccheri, Sicily.

Look for more images on Commons, search for "eolica", the Italian word for "wind". This finds only one image of wind turbine(s) in Italy that was not already in commons:Category:Wind power in Italy, so I added it to the correct category.
 * http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=Eolica&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns9=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&fulltext=Search
 * commons:Image:Centrale Eolica Frigento.jpg - Aeolian generating station nearby Frigento (AV) - Italy. Author: Roberto Petruzzo - 2005 (a town (commune) in the province of Avellino, Campania, Italy)
 * Check out this Toolserver tool that finds which Wikipedias have the above image:
 * http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/CommonSense.php?i=Centrale_Eolica_Frigento.jpg&go-clean=yes
 * Search Commons for: wind italy
 * commons:Image:REpowerMM82.jpg - REpower MM82 Wind Turbine in Minervino Murge, Italy

That seems to be about all I can find on Commons. Except for these which I first found on the Italian Wikipedia:
 * commons:Image:Parco eolico dei Poggi Alti Scansano (GR).jpg
 * commons:Image:Market share eolico.JPG
 * commons:Image:Varese Ligure - Pale eoliche.JPG

Images of wind power in Italy on Flickr
Look for images on Flickr:


 * search Flickr for: wind power in Italy
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorillaradio/2401771926/ it:Pedagaggi Wind Turbines, Uploaded on April 9, 2008 by Sebastiano Pitruzzello (aka gorillaradio) All sizes of this photo are available for download under a Creative Commons license. - this photo is very good.
 * Pedagaggi appears to be in the Province of Syracuse.
 * Unfortunately the license of this photo is: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic, which stipulates:
 * Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
 * No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
 * commons:Commons:Licensing says: Wikimedia Commons accepts only free content, that is, images and other media files that can be used by anyone, for any purpose. Therefore, I cannot upload this image to Commons.
 * http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolomargari/2460143974/ cartolina dal salento (postcard from salento), showing a wind turbine
 * Unfortunately, most of the other wind turbine photos in these search results are under copyright.
 * search Flickr for: eolica italia - this appears to be a much more productive search; a large fraction of resulting photos are actually of wind turbines in Italy. Unfortunately, most of them look to be copyrighted too.

10:41, 2 January 2009 (UTC): but now I have my wonder weapon, the Flickr free search template:
 * - finds some photos of Spanish (more) and Italian (fewer) wind farms
 * - finds some photos of Spanish (more) and Italian (fewer) wind farms
 * - finds some photos of Spanish (more) and Italian (fewer) wind farms
 * - finds some photos of Spanish (more) and Italian (fewer) wind farms

The above searches find a few photos, for example:
 * http://flickr.com/photos/soleride/sets/72157605156768041/
 * http://flickr.com/photos/chiaramarra/1093557976/ (and see the containing set)
 * http://flickr.com/photos/soleride/2376075459/in/photostream/ (and see the neighboring photos in the set)

Images of wind power in Italy on the English Wikipedia
07:25, 22 November 2008 (UTC): somewhat belatedly, I thought to try searching for images of wind power in Italy on the English Wikipedia. If I find any, then naturally I would like to move them to Commons if they are under a suitably free license. That would be a good way for me to practice the procedure, using a source wiki whose language I understand. Then I might be able to move images from the Italian Wikipedia to Commons even though I don't speak Italian.

Use my search methods from User:Teratornis/Notes. That finds a mix of images, some on Commons, and some only on the English Wikipedia. I did not find any new images of modern wind turbines in Italy that I have not already seen. But I did stumble across commons:Category:Windmills in Italy with a couple of photos of antique windmills.

Wind power in Austria
20:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC): I also created a new article: Wind power in Austria. It was pretty easy since I followed the general pattern from Wind power in Italy. I could start the remaining missing "Wind power in ..." articles.

Windpark Klettwitz
20:10, 13 May 2009 (UTC): Windpark Klettwitz may be (or have been) the largest wind farm in Europe. It does not appear on List of onshore wind farms.
 * http://wiki.lausitzerleben.de/lausitzwiki/index.php/Windpark_Klettwitz - an article in German on Lausitzwiki
 * Google translation

The windpark is apparently adjacent to EuroSpeedway Lausitz. I noticed wind turbines in the background of this photo from The Guardian article about the Shell Eco-marathon 2009 at EuroSpeedway Lausitz: so I Googled around and found they must be part of Windpark Klettwitz.
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/may/08/shell-eco-marathon-germany?picture=347096429
 * Coord 51.5302°N, 13.8741°W - the wind turbines are visible in Google Maps, between an old open-pit coal mine and the EuroSpeedway, but this wind farm does not look very large. The entry here says it only has 17 turbines with a total nameplate capacity of 2.28 MW:
 * http://www.thewindpower.net/champ-eolien-3322-klettwitz-nd-nd.php
 * However, the Google Maps photo clearly shows one field with 17 turbines and adjacent field with 19 turbines, which agrees with the following source, a site for kids which clears things up:
 * http://www.kids4offshore.eu/content/view/52/91/lang,english/
 * "Klettwitz in Brandenburg, Germany, was temporarily the biggest wind farm in Europe. It was built at a former mining area for brown coal in 1999. 38 wind turbines (Vestas V80) ..."

The Wind power database entry sounds incorrect, as the Vestas V80 has a nameplate capacity of 1.8 MW. 29*1.8 = 52.2 MW.

Gütsch windfarm, Switzerland: formerly the world's highest
While I was reading some sources about wind power in Austria, I read about the highest large-scale wind turbine in the world, at Gütsch windfarm, Switzerland near Andermatt. It's an Enercon E40/600 at an elevation of 2,330 m.

See on this page for the current high-altitude record-holding wind turbine as of 23:48, 16 April 2010 (UTC).

Barrick Gold Corporation's Veladero wind turbine
21:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC): the record for highest-elevation single large-scale wind turbine goes to this one by Barrick Gold Corporation in San Juan Province (Argentina): I added a note about that to both of those topics.

20:34, 16 April 2010 (UTC): a Spanish Wikipedia user uploaded a photo and two diagrams almost certainly about this wind turbine at the Barrick Gold Corporation's Veladero mine:


 * File:Veladero_01.png - it would be nice to determine the location of this wind turbine.
 * File:Veladero 02.png
 * File:Veladero 03.png
 * Del Veladero
 * es:Veladero (generador eólico)
 * DeWind

Figure out where the Veladero mine is.


 * http://www.barrick.com/GlobalOperations/SouthAmerica/Veladero/default.aspx
 * "The Veladero mine is located in the San Juan Province of Argentina, immediately to the south of the Pascua-Lama property in the highly prospective Frontera District. The property is located at elevations of 4,000 and 4,850 metres above sea level, approximately 320 kilometres northwest of the city of San Juan."
 * http://www.barrick.com/Theme/Barrick/files/mine_images/Zaldivar_Pascua_LgRev.jpg - a map that shows roughly the location near the Chile-Argentina border.
 * File:PascuaLamaPlanMap.png - a map of the nearby Pascua-Lama property

One would think a massive open-pit gold mine would be big enough to show up on Google Maps.


 * - an information brochure from DeWind giving some technical details of the Veladero wind turbine, but again no precise coordinates.


 * http://www.infomine.com/index/properties/VELADERO.html - that page gives approximate coordinates:
 * -29.35°N, -69.98333°W - the actual mine may be 3 km southeast of this location; some buildings and roads are visible on Google Maps.


 * Pascua-Lama gives coordinates of the mine which is to the northwest of Veladero.


 * - a video showing the wind turbine construction

San Jorge Basin
05:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC): San Jorge Basin describes a wind farm in Argentina. At the moment, Wikipedia's coverage of wind power in South America is rather sparse, perhaps because most South Americans are not native English speakers and therefore not many edit on the English Wikipedia, and because the wind power industry in South America is just getting started. Find some references about this wind power development with Google and Google scholar cite:
 * argentina wind power
 * argentina wind power
 * argentina wind power


 * Spanish companies Endesa and Elecnor have proposed building and operating three wind farms in Patagonia with a total nameplate capacity of 3,000 MWe, enough to meet 12% of Argentina's energy (electricity?) demands by 2010. Estimated cost: $2.25 billion.
 * Spanish companies Endesa and Elecnor have proposed building and operating three wind farms in Patagonia with a total nameplate capacity of 3,000 MWe, enough to meet 12% of Argentina's energy (electricity?) demands by 2010. Estimated cost: $2.25 billion.

Other language Wikipedias
10:47, 28 November 2008 (UTC): the other language Wikipedias have some coverage of wind power not in the English Wikipedia yet. Try to see what they have. Where possible, add interlanguage links to the various "Wind power in ..." articles.

23:13, 29 November 2008 (UTC): I just created Translate wikipedia to give a more compact syntax for machine-translating these articles to English.

German Wikipedia
Google translates "Wind power in Germany" as "Windenergie in Deutschland". The Wind power in Germany article does not yet have an interlanguage link to the German Wikipedia. See if the German Wikipedia has an article with that title:


 * de:Windenergie in Deutschland - it does not. However, some of the other wind power articles in the German Wikipedia look interesting. In particular, they show additional detail about several wind power-related images I saw on Commons that have incomplete descriptions there, such as this one which the de: says is in Luxembourg:


 * de:Image:Windenergy.jpg

Articles about wind power in the German Wikipedia:


 * de:Windkraftanlage -
 * de:Liste von Windkraftanlagenherstellern -
 * de:Repowering -
 * de:Offshorebauwerk -
 * de:Kaskadenmaschine -

Spanish Wikipedia
The Wind power in Spain article has a link to its counterpart in the Spanish Wikipedia:


 * es:Energía eólica en España -

Danish Wikipedia

 * da:Vindmølle -
 * da:Vindmøllepark -

Italian Wikipedia

 * it:Energia eolica -
 * it:Passo di Monte Croce Carnico - - this article has a great photo of a wind turbine in the pass (actually on the Austrian side):
 * it:Immagine:Passo Monte Croce Carnico 1.jpg which does not yet appear to be on Commons.
 * it:Kite Wind Generator -

The future of wind power
Denmark plans to build very large offshore wind turbines, with nameplate capacity between 8 and 12 MW, 170m hub height, 200m rotor diameter:

08:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC): that link seems to have broken, the page is now here:
 * http://www.ambathen.um.dk/da/menu/OmOs/Klimaforandringer/DENMARKPLANSFORTHESUPERSIZEWINDTURBINESOFTHEFUTURE.htm

EROEI
22:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC): several articles on Wikipedia give conflicting information about the EROEI of wind turbines.
 * - unfortunately these search results contain many false positives, because Wind power contains a link to EROEI.


 * EROEI says:
 * "Currently (2006) the EROEI of wind energy in North America and Europe is about 20:1 which has driven its adoption."


 * Actually the cited paper claims an EROEI of 80 for 600-kW wind turbines in 1996. The smaller 10-30 kW wind turbines of 1980 had an EROEI of 20. (Possibly today's larger 1-5 MW wind turbines have an even better EROEI.) The citation is to a summary page on the Danish Wind Energy Association Web site, which links to a much more detailed paper:


 * Environmental effects of wind power gives two different figures:
 * "The initial carbon dioxide emissions "pay back" is within about 9 months of operation for off shore turbines."
 * The energy return on investment (EROI) for wind energy is equal to the cumulative electricity generated divided by the cumulative primary energy required to build and maintain a turbine. The EROI for wind ranges from 5 to 35, with an average of around 18. EROI is strongly proportional to turbine size, and larger late-generation turbines are at the high end of this range, at or above 35.
 * The energy return on investment (EROI) for wind energy is equal to the cumulative electricity generated divided by the cumulative primary energy required to build and maintain a turbine. The EROI for wind ranges from 5 to 35, with an average of around 18. EROI is strongly proportional to turbine size, and larger late-generation turbines are at the high end of this range, at or above 35.

Intermittency/variability and backup requirements
19:32, 24 July 2009 (UTC): a feature of wind power is its intermittency (or variability, as different authorities prefer different terms). Several articles relating to wind power mention this issue, but the treatment is not uniform. (Different articles cite different references with different conclusions.) Wind power proponents acknowledge the problem of intermittency but consider it to be a problem manageable at "modest" cost. Wind power critics typically claim the problem is insurmountable, and tend to present this as self-evident.

The National Grid (UK) article cites this paper:



Read the paper and see whether it adds anything useful to Wind power in the United Kingdom.

Another reference, which sounds like a report about Desertec:



Wind turbine logistics
An interesting article about the difficulties of moving wind turbine components around the world:



Wind power in Mexico
Mexico lags far behind its neighbor to El Norte, but has some wind power. Wikipedia has no Wind power in Mexico article yet, but does have Electricity sector in Mexico. Here is a new wind farm at La Ventosa, Oaxaca, which apparently more than doubles Mexico's installed wind power capacity:



Various articles that mention wind power
04:25, 3 January 2009 (UTC): Wikipedia has several articles that mention wind power in the context of something else. Sometimes these articles do not cover wind power as well as the main wind power articles do. For example:


 * Energy development - has a Refimprovesect template message complaining about lack of references. The section contains several bullet points about wind power which are basically a brief summary of material that is in Wind power and Environmental effects of wind power, with good citations there.


 * High Plains (United States) - mentions wind power even more briefly than Great Plains which I previously worked on a bit.

Look at Special:Whatlinkshere/Wind power and see if the articles that mention wind power have coverage that is up to the quality standard of our main wind power articles.

Wind resources
08:13, 24 June 2009 (UTC): here is a popular press article about a journal article that has some updated estimates of wind resources of various countries: Sloppy reference to the underlying scholarly paper:

Xi Lu, Michael McElroy, and Juha Kiviluoma. Global potential for wind generated electricity. PNAS Early Online Edition for the week of June 22, 2009. doi/10.1073/pnas.0904101106

Find it with Google scholar cite:


 * Global potential for wind generated electricity

21:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC): Google does not find the paper yet. Here is the abstract page from the PNAS site, and a free PDF of the whole paper:


 * http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/19/0904101106.abstract?sid=6c07bfa9-a734-4a53-a2e5-0f03c2ed72e1 (abstract)
 * http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/19/0904101106.full.pdf+html (full text)

Manually put it into a Cite journal template:



The paper looks interesting. It has some maps of wind resource potential which would be nice to duplicate in free content SVG versions, if we can get the underlying data. Incorporate this information in articles that mention wind resource estimates.

Search with Google scholar cite for papers by the coauthors:


 * Kiviluoma, Juha



The authors are from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, but I don't see a field for putting that into a Citation template. There is a  field, but that seems to apply to the conference where the authors presented the paper. The conference was:


 * http://www.ewec2006proceedings.info/index2.php?page=searchresult&searchin=3
 * Session: Integrating wind into electricity markets
 * Chair(s):
 * Christian Kjaer, European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), Belgium
 * Poul-Erik Morthorst, Risoe National Laboratory, Denmark
 * Business & Policy Track / Session Code: BB1
 * Tuesday, 28 February 2006, 09:00 - 10:30

Offshore
18:23, 23 July 2009 (UTC): here is an interesting paper that describes some construction details from Nysted Wind Farm and Thorntonbank Wind Farm:


 * OFFSHORE WIND TURBINE FOUNDATIONS - THE COWI EXPERIENCE

Work some facts from this paper into the corresponding articles on Wikipedia.

21:00, 1 April 2010 (UTC): another reference giving specifications for some offshore wind turbines:



Work the specifications into the respective articles on Wikipedia about wind power manufacturers.

Propulsion
Here is a paper about a scheme to build Rotor ships:



Kite power
22:13, 2 August 2009 (UTC): will this ever amount to anything? See Airborne wind turbine, Unconventional wind turbines, Saul Griffith. It's hard to write good articles about airborne wind turbines because everything is experimental and not well publicized.



Griffith flashes a citation of a seminal paper on airborne wind turbines on one of his slides at 1:57 in the video. Find the paper:


 * Miles Loyd, Crosswind Kite Power, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.
 * Crosswind Kite Power

Incidentally, my Google scholar cite script appears to have broken. Google Scholar comes up, but there is no link under each entry. Oh well, I can still get the citation and manually format it:

Crosswind kite power (for large-scale wind power production) LOYD, M.L., California, Univ., Livermore Journal of Energy 1980 0146-0412 vol.4 no.3 (106-111) doi: 10.2514/3.48021


 * finds no results, suggesting nobody has cited this paper yet on Wikipedia. So I might work it in somewhere in the airborne wind turbine articles.

We should also have an article about Makani Power, if I can find enough references. We mention in it in the articles: Google.org and Saul Griffith.

Publications
07:28, 8 August 2009 (UTC): I've seen some publications about wind power during my random Googling for references.
 * Enercon has a "Windblatt" magazine. ,
 * http://www.enercon.de/www/en/windblatt.nsf/vwAnzeige/66BD14BABA22BCA2C12573A7003FA82E/$FILE/WB-0407-en.pdf ENERCON Magazine for wind energy Issue 04 | 2007
 * http://www.horizonwind.com/images_projects/arrowsmith/permit/ARR_App_4_turbine_Specs.pdf Vestas V82 and V90 Wind Turbine Specifications, and the Vestas V100 Wind Turbine Product Brochure

Statistics
02:51, 26 August 2009 (UTC): it would be nice to complete the table "Annual Wind Power Generation (TWh) and total electricity consumption(TWh) for 10 largest countries" at the bottom of Wind power. A possibly helpful reference:



Data current missing from the table:
 * Year 2007:
 * Three of four world totals are missing: electrical energy generated from wind, TWh; capacity factor of world total wind power plant; % of total electrical energy generated; total electrical energy generated.
 * Year 2008:
 * All four totals
 * All four data items for Germany, India, Italy, United Kingdom

Examine the references other editors used to compile previous years in the table:


 * International Electricity Consumption
 * CIA - The World Factbook - Rank Order - Electricity - consumption
 * BP.com
 * 2005 月电力概况 (Chinese)
 * 2006 月电力概况 (Chinese)
 * Energy Information Administration - International Electricity Generation Data
 * International Energy Statistics

Compute the average capacity factor for all the world's commercial-scale wind turbines in 2008. Data from the World Wind Energy Report 2008: The World Wind Energy Report does not give a capacity factor. We can compute it from the hours per year (24 * 365 = 8760):
 * Annual energy production: 260 TWh
 * Total nameplate capacity installed: 121’188 MW, out of which 27’261 MW were added in 2008
 * 121188 MW * 8760 hr/yr = 1,061,606,880 MWh/hr = 1.062 TWh/yr
 * Average capacity factor = 260/1,061 = 0.245

The 2008 report does not contain data for 2007. Look for that:



The WWEA figures look to be running a bit higher than the values for previous years already in the table. I'm not sure why. Possibly the earlier table values attempt to count the actual wind-generated electricity in a given year, while the WWEA figures estimate the annual output of wind projects completed through the end of a year. Given that wind power is growing fast, that would be like moving the WWEA figures several months ahead.

Location maps
19:08, 19 September 2009 (UTC): location maps make a useful addition to wind power articles. After I saw the location map in Wind power in Maine, I made a similar map for Wind power in Ohio. A questioner on the Help desk asked about adding one to List of wind farms in South Australia, so I made a sample in Talk:List of wind farms in South Australia to inspire other editors, just as I had earlier done in Talk:Cape Wind. The following subsections list some issues with these maps.

Pushpin images
The location map in Wind power in Maine uses pushpin images that are difficult to distinguish: File:Green pog.svg, File:Purple pog.svg, etc. The colors are washed out and thus not very different from each other, and the shapes are all the same. It would be better to use distinct symbols such as crosses for decommissioned wind farms, etc. See what other pushpin images are available. Look in Commons:Category:Map pointers.

Generating location maps automatically
It would be nice to generate location maps automatically, for example by parsing a table such as the one in List of wind farms in South Australia with a Perl script.

Articles that could use location maps
Find the other lists of wind farms which could use location maps.

Using other images as background maps
In the Cape Wind article, there is already File:Massachusetts wind resource map 50m 800.jpg with an awkward verbal description of the wind farm site. See if I can incorporate that map into a location map. Presumably this just requires setting the boundary coordinates accurately.

Bioenergy and biofuel
00:57, 30 March 2008 (UTC): edit some articles and templates about bioenergy and biofuel. I don't see biofuels substituting one for one for petroleum any time soon, but biofuels can replace some petroleum for fuel, and perhaps eventually all of petroleum for feedstock use.

Navigation template
I don't see any navigation template for bioenergy; it should go in Category:Energy templates. Such a template could link to representative articles from these categories:


 * Category:Renewable energy
 * Category:Bioenergy
 * Category:Energy crops
 * Category:Biofuels

I'm working on this template in User:Teratornis/Sandbox2. 07:13, 4 April 2008 (UTC): I edited the template a little. It's shaping up rather nicely. The Category:Biofuels does not distinguish between biofuels themselves, and technologies for synthesizing, converting, and/or refining biofuels from biomass. I might want to create a biofuels technology subcategory. I'm setting up the template with separate groups for links to biofuels and biofuels technologies, respectively. 07:38, 5 April 2008 (UTC): I copied the template to: Bioenergy.

Miscanthus giganteus
00:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC): the Miscanthus giganteus article needs work. The article about the genus, Miscanthus, contains more information that is specifically about Miscanthus giganteus than the Miscanthus giganteus article contains.

Some references (to-do: summarize each one):
 * - finds some interesting images
 * http://miscanthus.uiuc.edu/
 * http://miscanthus.uiuc.edu/








 * The above page is some sort of blog post, probably not a reliable source. It would be nice to get permission to upload this photo to Commons:
 * http://bioage.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/11/miscanthus2.jpg
 * http://bioage.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/11/miscanthus2.jpg

Copy the Miscanthus giganteus article to User:Teratornis/Sandbox so I can bang on it there. Also, edit the Miscanthus article so it uses Main to refer to Miscanthus giganteus.

Things to fix in Miscanthus giganteus:

| genus_authority = Andersson
 * The Taxobox template has a red link in the  field (currently the value is: Keng).
 * Compare this to the Taxobox template in Miscanthus, which has the code:
 * Mention that the plant is a sterile hybrid of M. sinensis and M. sacchariflorus, that it doesn't produce seeds, so growers reproduce it with rhizome propagules, it's twice as productive as switchgrass, it is perennial and requires little herbicide as it outcompetes most weeds, and needs little fertilizer.
 * Dry biomass has almost the same heat of combustion as Powder River Basin coal.

07:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC): I can search more efficiently for journal articles using the Google scholar template I just made. For example:
 * finds lots of links, including:

Panicum virgatum (switchgrass)
06:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC): fix the messed-up references in Panicum virgatum (Switchgrass). First, just make a list of the references and put them into citation templates. Then try to match up the references with the statements in the article they supposedly support. Relevant discussions: Templates I will need for these complicated references: Cite web, Cite book, Cite conference, Cite journal.
 * Talk:Panicum virgatum
 * Talk:Panicum virgatum
 * User talk:SoilMan2007
 * User talk:SoilMan2007

Here is a page of references for switchgrass which I ran across while searching for the references in our switchgrass article:
 * Unfortunately, those references are in a plain text format, rather than a format that Zotero or Google Scholar can decode.
 * Unfortunately, those references are in a plain text format, rather than a format that Zotero or Google Scholar can decode.

The following subsections contain edits to support my cleanup of the references in Panicum virgatum:

Un-numbered references

 * - this finds a bunch of bids that include a line item for switchgrass seeding, in addition to seeding with several other grasses. For example:



Try to find real citation links for the rest of these sources from the Panicum virgatum article. Add a  tag to each reference after I put it into a template here. Then I can easily see which ones still need templates.


 * USDA NRCS Plant Fact Sheet. Switchgrass - Panicum virgatum L. Plant symbol = PAVI2. 16Jan2001 JKL; 28sp05 jsp; 24may06sjp


 * Farmers' motivations for adoption of switchgrass. Hipple PC, Duffy MD.  Trends in New Crops and New Uses, ed. J. Janich and A. Whipkey, pp. 252-266, ASHA Press, Alexandria VA, 2002.


 * The Biofuels Explosion: Is Green Engergy Good for Wildlife? Laura Bies, The Wildlife Society Bulletin 34(4): 1203-1205; 2006


 * Native Plants Journal. Fall, 2000. Vol. 1(2)  http://nativeplants.for.uidaho.edu/  ISSN 1522-8339.


 * Switchgrass Production in Ontario: A Management Guide.  Samson, R., 2007.  Resourse Efficient Agriculture Production (REAP) - Canada


 * The isolation and identification of steroidal sapogenins in switchgrass. Lee ST, Vogel KP, et.al. Jnl of Natural Toxins, Vol 10 No. 4 2001 p 273-81.
 * Fall Panicum (Panicum dichotomiflorum) Hepatotoxicosis in Horses and Sheep. Johnson, AL, et.al.  J Vet Intern Med 2006;20:1414-1421.
 * Fall Panicum (Panicum dichotomiflorum) Hepatotoxicosis in Horses and Sheep. Johnson, AL, et.al.  J Vet Intern Med 2006;20:1414-1421.


 * Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) Toxicity in Rodents, Sheep, Goats and Horses. Stegelmeier, BL, et.al. USDA-ARS Poisonous Plant Research Laboratory, Logan UT & ILS, Inc, Research Triangle Park, NC.  As reprinted in Utah State University Extension Veterinary Newsletter.  July, 2005.
 * Google Scholar found a more recent citation for what is probably the same work:


 * Table 28. Guidelines for rotational stocking of selected forage crops. International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) Forage Crop Pocket Guide Developed by Ball, Hoveland, Lacefield  Edited by Armstrong, Darst 2006
 * I found this reference online with a Google custom search of the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) site:


 * Table 33b. Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) and Relative Feed Value (RFV) Ranges for Various Forge Crops. International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) Forage Crop Pocket Guide Developed by Ball, Hoveland, Lacefield  Edited by Armstrong, Darst 2006


 * Planting and Managing Switchgrass for Forage, Wildlife, and Conservation. Wolf, DD, Fiske, DA. Virginia Cooperative Extension Publication # 418-013, June, 1996.
 * Google Scholar continues to kick hiney:


 * Native Warm-Season Perennial Grasses for Forage in Kentucky. Rasnake, M., Lacefield, G.  University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service.  AGR-145, 2004
 * Google Scholar does not find this. But Google finds a PDF link:
 * http://www.wildlifemanagement.info/native_grass_mgt.htm
 * http://www.wildlifemanagement.info/files/nwsg_12.pdf


 * Establishing and Managing Switchgrass. Renz, M., Undersander, D. University of Wisconsin Extension, 3/15/07


 * Switchgrass. Salvo, SK, Brock, BG. Division of Forest Resources, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
 * I cannot find this with a Google search:


 * Plentiful switchgrass emerges as breakthrough biofuel. Bob Secter.  Chicago Tribune.  SignOnSanDiego.com The San Diego Union Tribune. 12/21/06.


 * Switchgrass Profile. David Bransby, Auburn University.  http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switchgrass-profile.html
 * Search bioenergy.ornl.gov for:

Manually-numbered references
20:51, 24 May 2008 (UTC): several of these are redundant with the un-numbered references above. I only add citation templates here for the references which are distinct.

1.	General Planting Guide for Warm Season Grasses in the Northeast U.S. & Canada. Ernst Seed Catalog Web Page http://www.ernstseed.com/switchgrass_planting_quide.htm Ernst Conservation Seeds, LLP, 9006 Mercer Pike, Meadville, PA 16335 Copyright 2007, Ernst Conservation Seeds, LLP. All rights reserved.

2. 	Lecture notes prepared by Tanya Silzer for lecture titled:  “Panicaum virgatum L. - Switchgrass, prairie switchgrass, tall panic grass” www.usask.ca/agriculture/plantsci/classes/rang/panicum/html

3. 	Southern Forages. Third Edition. DM Ball, CS Hoveland, GD Lacefield. Copyright 2002 by the Potash & Phosphate Institute and the Foundation for Agronoomic Research. ISBN 0-9629598-3-9 p 26

4. 	USDA NRCS Plant Fact Sheet. Switchgrass - Panicum virgatum L. Plant symbol = PAVI2. 16Jan2001 JKL; 28sp05 jsp; 24may06sjp

6. 	Farmers' motivations for adoption of switchgrass. Hipple PC, Duffy MD. Trands in New Crops and New Uses, ed. J. Janich and A. Whipkey, pp. 252-266, ASHA Press, Alexandria VA, 2002.

7. 	The Biofuels Explosion:  Is Green Engergy Good for Wildlife? Laura Bies, The Wildlife Society Bulletin 34(4): 1203-1205; 2006

8. 	Native Plants Journal. Fall, 2000. Vol. 1(2) http://nativeplants.for.uidaho.edu/  ISSN 1522-8339.

9. 	Switchgrass Production in Ontario: A Management Guide. Samson, R., 2007. Resourse Efficient Agriculture Production (REAP) - Canada

10. 	The isolation and identification of steroidal sapogenins in switchgrass. Lee ST, Vogel KP, et.al. Jnl of Natural Toxins, Vol 10 No. 4 2001 p 273-81.

11. 	Fall Panicum (Panicum dichotomiflorum) Hepatotoxicosis in Horses and Sheep. Johnson, AL, et.al. J Vet Intern Med 2006;20:1414-1421.

12. 	Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) Toxicity in Rodents, Sheep, Goats and Horses. Stegelmeier, BL, et.al. USDA-ARS Poisonous Plant Research Laboratory, Logan UT & ILS, Inc, Research Triangle Park, NC. As reprinted in Utah State University Extension Veterinary Newsletter. July, 2005.

13. 	Table 28. Guidelines for rotational stocking of selected forage crops. International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) Forage Crop Pocket Guide Developed by Ball, Hoveland, Lacefield  Edited by Armstrong, Darst 2006

14. 	Table 33b. Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) and Relative Feed Value (RFV) Ranges for Various Forge Crops. International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) Forage Crop Pocket Guide Developed by Ball, Hoveland, Lacefield  Edited by Armstrong, Darst 2006

15. 		Planting and Managing Switchgrass for Forage, Wildlife, and Conservation. Wolf, DD, Fiske, DA. Virginia Cooperative Extension Publication # 418-013, June, 1996.

16.  	Native Warm-Season Perennial Grasses for Forage in Kentucky. Rasnake, M., Lacefield, G. University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service. AGR-145, 2004

17. 	Establishing and Managing Switchgrass. Renz, M., Undersander, D. University of Wisconsin Extension, 3/15/07

18. 	Switchgrass. Salvo, SK, Brock, BG. Division of Forest Resources, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

19. 	Plentiful switchgrass emerges as breakthrough biofuel. Bob Secter. Chicago Tribune. SignOnSanDiego.com The San Diego Union Tribune. 12/21/06.

20. 	Switchgrass Profile. David Bransby, Auburn University. http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switchgrass-profile.html

Images
04:28, 22 May 2008 (UTC): while googling around to resolve the references for the Panicum virgatum article, I noticed this handy template: with which I can mark images such as this one from the Natural Resources Conservation Service:
 * PD-USGov-USDA-NRCS
 * http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=PAVI2
 * http://plants.usda.gov/java/county?state_name=North%20Dakota&statefips=38&symbol=PAVI2

Chris Somerville: Development of Cellulosic Biofuels
This is a long lecture about biofuels by Chris Somerville (Director of the Energy Biosciences Institute, University of California).



As is common among many in the biofuels community, Somerville seems to be working from the orthodox science assumption that global warming is the main problem, and the Energy Information Administration's optimistic projections of steady expansion in global oil extraction are true. I.e., Somerville seems not to have heard of peak oil yet, not that it really matters to his work. He's trying to develop biofuels either way. If peak oil really did occur in 2005 or 2006, as seems increasingly likely, that will merely add urgency and value to his work, rather than change its essential character.

Wikipedia seems to have no article about Chris Somerville yet, although it has an article about one of his business partners, George Church, as well as the Energy Biosciences Institute which Somerville directs. (I added Bioenergy to the EBI article.) I could think about starting an article about Dr. Somerville.

At 18:32 in his video, Somerville mentions that he is on the National Research Council's Committee on America's Energy Future. At 19:13 he says he is on the Transportation Fuels Subcomittee which is looking at biofuels and coal. Wikipedia does not seem to mention that comittee; finds a few other members, for example:
 * Christine Ehlig-Economides, Ph.D. (note the typo in her name in the section heading on that page, hah)
 * Mark Stephen Wrighton who curently serves as Vice Chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on America's Energy Future
 * Harold Shapiro, President Emeritus, Princeton University and Chair, National Research Council Committee on America's Energy Future; Wikipedia has an article about Harold Tafler Shapiro who appears to be the same person.

At 22:30 he mentions Miscanthus giganteus, and shows a seven-year-old stand of the plant at an agricultural research field of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He says the stand has never been irrigated nor fertilized, and each year they harvest the biomass, with a yield of up to 26 tons per acre. He says M. giganteus is one of his favorite biomass plants. And no wonder.

At 24 minutes he lists several advantages of perennial energy crops. He mentions Miscanthus is a C4 perennial, so you harvest it in the winter, because the plant recycles its nutrients into its root system in autumn. That's why it is a low-input crop compared to annual crops such as maize, which must grow from seed each year. He mentions that perennial plants outperform annual plants because the root systems survive the winter, and the leaves and stems begin growing in early spring, from well-developed roots, before farmers are even able to plow fields to plant annual crops.

At 48 minutes he summarizes the problems that limit algae fuel. Basically, it costs too much to build the containers, relative to the solar energy the algae can capture (only about 20 watts per square meter).

Overall, I would say this is the most outstanding video lecture about biofuels that I have seen so far, probably because it's one of the few by an actual scientific expert. However, Dr. Somerville whips through some of his slides too rapidly for me to scrutinize, and the YouTube resolution makes the text one some illegible. See if I can locate his source materials in HTML format.

Comparison of ethanol production in Brazil vs. United States
05:24, 21 August 2008 (UTC): it would be nice to add some more data to the table in this section:


 * Ethanol fuel in Brazil

Specifically, I would like to add more statistics about both countries to put the respective ethanol industries into further context: population, petroleum production and imports/exports, barrels of oil equivalent of the ethanol produced; total gasoline consumed; diesel fuel consumed; per capita ethanol and gasoline consumption; total vehicle miles driven (if possible); and fleet fuel economy; GDP; per capita GDP; per capita energy consumption from all sources.

It's common for people to cite Brazil's ethanol industry to show what would be possible for the United States, but often the boosters fail to mention that (a) the U.S. already produces more ethanol than Brazil; and (b) Brazil uses far less energy and far less liquid fuel than the U.S., so the problem for ethanol to solve in Brazil is far smaller than in the U.S.

Here is a table I may someday expand with more comparative data:

Algae fuel
05:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC): here is an interesting paper which claims that even under the most optimistic assumptions, the cost of biodiesel fuel from algae will be over $800/bbl: I read the paper and I don't see anything immediately wrong with the reasoning. Chris Somerville of the Energy Biosciences Institute basically agrees - the problem is that photobioreactors cost too much per unit area and convert too little of the incident sunlight into liquid fuels.

Food vs fuel
00:58, 3 October 2008 (UTC): Food vs fuel looks like a somewhat contentious article. Here is a reference:


 * "The expanding global economy continues to face oil supply constraints, prompting consumers to become more efficient in their oil use and substitute into other fuels. Helped by a favourable policy wave, biofuels have rapidly become a major source of incremental fuel supply. On a global scale, biofuels are now the single largest contributor to world oil supply growth. We estimate that retail gasoline prices would be $21/bbl higher, on average, without the incremental biofuel supply."
 * Chris Goodell blames high oil prices for high food prices.
 * Chris Goodell blames high oil prices for high food prices.
 * Chris Goodell blames high oil prices for high food prices.

Solar updraft tower
17:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC): this video on YouTube describes a Solar updraft tower pilot plant in Spain:



The most interesting part of the video to me was the observation that beneath the plastic sheeting over the collection area, grasses and shrubs were growing more lushly than in the surrounding scrubby desert. The pilot plant's designers did not anticipate this. Explanation: at night, water vapor condenses on the underside of the plastic sheeting and drips on the ground below it, keeping the greenhouse environment moist. Thus a potential byproduct of these types of solar tower plants could be food or biomass from otherwise non-arable land, without the need for irrigation.

The Solar updraft tower article at the moment does not mention the potential byproduct of converting desert into arable land. This could be a significant benefit of the solar updraft tower concept, given the 2007–2008 world food price crisis along with Food vs fuel concerns. The high value of food or energy crops might offset some of the cost of building a solar updraft tower. In contrast, the existing first-generation biofuels compete with food production on existing (naturally) arable land.

Search with Google scholar cite for reliable sources about using solar updraft towers to reclaim desert for agriculture:


 * solar updraft tower
 * solar updraft tower condensation

Some of the search results look interesting. I will have to study them.

Chipmakers
03:41, 28 July 2008 (UTC): here's an interesting article about the large number of semiconductor manufacturer who are rushing to manufacture photovoltaics:

Wave power
17:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC): I see no navigation template for articles about wave power, other than one line in Renewable energy sources. Search for existing work with Google wikipedia and Google custom:



Fraction of world population living near the ocean
18:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC): search with Google and Google scholar cite for a citation for the fraction of world population living near the ocean, and add it to the lead section of Ocean energy, which is somewhat weasely on the subject currently.


 * This may not be a reliable source:
 * This may not be a reliable source:


 * fraction of world population near an ocean
 * _ref name=Cohen1998>_/ref>

Wikipedia has a Hypsography article, but it does not mention population. Also, hypsography is about elevation, not necessarily the distance from an ocean (although most lowlands will be near oceans, or they may have ocean-navigable rivers).

Geothermal heat pump
23:54, 27 July 2008 (UTC): fix the broken references in the Geothermal heat pump article.

Microtunneling
00:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC): An article in Scientific American about the SuperGrid (liquid hydrogen, superconducting), mentions microtunneling as a possible method for digging tunnels within which to bury the SuperGrid transmission lines. The article reference: I wonder whether someone has tried using microtunnel boring machines to install the ground loops for geothermal heat pumps? That would avoid the disruption of excavating large amounts of earth. Of course there are already some vertically-drilled and radially-drilled ground loops which require minimal trenching. It would seem microtunneling would expand that option to horizontally-oriented geothermal ground loops.

A reference that Google scholar cite finds:
 * Geothermal Heat Pumps

Transportation
Transportation is the largest user of petroleum, and depends more strongly on petroleum for its energy than other areas of the economy (such as housing, electricity generation, industry). This makes transportation especially susceptible to any temporary or permanent reduction in petroleum supply. The problem with transportation, especially for airplanes and road vehicles, is the need for a portable energy carrier with high energy density both by volume and by weight. All currently known substitutes for liquid fuels from petroleum suffer from a variety of economic and/or physical drawbacks, which is why petroleum powers 95% of transportation worldwide. Therefore, to understand the potential impact of a post-peak oil decline in oil supply, one must understand the alternatives available to power the transportation sector - their costs, pros and cons, potential scale, and time to develop and scale up.

A related idea is to understand the non-transportation substitutes for transportation, e.g. telecommunication, telerobotics, videoconferencing, telepresence, Transportation demand management, etc.

See also.

Car Sick (book)
George Monbiot cites the book Car Sick in his blog at The Guardian:

Car-free movement also cites the book:

Google Books has a 30 or 40 page preview.

How many Tesla Roadsters can one wind turbine power?
20:27, 7 August 2010 (UTC): estimate the number of Tesla Roadsters (2008) that one large wind turbine can power. The Roadster has a plug-to-wheel efficiency that depends on driver behavior and road conditions. The Wikipedia article gives several values between 20.5 kW·h/100 mi and 33.6 kW·h/100 mi. Assume 25 kW·h/100 mi and that the average Tesla owner drives 10,000 miles per year. That yields an annual energy consumption of:

$$( 25 \mbox{kWh/100 mi}) \times (10,000 \mbox{mi/yr})=2500 \mbox{kWh/yr}$$

For the wind turbine, assume a model such as the Vestas V80-1.8 MW which is common in the US for onshore wind farms (e.g., Buffalo Gap Wind Farm). Most wind farms have capacity factors ranging between 20% and 40%. Assume 25% to be conservative. Further assume 10% transmission loss between the wind farm and the Tesla charging stations. Under these assumptions, multiply the wind turbine nameplate capacity times the capacity factor times the number of hours per year times the transmission efficiency to compute the annual energy it can deliver to the Teslas:

$$( 1,800 \mbox{kW} ) \times ( 0.25 ) \times (8,760 \mbox{hr/yr}) \times (0.9) = 3,547,800 \mbox{kWh/yr}$$

Dividing this number by the annual energy consumption of the Tesla gives:

$$\frac{3,547,800}{2500}=1,419$$

In reality, wind power is an Intermittent energy source, so a single wind turbine may not be producing power at exactly all the times when the Teslas are recharging. However, the Tesla has a driving range of over 200 miles per full charge, and few people will drive that far every day. (10,000 miles per year is an average of 27 miles per day.) This means the Teslas combined with a smart grid using time-based electricity pricing would allow for some flexibility as to when they would recharge. A driver who doesn't plan to drive far in the next several days could in principle allow the smart charger to wait out a wind lull of several days. In practice, a large power grid supplies electricity from many different sources, so a single electric car would not follow the operating schedule of a single wind turbine. Rather, the availability of wind power at a given time, along with the electricity demand, would factor into the spot price of electricity at that time. Having electric cars plugged into smart charging stations at most hours of the day would allow the grid as a whole to accommodate a larger percentage of supply coming from intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar, since the cars could adjust the amount of electricity they consume in response to the spot price. On a grid with lots of wind power, the spot price would tend to rise when the wind stops, and many of the electric cars would respond by delaying their recharge automatically. In a vehicle-to-grid scheme, some of the cars could even sell energy back to the grid if the spot price became very high and the car owners have spare capacity.

Because electric cars have built-in energy storage, they should be well-matched to consuming the variable output from wind turbines. Thus it is reasonable to think of the number of electric cars that can be fueled per wind turbine.

Policy
Since I live in the U.S., my primary interest is in U.S. energy policy, but the energy problem is a global problem, so every nation must work together to avoid hoarding and resource wars in the event of a peak oil doomsday scenario and so on.

Energy Policy Act of 2005
01:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC): The Energy Policy Act of 2005 article has no navigation templates. It could use several. 00:51, 26 October 2008 (UTC): I added Energy in the USA. Later I might add Energy policy, after I create that template.

New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence

 * New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence - this is a proposal by U.S. Congressman Randy Forbes. The article needs work; it contains typographical errors, and it lacks sources and categories.

Potential categories: look at similar articles such as Pickens Plan to see what categories they are in.


 * Category:Renewable energy in the United States
 * Category:Wind power in the United States
 * Category:Political plans in the United States
 * Category:Energy policy

Sources: search for them, with Google, Google wikipedia, Google custom, and Google scholar cite.


 * New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence - search with Google scholar cite
 * New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence - search with Google scholar cite
 * New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence - search with Google scholar cite
 * New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence - search with Google scholar cite
 * New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence - search with Google scholar cite

Apollo Alliance
Here is a video of Amanda Woodrum, Energy Officer, Policy Matters Ohio, host of Ohio Apollo Alliance:



Some presentations by Ms. Woodrum:


 * http://www.policymattersohio.org/publications.htm#energy

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security
This is a pretty good paper. Get the citation.


 * "Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security"
 * http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c
 * http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article

Google Scholar finds the paper, when I put quotes around the title, but the Universal reference formatter does not wikify it into a nice citation. So put it into a nice citation template. The Sustainable energy article already cites it with a bare reference.




 * - a Stanford U. lecture by Mark Jacobson.

Sustainable Energy - without the hot air
19:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC): this is a new book by David J. C. MacKay:


 * - a video featuring David MacKay, illustrating some concepts from the book
 * - a video featuring David MacKay, illustrating some concepts from the book

In a manner similar to Jacobson's review, MacKay sizes up the energy problem, and explains the scale of renewable energy construction that will be necessary to replace fossil fuels. The book is available on the author's Web site and as a PDF file for free download.

Copyright policy: on the plus side, the author has released the book freely:

"This is a free book in a second sense: you are free to use all the material in this book, except for the cartoons and the photos with a named photographer, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. (The cartoons and photos are excepted because the authors have generally given me permission only to include their work, not to share it under a Creative Commons license.) You are especially welcome to use my materials for educational purposes. My website includes separate high-quality files for each of the figures in the book."

But on the minus side, his use of a non-commercial license means we cannot upload the book's images to Wikimedia Commons.

My initial impression is that this book does a very good job of explaining the energy problem to the nontechnical reader.

Page 205 in Chapter 27 has this quote, which is as close as I've seen so far in the book to some mention of virtualizing travel:

"Yes, lighting efficiency is improved by a switch to light-emitting diodes for most lighting, and many other gadgets will get more efficient; but thanks to the blessings of economic growth, we’ll have increased the number of gadgets in our lives – for example video-conferencing systems to help us travel less."

Renewable energy in the United States
21:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC): an interesting article from The Guardian:

Interesting stat from the article: 42 percent of the diesel fuel burned in the rail freight sector is used to haul coal.

Energy security and renewable technology
14:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC): as with many of Wikipedia's energy-related articles, Energy security and renewable technology needs work:
 * It's a brief overview article, so it mentions several other energy-related topics in passing, but not all of these references use terminology consistent with the other Wikipedia articles about the subjects, and not all of them have links.
 * The article has no navigation templates. Perhaps we need a new navigation template specifically about energy policy type issues.
 * There are several overlapping articles (e.g., Energy security).

Efficiency
19:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC): Wikipedia has several articles about energy efficiency that various people may have edited without being aware of what others were doing. For example, this search finds several: Including:
 * Efficient energy use
 * Energy efficiency
 * Green building
 * Non-nuclear future
 * Sustainable energy

Zero-energy building
19:27, 28 August 2008 (UTC): The Zero-energy building article has some problems:
 * Not all of the references are in a consistent format; edit them to use citation templates.
 * There is no navigation template. Sustainability is one option, but that template is big and general. A template more focused on energy efficiency, or perhaps just on efficent buildings, would be nice.
 * The order of standard sections does not quite comply with WP:LAYOUT.

Degree days
This map is interesting; it would be nice to get this same data as a shapefile, so I could make an SVG file from it:


 * File:United States Heating Degree Day map, 1961-1990.jpg

Super-efficient refrigerators

 * http://mtbest.net/chest_fridge.html describes a conversion kit to turn an ordinary chest freezer into a chest refrigerator, requiring only 0.1 kWh/day. Top-opening refrigerators have the potential to be far more efficient than conventional front-opening refrigerators, because opening the lid of a chest does not allow the cold air inside to spill out as it does from a front-opening refrigerator.

The most efficient production refrigerators are by Sun Frost. But it appears that all their models are conventional uprights. Even so, Sun Frost claims its refrigerators use only 15 kWh per month, compared to 110 kWh for an average refrigerator. But the chest refrigerator uses even less, around 3 kWh/month.

Search on Wikipedia to see whether any articles have already described the energy savings possible by replacing all the existing refrigerators with the most efficient possible refrigerators. I'm not finding much. Some people make kegerators by converting chest freezers, which is similar to making a chest refrigerator in that it involves installing a thermostat which regulates the interior temperature above freezing. There was once an Icy Ball kerosene-fueled refrigerator that opened on the top. It's possible that no modern refrigerator manufacturer makes a top-opening model to attain the maximum possible efficiency.

I also wonder, has anyone tried integrating a refrigerator with a hot-water heater? The temperature of tap water, in summer where I live, anyway, is colder than the typical air temperature. Cooling the refrigerator condenser with incoming tap water would warm it slightly, making it easier for the hot water heater to heat. Another source of cool fluid to heat-sink the refrigerator condenser would be the loop of a geothermal heat pump.

Search the Web with Google to see if anyone has thought of integrating these technologies:



The second search finds some links on the first page of results.

New York City
21:20, 8 April 2009 (UTC): New York City is one of the most energy-efficient cities in the United States. This is true with respect to New York City's consumption of energy overall, energy as electricity, and energy as liquid fuels. See:


 * New York City
 * Environmental issues in New York City

To-do: calculate what the overall U.S. consumption of electricity and petroleum would be if the entire U.S. was as efficient as New York City. In particular, see whether New York City's efficiency, if scaled to the whole U.S., would suffice to eliminate U.S. oil imports. This comparison is interesting because New York City is an American city which undeniably exists and is a leader in commerce, culture and the arts, science and technology, etc. This makes NYC a more relevant example than cities in other countries, or hypothetical ideas about efficient living arrangements that haven't been validated on a large scale.


 * http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_profiles.cfm?sid=NY Energy Information Administration - State Energy Profiles - State energy data, information, and maps - New York Quick Facts

Steady-state economy
20:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC): this is an interesting paper:



George Monbiot cites it in his blog at The Guardian: The Sustainable development article mentions the steady-state economy, but the presentation seems to differ from that in the paper.

Daly points out the difference between information and other types of products, but he does not mention the physical reasoning, namely that the Conservation laws apply to material and energy, but do not apply to information in exactly the same way, because humans are still many orders of magnitude away from manipulating information with the theoretical minimum amount of energy. He says intellectual property laws slow the exchange of knowledge thereby helping to keep poor people poor.

Daly makes explicity some ideas I have thought about imprecisely, for example he says:
 * Advertising should be taxed rather than made a tax-deductible business expense. It is inconsistent for economists to regard consumer preference as paramount while at the same time corporations are encouraged to use every possible means to shape consumer preference.
 * Production of less-than-maximally-durable products should be regarded as a maintenance cost, rather than as contributing to economic output. For example, twice as many of a product that lasts 10 years must be built each year to maintain the existing stock compared to a product that lasts 20 years. Doubling the service life of a product divides its maintenance cost in half, if we view the manufacture of replacements as a maintenance cost.

Electricity generation, transmission, storage
22:44, 5 October 2008 (UTC): the intermittency of renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar energy creates the need for technologies and policies to better match the variable supply of power to the variable demand. This requires some adjustment for the electric power industry accustomed to fossil fuel power plants that turn on when you need them. The various articles about wind and solar power have some overlapping ad hoc discussions of dealing with intermittency. It would be more efficient to place most of the discussion of mitigation strategies for intermittency in articles specific to each technology, and then link to them from the articles about the intermittent power sources themselves. The first step is to inventory the various articles about mitigation, to see what we have.

SuperGrid
22:44, 5 October 2008 (UTC): the SuperGrid article is a bit stubby at present. To-do:


 * Add sections to distinguish between the proposed (hypothetical) cryogenically-cooled, superconducting SuperGrid, and the currently-buildable high voltage direct current supergrids for linking up geographically dispersed wind farms and solar power plants. Currently, the whole article is just a lead section.
 * Edit the existing references as footnotes using citation templates.
 * Add more references:
 * See where else Wikipedia mentions the term:
 * Add Electricity generation
 * See where else Wikipedia mentions the term:
 * Add Electricity generation
 * See where else Wikipedia mentions the term:
 * Add Electricity generation
 * Add Electricity generation

Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant
22:44, 5 October 2008 (UTC): I made a few edits. Add an Infobox power station.

Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant
22:44, 5 October 2008 (UTC): I added Electricity generation, and I put the standard sections into the standard order per WP:LAYOUT.

Isentropic
20:47, 27 April 2010 (UTC): a thermal pumped energy storage technology for which the inventors claim a lower cost than pumped-storage hydroelectricity:


 * Excerpt: "Isentropic's Pumped Heat Electricity Storage (PHES) system is based on the First Ericsson cycle and uses a heat pump to store electricity in thermal form."
 * http://www.isentropic.co.uk/index.php?page=technology
 * Excerpt: "Isentropic's Pumped Heat Electricity Storage (PHES) system is based on the First Ericsson cycle and uses a heat pump to store electricity in thermal form."
 * http://www.isentropic.co.uk/index.php?page=technology

Related links:
 * Brayton cycle
 * Isentropic process
 * Grid energy storage
 * Energy storage
 * Category:Renewable energy storage technology
 * Seasonal thermal store
 * Outline of energy storage

I don't see any mentions of this energy storage technology on Wikipedia yet.

Lists of power stations
00:10, 8 May 2010 (UTC): Wikipedia has lists of power stations that follow various styles of naming, layout, and topical organization. There are lists for some US states, e.g.:


 * List of power stations in California
 * List of power stations in Florida
 * List of generating stations in Indiana 23:32, 8 May 2010 (UTC): I moved this to: List of power stations in Indiana
 * List of power stations in Illinois
 * List of power stations in New Jersey
 * List of power stations in New York
 * List of power stations in Oregon
 * List of power stations in Pennsylvania
 * List of power stations in Virginia
 * List of power stations in Washington
 * List of power stations in Wisconsin
 * List of power stations in South Carolina
 * PowerStationsUnitedStates
 * Category:Power stations in the United States

and countries, e.g.:


 * List of power stations in the United States
 * List of power stations in Canada
 * List of power stations in England
 * List of power stations in New Zealand
 * List of power stations in Malaysia
 * List of power stations in Scotland
 * PowerStations

and lists for generating stations by type, e.g.:


 * List of solar thermal power stations
 * List of nuclear power stations
 * List of largest power stations in the world
 * List of photovoltaic power stations

and by type and country or region:
 * List of reservoirs and dams in Canada
 * Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert

I'm focusing on lists of power stations for the US states just now. There is a PowerStationsUnitedStates template which doesn't seem to link to all of the existing lists yet. There is also a Category:Power stations in the United States.

Clearly, List of generating stations in Indiana does not follow the naming convention of all the other existing per-state lists, and the template and category, so I will move it to List of power stations in Indiana. I will also move the templates:


 * Generating Stations in Indiana
 * Generating stations in Arizona

to:


 * Power stations in Indiana - 23:32, 8 May 2010 (UTC): I might not bother to rename this template
 * Power stations in Arizona

Search for more:



I would like to make these state lists:


 * List of power stations in Arizona - 23:32, 8 May 2010 (UTC): I started this.
 * List of power stations in Ohio

See what information sources the other lists use.


 * SourceWatch - has listings for some coal-fired power plants

Energy transportation
06:35, 25 May 2010 (UTC): it would be interesting to develop an article (or expand the section: Energy development) to compare all the major existing or proposed methods of transporting energy, in terms of investment cost, bandwidth, and energy cost to transport a unit of energy. For example, how does transporting coal by railroad compare to transmitting electricity in a power grid? Some forms of energy transportation to compare:


 * Alternating current transmission
 * High-voltage direct current transmission
 * Microwave transmission
 * Laser transmission
 * Oil pipeline (and gas pipeline, coal slurry pipeline, ethanol pipeline)
 * Oil tanker/barge
 * Rail transport
 * Truck transport
 * Embedded energy of finished goods (e.g. locating aluminum smelters near hydroelectric plants, and shipping bauxite to and aluminum from them)

Energy cost
21:42, 24 July 2010 (UTC): the cost of energy from various sources comes up repeatedly in any discussion of energy policy. Since energy is rarely a final product in itself, but is instead merely a means to obtain other desirable goods and services (such as heating, cooling, transport, food, etc.), everybody seems to want the cheapest energy. Debates about energy alternatives typically involve debates about what the various alternatives "really" cost. Consider making a navigation template for articles relating to energy costs.


 * Levelised energy cost
 * Relative cost of electricity generated by different sources
 * Economics of new nuclear power plants
 * Renewable energy credit
 * Cost of electricity by source
 * Energy economics
 * Category:Energy economics
 * Wind power grid integration

Hydro
08:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC): hydropower is a very mature technology. The first commercial power plants in the 1800s were hydroelectric plants. The U.S. has already tapped most of its hydroelectric capacity. However, there are many smaller dams for navigation and flood control that could have small power plants, but currently do not. Make a list of some in my area.

Hydro plants are perhaps the most desirable power plants to have on a grid, especially in conjunction with intermittent power sources such as wind and solar, because hydro plants can act as virtual grid energy storage units, and are rapidly dispatchable in response to varying demand for power on the grid. See:


 * Grid energy storage

Untapped hydroelectric potential of the Ohio River
09:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC): find some links:



Captain Anthony Meldahl Locks and Dam
08:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC): Wikipedia needs an article on the Captain Anthony Meldahl Locks and Dam. It would be a red link in the List of crossings of the Ohio River and List of locks and dams of the Ohio River, except that it's a black link. More than half of the Ohio River dams don't have articles yet, it seems. Here are some links with information about the Meldahl dam and its proposed hydroelectric plant:


 * 30 feet of head. 105 MW capacity. American Municipal Power-Ohio.
 * 30 feet of head. 105 MW capacity. American Municipal Power-Ohio.


 * Captain Anthony Meldahl Locks and Dam is at mile marker 436 on the Ohio River. It creates a 95 mile navigational pool between Meldahl Locks and Dam and Greenup Locks and Dam. The dam is between Neville, Ohio and Chilo, Ohio.
 * Captain Anthony Meldahl Locks and Dam is at mile marker 436 on the Ohio River. It creates a 95 mile navigational pool between Meldahl Locks and Dam and Greenup Locks and Dam. The dam is between Neville, Ohio and Chilo, Ohio.

Search for photos with Flickr free: Both searches come up dry. This search finds lots of photos, but I will have search through them manually to look for photos of the dam: This search finds two photos of the Cannelton Locks and Dam:

Markland Locks and Dam
Evidently Markland Locks and Dam (the next dam 95.3 miles downstream on the Ohio River) has a power plant now, 81,000 kva according to this page:



This page:



says:
 * Capacity: 65 megawatts
 * Switzerland County, Indiana
 * Commercial Date: 1967
 * At first this excerpt from the above page made no sense: "has three turbine generators inside a 150-foot high concrete dam", since the head is only 35 feet. At first I did not see where they could fit a structure of 150 vertical feet on the site. Later I found the book by R. F. Ott (see below) that shows a cross-sectional diagram of the powerhouse, which extends well below the pool level of the tailrace, down into the riverbed. The Ohio River is deep everywhere now, because dams along its whole length impound navigation pools.

The first page says Cinergy operates the plant, but Duke Energy merged with Cinergy on April 3, 2006, and the name of the combined entity is Duke Energy now. List of locks and dams of the Ohio River says several dams have hydro plants under construction, but does not list Meldahl as one of them. It looks like the Ohio River has 21 dams, of which only five currently generate electricity. Assuming each dam has a hydro potential between 50 MW and 100 MW (depending on the head, and on how far downstream the dam is), that's an unused hydro potential perhaps in the 1 GW range, the size of a nuclear power plant. Plus, hydroelectric power is the most desirable type of power from a grid energy storage standpoint, because hydroelectric plants can rapidly adjust their output to act as load following power plants, and their reservoirs can absorb the output of intermittent power sources such as wind farms and solar power plants.

Search for some more links with Google and Google scholar cite:


 * markland powerhouse
 * markland powerhouse

That finds some interesting links:


 * The report lists the powerhouse capacity as 81 MW. This conflicts with the 65 MW figure on the Duke Energy page. So, I have three sources which list the capacity as 81,000 kva, 65 MW, and 81 MW. Duh.
 * This shows aerial views of the powerhouse, which is on the north end of Markland Dam on the Indiana side. The locks are on the south end, the Kentucky side. The report also shows photos of the power lines leading northwest from the dam to the Fairview substation in Indiana.
 * This shows aerial views of the powerhouse, which is on the north end of Markland Dam on the Indiana side. The locks are on the south end, the Kentucky side. The report also shows photos of the power lines leading northwest from the dam to the Fairview substation in Indiana.

Google found a book listed on Google Books that shows a cross-sectional diagram of the powerhouse and a turbine.

Energy templates
21:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC): I wrote notes about Energy templates (i.e., energy-related navigation templates) elsewhere on this page. Move all my template-related notes to this section so I can keep track of them more easily.

User:Teratornis/Energy/Energy templates visual
21:03, 5 August 2010 (UTC): make a page that displays all the energy-related templates: Eventually consider moving it to WikiProject Energy/Energy templates visual, if it looks useful enough.
 * User:Teratornis/Energy/Energy templates visual

Template categories
08:21, 30 March 2008 (UTC): I noticed some less than optimal categorization in the templates that appear in energy articles. Presumably the most generally appropriate category would be:


 * Category:Energy templates

but some templates are in:


 * Category:Technology and applied science templates
 * Category:Natural science and nature navbox templates

I will recategorize the clearly energy-related templates into Category:Energy templates, when I notice them as I browse around energy articles.

I noticed that Category:Energy templates is itself in no category. I looked around for a suitable parent category, and I decided Category:Technology and applied science templates probably makes the most sense.

Templates by other users
As other users create energy-related navigation templates, make sure the template names are correct, and categorize them appropriately.

Template:Petroleum Industry
05:47, 31 July 2008 (UTC): the template is new, and needs the following:
 * A proper documentation subpage, per WP:DOC; see Peak oil and Template:Peak oil/doc. 07:39, 2 August 2008 (UTC): done.
 * Categorize it into Category:Energy templates. (That's part of what I will get by copying and editing Template:Peak oil/doc to Template:Petroleum industry/doc.) 07:39, 2 August 2008 (UTC): done.
 * Move the template to Template:Petroleum industry, per WP:TITLE. 05:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC): done.
 * Update all the links to the template: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Petroleum_Industry. 05:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC): done.

Template:Solar energy
17:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC): I see no navigation template for articles about solar energy, other than one line in Renewable energy sources. Search for existing work with Google wikipedia and Google custom:


 * I only see some navigation templates for renewable energy articles pertaining to specific regions (such as countries).
 * I only see some navigation templates for renewable energy articles pertaining to specific regions (such as countries).
 * I only see some navigation templates for renewable energy articles pertaining to specific regions (such as countries).
 * I only see some navigation templates for renewable energy articles pertaining to specific regions (such as countries).

Categories:
 * Category:Solar energy

16:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC): I see that someone made a navigation template for solar energy, but they put it in the wrong place:


 * Template:Navbox/Solar energy

The template should not be a subpage of another template. See if any other templates (pages in the Template: namespace) have this mistake: 15:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC): It appears that only Template:Navbox/Solar energy is in the wrong place.
 * Special:Prefixindex/Template:Navbox
 * [&from= a magic-wordsy way to generate the same link]

21:53, 2 August 2008 (UTC): so move the template to Solar energy and add a documentation subpage. Fix the links to it: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Navbox/Solar energy. 06:06, 4 August 2008 (UTC): done.

Template:Sustainable technology
00:59, 6 August 2008 (UTC): Sustainable technology has some energy-related links. I could categorize it into Category:Energy templates and give it a documentation subpage per WP:DOC.

Template:Energy in the USA
21:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC): Energy in the USA can use a documentation subpage per WP:DOC. I think the template could have some more entries. I might split the energy sources group into subgroups for fossils, renewable, and wind (since we have several individual state wind power articles). Also, a group for books could be nice.

22:19, 25 October 2008 (UTC): an unregistered user deleted the energy books group with no prior discussion to build consensus. I might start a discussion about that on Template talk:Energy in the USA.

Other articles to add to the template:


 * - search for related articles about petroleum that are not yet in the template.
 * Oil reserves in the United States
 * Strategic Petroleum Reserve
 * Arctic Refuge drilling controversy
 * Drill Here. Drill Now.

Separate the types of energy into different groups, for example non-renewable and renewable energy, like I did in Electricity generation. I might make separate groups for individual sources such as wind power and petroleum, which have numerous subsidiary articles.

Template:GalvanicCells
23:59, 29 November 2008 (UTC): the GalvanicCells template had no documentation subpage, and was not listed in Energy templates. I fixed both items.

Template:Grid modernization
23:59, 29 November 2008 (UTC): the Grid modernization template is not listed in Energy templates.

Template:Energy templates
05:28, 2 August 2008 (UTC): make an Energy templates template, similar to Google templates. The latter goes in the "See also" sections of documentation subpages for templates such as Google custom. That way, when I add or discover more energy-related templates, I can add links to them from all the other energy-related templates by editing only one template.

Template:Ocean energy
17:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC): make a template about Ocean energy. Start it in User:Teratornis/Sandbox. Copy from Bioenergy and edit it.

Search for existing work with Google wikipedia and Google custom:



Categories:
 * Category:Ocean energy
 * Category:Energy conversion
 * Category:Renewable energy
 * Category:Wave power
 * Category:Energy from oceans and water
 * Category:Power station technology
 * Category:Sustainable technologies

04:48, 25 October 2008 (UTC): Ocean energy remains somewhat sparse, reflecting the relative lack of development of ocean energy compared with other types of renewable energy. The wind, solar, and geothermal industries are much farther along as of 2008. However, several companies and countries are seriously developing ocean energy, so the industry may grow in size, and Wikipedia articles may grow along with it. However, ocean energy will have a challenge to catch up to wind power, which seems solidly into an exponential growth curve now.

Template:Geothermal power
23:54, 27 July 2008 (UTC): make a navigation template for Geothermal power.

Search for existing work with Google wikipedia and Google custom:



Somewhat confusingly, the main article for this topic is Geothermal power, but the relevant category is Category:Geothermal energy. I will call the template Geothermal power, in favor of the main article.

00:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC): I started a draft of the template in User:Teratornis/Sandbox.

Some categories containing articles to add to a Geothermal power template:


 * Category:Geothermal energy
 * Category:Geothermal power and heating plants
 * Category:Geothermal power by country

Template:Energy books and films
01:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC): do we have a template for energy books and films yet? I am not finding one with these searches:





List some categories containing articles for this template to link to:
 * Category:Books about petroleum politics
 * Category:Climate change books
 * Category:Peak oil books
 * Category:Peak oil films

Look for other categories containing links to energy-related books and films. There might not be any or many such categories yet.

A page that lists a lot of books relating to energy, although many of them may not yet have articles on Wikipedia:
 * User:Americanus/Peak Oil People

List of books about energy issues
Lists (see: WP:LIST):
 * List of books about energy issues

Look for similar lists: Wikipedia has many Lists of books. They appear to follow various formats. One illustrative page is: I would like to add authors to the entries on List of books about energy issues. I think I like the sortable table format on this page:
 * Special:Prefixindex/List of books
 * Wikiproject Books/List of books by title, e.g.:
 * Wikipedia:Wikiproject Books/List of books by title: A
 * List of environmental books

Here is an interesting book from Category:Books about petroleum politics, by Chris Mooney: The Republican War on Science. However, I'm not seeing anything about energy jumping right out in the following video (other than some mentions of climate change):



More searches to look for books about energy:



06:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC): temporarily paste in the list entries from List of books about energy issues just in case I missed anything when I converted them to a table.


 * Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (1982)
 * Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System (2007)
 * Energy and American Society: Thirteen Myths (2007)
 * Energy Autonomy: The Economic, Social & Technological Case for Renewable Energy (2007)
 * Energy Technology Perspectives (biennial)
 * Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil (2007)
 * Global Warming: Opposing Viewpoints (2002)
 * Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy (2007)
 * Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis (2005)
 * Nuclear Implosions: The Rise and Fall of the Washington Public Power Supply System (2008)
 * Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story of the Little County That Couldn’t Be Bought (2007)
 * Nuclear or Not? Does Nuclear Power Have a Place in a Sustainable Energy Future? (2007)
 * ''Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil (2004)
 * Outlook On Renewable Energy In America (2007)
 * Power Down: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World
 * Reaction Time: Climate Change and the Nuclear Option (2007)
 * Renewable Electricity and the Grid: The Challenge of Variability (2007)
 * Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (2010)
 * Small is profitable: The hidden economic benefits of making electrical resources the right size (2002)
 * The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era (1999)
 * The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity (2007)
 * The Hype about Hydrogen, Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate (2004)
 * The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (2005)
 * The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003)
 * Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective (2004)
 * Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs and Security (2005)

Template:Energy books
04:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC): since there are a lot of books relating to energy, make separate navigation templates for energy-related books and films. Start by making a template for Energy books. Start it in User:Teratornis/Sandbox. Copy from Peak oil and edit it.

Template:Energy films
04:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC): also make a Energy films. Start it in User:Teratornis/Sandbox2.

Categories to check for possible links:


 * Category:Documentaries about technology
 * Category:Documentaries about transportation
 * Category:Environmental films

Template:Electricity generation
03:11, 25 August 2008 (UTC): articles such as Intermittent power source, Baseload power, and Capacity factor have no navigation templates yet. Make a navigation template for these types of articles, Electricity generation. Start it in User:Teratornis/Sandbox2. Lots of articles about Wind power and other Renewable energy sources link to these articles. To understand the scope for renewables, and the arguments pro and con, one must understand the underlying power technology they rely on or impact.

I thought initially about calling this: Template:Power station technology, but then I liked the name Electricity generation.

Categories:
 * Category:Power station technology
 * Category:Electricity distribution
 * Category:Electricity economics

Neither the Electricity nor the Electricity generation articles have navigation templates. Electricity generation has some bunched-up edit links which I will fix with the FixBunching template, if applicable.

Template:Energy policy
04:43, 25 October 2008 (UTC): given that the United States presidential election, 2008 is in the home stretch, I'm thinking about Energy policy. I noticed that article has no navigation template. So make an Energy policy template.

Searches:

Articles:
 * List of energy topics
 * List of energy topics

Categories:
 * Category:Energy economics
 * Category:Energy policy

Template:Energy units
04:43, 25 October 2008 (UTC): I'm looking at other articles on List of energy topics and seeing some that have no navigation templates yet:


 * List of energy topics - make an Energy units template
 * Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Convert
 * Template:Convert/list of units/energy

I like the Cubic mile of oil unit. Add energy unit comparison tables to articles such as Barrel of oil equivalent. Consider making a bar graph with gnuplot showing the common energy units against a logarithmic scale. That would compare units of widely varying sizes on a single graph. See also Category:Orders of magnitude and Orders of magnitude (energy).

Template:Petroleum in the United States
07:23, 20 November 2008 (UTC): several articles about petroleum in the United States have no navigation template yet. For example:
 * Trans-Alaska Pipeline System
 * Petronius (oil platform) - this does have Supertall, but no template specifically about energy

Template:Alternative vehicle propulsion
07:23, 20 November 2008 (UTC): several articles about alternative vehicle propulsion technology have no navigation template yet. For example:
 * Compressed natural gas
 * Electric double-layer capacitor
 * Electric vehicle
 * Hypermiling
 * Regenerative braking
 * Vehicle-to-grid
 * HCNG
 * Hydrogen fuel enhancement

07:33, 16 June 2008 (UTC): make a navigation template for links of the type in: Transportation demand management.

Template:Wind power in the United States
03:34, 22 November 2008 (UTC): after I started the Wind power in Italy article, I was looking at its Special:Whatlinkshere/Wind power in Italy and I noticed Wind power in Serbia linking to it. When I looked at that article, I saw a "Wind power in Europe" template that was really just a call to Europe topic, a template that allows for quick construction of a navigation template that links to every article in a series that has a name matching a simple pattern. The United States topic template is analogous. I could make a Template:Wind power in the United States that would have links to all the per-state articles such as Wind power in Texas. Right now it would mostly consist of red links, but someday we might have enough wind power articles for the states to justify a navigation template for all of them.

Glossary
22:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC): make a Glossary of energy page. See:
 * Portal:Contents/List of glossaries
 * Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Manual of Style
 * Manual of Style (glossaries)
 * Manual of Style (glossaries)

I can collect definitions of technical terms from various Wikipedia articles, for example nameplate capacity, capacity factor, Scram, etc. That would be very handy.

Start with User:Teratornis/Glossary of energy. I will follow the simple style in Glossary of chess. I might later experiment with the fancier structured style that Manual of Style (glossaries) describes in a rather turgid style with too much passive voice with missing actor.

Index
22:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC): make an index of energy that follows the analytical style of the Editor's index to Wikipedia. This would require consensus to write an index which does not follow the crude style of article index pages on Wikipedia, which merely list article titles alphabetically and make no attempt to organize them hierarchically, annotate the entries, or cross-reference them. See:


 * Index of solar energy articles
 * Index of steam energy articles
 * Outline of energy
 * Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge
 * Outline of energy development
 * Outline of energy storage
 * Outline of nuclear technology

See if there is a Manual of Style page about index pages. Also study WikiProject Outline of knowledge. Making an index of energy might be more difficult than making a Glossary of energy, since the style I would like to use doesn't seem to be the style that most people are currently using.

Energy-related wikis
17:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC): Wikipedia has a no original research policy. This is necessary on Wikipedia because of its nature, but it has the unfortunate side effect of limiting what users can write, when no published source already happens to say what they want to say. Since many topics relating to energy are controversial, not to mention speculative, look for other wikis which accept a wider range of content on the subject.


 * wikiindex:Category:Energy

21:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC): here is an energy-related wiki that runs on MediaWiki:
 * http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

07:48, 15 October 2008 (UTC): here is another wiki that runs on MediaWiki. It has pages about wind power on the Great Lakes, but at the moment the wiki seems to be broken (I was able to view Google's cached version of some of its pages).
 * http://www.greatlakeswiki.org/index.php/Wind_energy

Google custom search
The Green Maven site has a Google custom search on Web sites specializing in "green" topics.

WikiProjects
04:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC): I saw that User:GGByte is working on a WikiProject Renewable energy: User:GGByte/Renewable Energy.

WikiProject Energy
Add some more tasks to the to-do list for WikiProject Energy:
 * WikiProject Energy/to do

Here are all the existing subpages of WikiProject Energy, so far:


 * Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:WikiProject Energy

WikiProject Energy/to do uses the tasks template, which looks too constraining. The tasks template seems to assume you only need to list the titles of some pages which presumably exist. There is no room to document anything about what to do, nor to describe generally how to create things which do not exist yet. This format would seem uninformative for new users who don't know anything about Wikipedia yet. See how some of the other well-developed WikiProjects handle their to-do lists. Maybe WikiProject Mathematics has something better. See for example: WikiProject Mathematics has multiple subpages for managing ongoing work.
 * WikiProject Mathematics

Rough notes about some of the things I would like to add to an expanded to-do list for WikiProject Energy:


 * Wind power
 * Wind power in the United States
 * Create the missing categories for "Wind power in state" as subcategories of Category:Wind power in the United States by state
 * Start the missing "Wind power in state" articles
 * Media files
 * Find all energy-related, freely-licensed images on Wikipedia and move them to Commons
 * Categorize all energy-related images on Commons
 * Geocode as many energy-related images as possible
 * Correctly identify the objects in the images (wind farm, turbine vendor, etc.)
 * Upload more images from Flickr to Commons

Articles that need cleanup

 * Energy security
 * U.S. energy independence
 * Jatropha curcas
 * Cellulosic ethanol
 * Miscanthus
 * Switchgrass
 * Algae fuel
 * Almost every article under Category:Bioenergy needs help
 * Electricity sector of the United States - needs updating with data more recent than 2006, plus more links to the other US energy articles. It has no navigation template as of 21:26, 4 November 2009 (UTC); that's an easy fix: Energy in the US and Electricity generation.

Global warming
09:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC): I'm getting a bit tired of reading endless skepticism/denial of anthropomorphic global warming on various Web sites (for example in the reader comments section of just about every article about global warming on a typical news site such as The Guardian). The scientific consensus is basically settled, but that doesn't stop unqualified people from parroting the denial arguments they heard on Fox News and right-wing talk radio. However, any effective strategy for Mitigation of global warming is certain to be highly non-transparent to the average person, to put it mildly, so it's fair for people to demand some convincing. Unfortunately, not many people understand the strength of scientific consensus.


 * Scientists can make mistakes, and occasionally large numbers of scientists have been wrong about things in the past. An example is Piltdown Man, a hoax that stood for 40 years before full exposure, but some scientists were skeptical from the outset. As more hominid fossils turned up elsewhere, Piltdown Man became harder to fit into the evolutionary sequence. This is unlike a scientific consensus for which each new bit of evidence tends to strengthen rather than weaken the consensus view.

However, for the most part scientists tend to be collectively very smart, which makes it difficult for large numbers of scientists to persist in egregious errors for long periods. With modern instrumentation, data collection methods, global communication, and many scientists checking each others' work, it is unlikely for an average untrained person to realize something that all the scientists missed. Not impossible, but very unlikely. Most objections to the AGW consensus are thus squarely in the newbie-FAQ category, the sort of thing that scientists would have recognized and checked from the start. Unfortunately, the average person isn't aware of that, and easily falls prey to unqualified question-raising of the Glenn Beck variety. To working scientists, having to answer newbie-FAQs is a waste of time, but unfortunately any effective response to global warming will require life-altering behavioral changes from everybody who currently burns substantial amounts of fossil fuels directly or indirectly, or who contributes to deforestation. Which would be nearly everyone in an industrialized or industrializing country, as well as anyone who chops down trees in a less-developed country. In short, almost everyone who has had contact with modern civilization.

Since Wikipedia has a neutral point of view policy, that puts Wikipedia editors in a tricky position when scientific consensus is so out of step with popular belief. Polls show that lots of people depart from the scientific consensus on AGW to varying degrees. A substantial minority reject the science outright, and another large fraction of people agree with the science but believe there is much more scientific debate on the issue than there really is. And only a vanishingly small fraction of people (at least where I live) have taken any substantial steps to cut their carbon footprints by the 90% or so that would be necessary to reduce the chance of dangerous global warming - which means the vast majority of people do not view global warming as being as important as their vacation plans and so on. It doesn't rise to the level of real-life importance for most people.

So anyway, one of the great strengths of wiki technology is that we can accumulate the results of questions and answers, so we can keep improving the answers by collaborative editing and we won't have to waste the rest of our lives repeatedly answering the same questions. But because Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy, even if the habitability of the planet is at stake, the Constitution may actually be a suicide pact here. Therefore the most appropriate platform for collaboratively editing a global warming FAQ would probably be another wiki.


 * http://earth.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page - Global Warming Wikia - not very well developed, looks like some copy and paste from Wikipedia articles
 * http://globalwarming.wikidot.com/ - Global Warming Wiki, at wikidot.com (a wiki farm
 * http://www.countercurrents.org/henderson240807.htm - A Climate Change Wiki: not a wiki, but a somewhat rambling call to construct a climate change wiki
 * wikiindex:Category:Environment
 * http://www.wikigw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page - wow, here's an example of what to avoid, a spammed wiki that would have been about global warming
 * http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia - this one looks like a fairly well-developed wiki, by people who are familiar with Wikipedia

Here are some general sites that result from an obvious Google search:


 * http://www.astronomynotes.com/solarsys/s11b.htm - Answers to Global Warming Skeptics: a list of questions with links to many other sites
 * http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/ - How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming
 * The above series has some good content, but the format is rather ugly compared to Wikipedia (in keeping with Teratornis' law: everything sucks compared to Wikipedia), the reader has to click all over to read each question one at a time on a separate page, and you have to scroll down each page individually to skip a bunch of irrelevant header garbage. I see no way to read the questions in compact order on one long page, or to scroll to the next question without having to scroll back to the contents page. Ugh.
 * The above series has some good content, but the format is rather ugly compared to Wikipedia (in keeping with Teratornis' law: everything sucks compared to Wikipedia), the reader has to click all over to read each question one at a time on a separate page, and you have to scroll down each page individually to skip a bunch of irrelevant header garbage. I see no way to read the questions in compact order on one long page, or to scroll to the next question without having to scroll back to the contents page. Ugh.






 * Climate change controversies: a simple guide from the Royal Society

Psychological aspects of Global Warming
"Psychotherapist Rosemary Randall described her Cambridge-based project to reduce people's carbon footprint by engaging them in a series of 'carbon conversations'. She was puzzled by the fact that people who accepted the threat of climate change still didn't change their lifestyles accordingly. In response, her approach not only helps people understand their carbon footprints but also recognizes the key roll that psychology and emotion play in behaviour change. "We don't just talk about how to increase energy efficiency in a home, we talk about what makes a home a home." Typically, people who went through her six-meeting course cut one tonne from their carbon emissions in the first year and halved their emissions in two to five years."


 * One minute video summary by Rosemary Randall







Global warming denial
21:41, 2 August 2009 (UTC): this is an interesting subject. Some links:


 * http://perspicacity.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/naomi-oreskes-gets-to-the-source-of-denial/
 * finds a number of overlapping articles on Wikipedia.

08:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC): here some interesting posts on The Guardian about denialism by this user:
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/05/climate-change-scepticism?commentid=6bcda870-bdda-4f72-8e22-2f3f7183d3ca
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/05/climate-change-scepticism?commentid=aac92dbf-7e51-4496-bfc2-7125d28e5276
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/05/climate-change-scepticism?commentid=c225fb90-9ecf-4de4-b03b-88f4a0bfadf7

I saw an interesting video about an unrelated struggle of ideas:



in which "Jarret Brachman summarizes an interview of high-ranking al-Qaeda official Abu Yahya al-Libi (reportedly a likely successor to Osama bin Laden), in which al-Libi taunts the U.S. by offering six strategies the military could use to defeat the terror network."


 * 1) Amplifying backtrackers. People who used to be prominent members of al-Qaeda but who have since recanted "hurt al-Qaeda and hurt them badly."
 * 2) Fabrication and exaggeration. (I don't quite understand Brachman's point there.)
 * 3) Supporting anyone who announces religious rulings or fatwa against al-Qaeda.
 * 4) Introducing new voices. An insurgency is fundamentally predicated on eliminating distinctions between the insurgents and the host population. al-Qaeda understands that the more distinctions and shades of gray that are introduced within Islam, the worse it is for al-Qaeda.
 * 5) Symbolically degrading senior jihadists by releasing unflattering photos of them. (E.g., File:Khalid Shaikh Mohammed after capture.jpg.)
 * 6) Promoting the distinctions. (Salafist jihadism has evidently splintered.)

03:23, 6 March 2010 (UTC): a fascinating series of articles about the rabid right-wing populist version of climate change denial.
 * http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2826189.htm
 * http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2827047.htm
 * http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2828195.htm
 * http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2829295.htm
 * http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2830890.htm

21:42, 29 May 2010 (UTC): a list of publications about climate change denial:
 * http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/papers-on-agw-denialism/

Key Scientific Developments since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
08:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC): here is an interesting update:
 * http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Key-Scientific-Developments-Since-IPCC-4th-Assessment.pdf Key Scientific Developments since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Science Brief 2, June 2009
 * Basically, several indications and future projections of climate change are worse now than they were in the last IPCC report.

Bjørn Lomborg vs. Myles Allen
02:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC): here is an interesting debate.
 * http://media10.simplex.tv/shared/73/SmpMPclimateForum.html?firstProjectID=3344

Michael Pawlyn
05:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC): here is an interesting video from Google:


 * Michael Pawlyn speaks about some the projects Grimshaw Architects has worked on including a carbon-neutral amphitheatre in Las Palmas and the world-famous Eden Project in Cornwall
 * Michael Pawlyn speaks about some the projects Grimshaw Architects has worked on including a carbon-neutral amphitheatre in Las Palmas and the world-famous Eden Project in Cornwall

His response to Bjørn Lomborg is also interesting:


 * playlist
 * playlist

Sea level
According to James Lovelock, sea level rise is the most definitive measure of global heating. Measures of global average (atmospheric, surface) temperature can fluctuate from year to year. Oceans, however, store far more heat than the atmosphere (the atmosphere has the heat capacity of a 3.2m layer of seawater). Thus a slight change in the rate of heat transfer between air and ocean can cause the atmosphere to cool or warm enough in a given year to mask the long-term temperature trend. When the oceans absorb heat, they expand, and sea level rises. It's hard to get rising seas on a cooling Earth.



Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States
04:58, 23 August 2010 (UTC): see my comment here:


 * Talk:Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States

The Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States article does not list emissions by economic sector. This information is available here:

It would be nice to make some diagrams similar to File:Greenhouse Gas by Sector.png, but for the US rather than the whole world, to illustrate this article. That would also show the differences between the relative amounts of greenhouse gases coming from given sectors in the US vs. globally. For example, in the US, the ratio of transport emissions to agricultural emissions is higher than for the whole world. This is because on global scale, most countries have agriculture, but few have motorized to the extent that the US has.

Copy-editing pass through global warming articles
05:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC): I'm reading through several articles relating to global warming and climate change, making small edits to add links and so on. Since I've read or edited a number of related articles, sometimes I can see where an article could have more links to articles I am familiar with, current links are not as specific as they could be, or terminology in one article is not consistent with terminology in another. Given the large number of articles and the complexity of the subject area, one expects to see some inconsistency.

Additionality
00:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC): the jargon term "Additionality" relates to projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The term is not yet in the Glossary of climate change but several articles mention it or define it:
 * Clean Development Mechanism
 * Clean Development Mechanism
 * Carbon credit
 * Carbon offset
 * Renewable Energy Certificates
 * Eugene Green Energy Standard
 * Talk:Carbon credit
 * CDM Gold Standard
 * Loharinag Pala Hydro Power Project - mentions a tool for assessing the additionality of a renewable electricity generating project
 * TerraPass
 * - contains a not very clear definition of additionality
 * additionality - one of the better definitions I've seen:
 * (economics) Net positive difference that results from economic development intervention. The extent to which an activity (and associated outputs, outcomes and impacts) is larger in scale, at a higher quality, takes place quicker, takes place at a different location, or takes place at all as a result of intervention. Additionality measures the net result, taking account of deadweight, leakage, displacement, substitution and economic multipliers.
 * - finds some more definitions
 * USEPA climate change glossary does not mention the term, but mentions several other terms not yet in Wikipedia's Glossary of climate change.
 * - another glossary with some terms that focus on Green-e's business, which is to certify carbon offsets and Renewable Energy Certificates.
 * - another glossary with some terms that focus on Green-e's business, which is to certify carbon offsets and Renewable Energy Certificates.

Annex I countries
07:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC): some articles say "Annex I countries" (I=the letter I), and others say "Annex 1 countries" (1=1 (number)). Determine which is correct. Google Wikipedia does not make it obvious, as each variation appears in plenty of articles: The UNFCCC site uses "Annex I" (with the letter I) so that may be canonical. For example: Searching the UNFCCC site for "Annex 1" (number 1) finds some hits, but they don't seem to be in connection with the Annex I countries.
 * - Results 1 - 10 of about 61 from en.wikipedia.org for "annex I countries".
 * - Results 1 - 10 of about 32 from en.wikipedia.org for "Annex 1 countries".
 * http://unfccc.int/parties_and_observers/parties/annex_i/items/2774.php

Enteric fermentation
09:15, 6 September 2010 (UTC): the Enteric fermentation article has a bit of a mess currently. A user added a claim that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, perhaps without realizing that the Carbon dioxide equivalent value for methane already accounts for this. Another user put strike tags around the claim rather than correcting it.

Lists

 * List of books about energy issues
 * List of countries by electricity production from renewable source
 * List of energy topics
 * List of large wind farms
 * List of photovoltaics companies
 * List of renewable energy magazines
 * List of renewable energy organizations
 * List of renewable energy topics by country
 * List of solar thermal power stations
 * List of the largest hydroelectric power stations
 * List of wind turbine manufacturers