Wind power in Ohio
Encyclopedia
Wind power in Ohio has a long history, and as of 2011, Ohio has eleven utility-scale wind power installations installed or under construction, with a combined nameplate capacity
of just over 1051 MW. An additional 784 MW is pending approval. Some installations have become tourist attractions. There has been a sudden increase in generating capacity, as total windpower generation in the state in 2010 was just 9.7 MW.
Ohio's first large wind farm, Timber Road II near Payne
in northwest Ohio, opened on October 6, 2011.
designed one of world's earliest electricity-generating windmills in Cleveland, Ohio
in 1887–1888. His engineering company built the "windmill dynamo" at his home. It operated from 1886 until 1900. The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 56 feet (17 m) in diameter and was mounted on a 60 foot (18 m) tower, making it similar in size to some of the first commercial wind farm turbines of the 1980s. However, the machine was only rated at 12 kW; it turned relatively slowly since it had 144 blades. Brush used the connected dynamo either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulb
s, three arc lamps, and various motors in his laboratory. The machine fell into disuse after 1900 when electricity became available from Cleveland's central stations, and was abandoned in 1908.
(then the Lewis Research Center) at Brook Park, Ohio
led the U.S. Wind Energy Program for large horizontal-axis wind turbines, designing a series of 13 experimental large horizontal-axis wind turbines. In conjunction with the United States Department of Energy
, NASA developed and tested megawatt-class wind turbines. The program's goal was to develop the technology, and then turn it over to private industry. While none of the program's wind turbine designs saw mass commercialization, the tests generated valuable data and pioneered modern design concepts such as tubular towers and computer control of blade pitch and rotor yaw.
Most of the MOD-series wind turbines went to sites outside of Ohio, but the first unit, the MOD-0 operated at NASA's Plum Brook facility near Sandusky
from 1975 to 1988. Initially the wind turbine had a lattice tower, a 38.1m diameter two-bladed rotor mounted downwind from the tower, and a capacity of 100 kW. Lockheed Corporation
manufactured the aluminum rotor blades. The discovery of severe stress resulting from the rotor blades passing through the tower's wind shadow led to several redesigns. In 1979, NASA rebuilt the MOD-0 with an upwind rotor mounted on a teetering hub, with a steel spar reinforcing the blades. In 1982, a tubular tower replaced the lattice tower. Finally, in 1985 NASA tested a single-bladed rotor with a teetering hub. In 1981, Two NASA Glenn engineers, Larry Viterna and Bob Corrigan, used the adjustable-pitch blade feature of the MOD-0 to invent an analytical method for calculating wind turbine output in high winds, which has since become widely used in the wind power industry as the Viterna method.
in megawatts (MW) for Ohio, Texas
, California
, and the entire United States
since 1999.
One large untapped resource of wind in Ohio is Lake Erie
. Its shallow depth and shelter from hurricanes provide advantages in terms of both ease of construction as well as safety of investment. Although land based wind farms frequently have lower siting costs, offshore wind farms usually have better wind, as open water lacks obstructions such as forests, buildings, and hills.
On February 11, 2010, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
released the first comprehensive update of the wind energy potential by state since 1993, showing that Ohio had potential to install 55 GW of onshore wind power nameplate capacity
, generating 152 TWh annually. For comparison, Ohio consumed 160.176 TWh of electricity in 2005; the entire U.S. wind power industry
was producing at an annual rate of approximately 50 TWh at the end of 2008; and Three Gorges Dam
(the world's largest electricity-generating station) produced an average of 80 TWh/yr in 2008 and 2009.
in Wood County
is Ohio's first utility-scale wind farm
. It consists of four Vestas
V80-1.8MW wind turbine
s giving a combined nameplate capacity
of 7.2 MW. The first two units came online in 2003, and the second two in 2004, next to the Wood County landfill. The US$10 million wind farm's wind turbines are highly visible for miles in all directions, and have become a tourist attraction, regularly hosting busloads of school children. A solar-powered kiosk on the site gives data to visitors about the project, the current wind speed, and real time power generation.
installed a reconditioned Vestas
V27-225 kW wind turbine in 2006, outside its museum building on Cleveland's
North Coast Harbor
between Cleveland Browns Stadium
and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
(41.506661°N 81.696769°W). The North Coast entertainment complex receives 1.5 million visitors per year, and the wind turbine appears regularly on local news broadcasts and Cleveland Browns
NFL
broadcasts, making it one of the world's most-viewed wind turbines.
The wind turbine originally operated on a wind farm in Denmark, which resold the wind turbine while repowering to newer, larger wind turbines. The ground around the wind turbine features an art display entitled Shadow and Light. The display includes walkways that align with the wind turbine's shadow at solar noon and two hours, eleven minutes after solar noon, respectively. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes
, the wind turbine's shadow also aligns with the walkways by length. Thus the wind turbine functions as a large gnomon
in an incomplete sundial
. The display includes boxes of light bulbs encased in concrete on one side of a plaza around the wind turbine's base, representing the amount of electricity consumed by the average American household in a year.
Nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity or maximum effect, refers to the intended technical full–load sustained output of a facility such as a power plant, a chemical plant, fuel plant, metal refinery, mine, and many others.For dispatchable power,...
of just over 1051 MW. An additional 784 MW is pending approval. Some installations have become tourist attractions. There has been a sudden increase in generating capacity, as total windpower generation in the state in 2010 was just 9.7 MW.
Ohio's first large wind farm, Timber Road II near Payne
Payne, Ohio
Payne is a village in Paulding County, Ohio, United States. The population was 1,166 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Payne is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , all of it land....
in northwest Ohio, opened on October 6, 2011.
History
Wind power in Ohio has a long (albeit discontinuous) history.Brush's windmill dynamo
Charles F. BrushCharles F. Brush
Charles Francis Brush was a U.S. inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.-Biography:Born in Euclid Township, Ohio, Brush was raised on a farm about 10 miles from downtown Cleveland...
designed one of world's earliest electricity-generating windmills in Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
in 1887–1888. His engineering company built the "windmill dynamo" at his home. It operated from 1886 until 1900. The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 56 feet (17 m) in diameter and was mounted on a 60 foot (18 m) tower, making it similar in size to some of the first commercial wind farm turbines of the 1980s. However, the machine was only rated at 12 kW; it turned relatively slowly since it had 144 blades. Brush used the connected dynamo either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulb
Incandescent light bulb
The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe makes light by heating a metal filament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament is protected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with inert gas or evacuated. In a halogen lamp, a chemical process...
s, three arc lamps, and various motors in his laboratory. The machine fell into disuse after 1900 when electricity became available from Cleveland's central stations, and was abandoned in 1908.
NASA Lewis MOD series
From 1974 to 1981, NASA's Glenn Research CenterGlenn Research Center
NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is a NASA center, located within the cities of Brook Park, Cleveland and Fairview Park, Ohio between Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and the Cleveland Metroparks's Rocky River Reservation, and has other subsidiary facilities in Ohio...
(then the Lewis Research Center) at Brook Park, Ohio
Brook Park, Ohio
-External links:*...
led the U.S. Wind Energy Program for large horizontal-axis wind turbines, designing a series of 13 experimental large horizontal-axis wind turbines. In conjunction with the United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
, NASA developed and tested megawatt-class wind turbines. The program's goal was to develop the technology, and then turn it over to private industry. While none of the program's wind turbine designs saw mass commercialization, the tests generated valuable data and pioneered modern design concepts such as tubular towers and computer control of blade pitch and rotor yaw.
Most of the MOD-series wind turbines went to sites outside of Ohio, but the first unit, the MOD-0 operated at NASA's Plum Brook facility near Sandusky
Sandusky, Ohio
Sandusky is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Erie County. It is located in northern Ohio and is situated on the shores of Lake Erie, almost exactly half-way between Toledo to the west and Cleveland to the east....
from 1975 to 1988. Initially the wind turbine had a lattice tower, a 38.1m diameter two-bladed rotor mounted downwind from the tower, and a capacity of 100 kW. Lockheed Corporation
Lockheed Corporation
The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace company. Lockheed was founded in 1912 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995.-Origins:...
manufactured the aluminum rotor blades. The discovery of severe stress resulting from the rotor blades passing through the tower's wind shadow led to several redesigns. In 1979, NASA rebuilt the MOD-0 with an upwind rotor mounted on a teetering hub, with a steel spar reinforcing the blades. In 1982, a tubular tower replaced the lattice tower. Finally, in 1985 NASA tested a single-bladed rotor with a teetering hub. In 1981, Two NASA Glenn engineers, Larry Viterna and Bob Corrigan, used the adjustable-pitch blade feature of the MOD-0 to invent an analytical method for calculating wind turbine output in high winds, which has since become widely used in the wind power industry as the Viterna method.
Installed capacity and wind resources
The following table compares the growth in wind power installed nameplate capacityNameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity or maximum effect, refers to the intended technical full–load sustained output of a facility such as a power plant, a chemical plant, fuel plant, metal refinery, mine, and many others.For dispatchable power,...
in megawatts (MW) for Ohio, Texas
Wind power in Texas
Wind power in Texas consists of many wind farms with a total installed nameplate capacity of 10,223 MW from over 40 different projects. Texas produces the most wind power of any U.S. state, followed by Iowa with 3,708 MW...
, California
Wind power in California
Wind power in California has been an area of considerable activity for many years. California was the first U.S. state where large wind farms were developed, beginning in the early 1980s. By 1995, California produced 30 percent of the entire world's wind-generated electricity...
, and the entire United States
Wind power in the United States
As of the third quarter of 2011, the cumulative installed capacity of wind power in the United States was 43,461 megawatts , making it second in the world, behind China. In 2010 wind power accounted for 2.3% of the electricity generated in the United States...
since 1999.
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One large untapped resource of wind in Ohio is Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...
. Its shallow depth and shelter from hurricanes provide advantages in terms of both ease of construction as well as safety of investment. Although land based wind farms frequently have lower siting costs, offshore wind farms usually have better wind, as open water lacks obstructions such as forests, buildings, and hills.
On February 11, 2010, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory , located in Golden, Colorado, is the United States' primary laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated facility; it is funded through...
released the first comprehensive update of the wind energy potential by state since 1993, showing that Ohio had potential to install 55 GW of onshore wind power nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity or maximum effect, refers to the intended technical full–load sustained output of a facility such as a power plant, a chemical plant, fuel plant, metal refinery, mine, and many others.For dispatchable power,...
, generating 152 TWh annually. For comparison, Ohio consumed 160.176 TWh of electricity in 2005; the entire U.S. wind power industry
Wind power in the United States
As of the third quarter of 2011, the cumulative installed capacity of wind power in the United States was 43,461 megawatts , making it second in the world, behind China. In 2010 wind power accounted for 2.3% of the electricity generated in the United States...
was producing at an annual rate of approximately 50 TWh at the end of 2008; and Three Gorges Dam
Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in the Yiling District of Yichang, in Hubei province, China...
(the world's largest electricity-generating station) produced an average of 80 TWh/yr in 2008 and 2009.
Wind farms
, Ohio has one utility-scale wind farm, one single large turbine wind power installation, and two more in development.American Municipal Power Inc Wind Farm
The AMP Wind Farm located at the following coordinates:(41.379481°N 83.737707°W) west of Bowling GreenBowling Green, Ohio
Bowling Green is the county seat of Wood County in the U.S. state of Ohio. At the time of the 2010 census, the population of Bowling Green was 30,028. It is part of the Toledo, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area. Bowling Green is the home of Bowling Green State University...
in Wood County
Wood County, Ohio
Wood County is a county located in the state of Ohio, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 125,488. Its county seat is Bowling Green. The county was named for Captain Eleazer D. Wood, the engineer for General William Henry Harrison's army, who built Fort Meigs in the War of 1812...
is Ohio's first utility-scale wind farm
Wind farm
A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other...
. It consists of four Vestas
Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines. It is the largest in the world, but due to very rapid growth of its competitors, its market share decreased from 28% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2009...
V80-1.8MW wind turbine
Wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or...
s giving a combined nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity or maximum effect, refers to the intended technical full–load sustained output of a facility such as a power plant, a chemical plant, fuel plant, metal refinery, mine, and many others.For dispatchable power,...
of 7.2 MW. The first two units came online in 2003, and the second two in 2004, next to the Wood County landfill. The US$10 million wind farm's wind turbines are highly visible for miles in all directions, and have become a tourist attraction, regularly hosting busloads of school children. A solar-powered kiosk on the site gives data to visitors about the project, the current wind speed, and real time power generation.
Great Lakes Science Center
The Great Lakes Science CenterGreat Lakes Science Center
The Great Lakes Science Center is a museum and educational facility in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States.The center's exhibits focus on helping visitors to understand science, technology, and their interdependence with the environment. Many of the exhibits document the features of the natural...
installed a reconditioned Vestas
Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines. It is the largest in the world, but due to very rapid growth of its competitors, its market share decreased from 28% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2009...
V27-225 kW wind turbine in 2006, outside its museum building on Cleveland's
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
North Coast Harbor
North Coast Harbor
North Coast Harbor is a district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie. It includes the Great Lakes Science Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Steamship William G...
between Cleveland Browns Stadium
Cleveland Browns Stadium
-See also:* List of current National Football League stadiums* Chronology of home stadiums for current National Football League teams* List of American football stadiums by capacity* List of U.S. stadiums by capacity* List of North American stadiums by capacity...
and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
(41.506661°N 81.696769°W). The North Coast entertainment complex receives 1.5 million visitors per year, and the wind turbine appears regularly on local news broadcasts and Cleveland Browns
Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional football team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They are currently members of the North Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
NFL
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
broadcasts, making it one of the world's most-viewed wind turbines.
The wind turbine originally operated on a wind farm in Denmark, which resold the wind turbine while repowering to newer, larger wind turbines. The ground around the wind turbine features an art display entitled Shadow and Light. The display includes walkways that align with the wind turbine's shadow at solar noon and two hours, eleven minutes after solar noon, respectively. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes
Equinox
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator...
, the wind turbine's shadow also aligns with the walkways by length. Thus the wind turbine functions as a large gnomon
Gnomon
The gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow. Gnomon is an ancient Greek word meaning "indicator", "one who discerns," or "that which reveals."It has come to be used for a variety of purposes in mathematics and other fields....
in an incomplete sundial
Sundial
A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. The style is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, often a thin rod or a...
. The display includes boxes of light bulbs encased in concrete on one side of a plaza around the wind turbine's base, representing the amount of electricity consumed by the average American household in a year.
See also
- Energy sector of Ohio -Wind
- List of wind farms
- List of wind farms in the United States
- Renewable energy commercialization in the United States
- Wind power in CaliforniaWind power in CaliforniaWind power in California has been an area of considerable activity for many years. California was the first U.S. state where large wind farms were developed, beginning in the early 1980s. By 1995, California produced 30 percent of the entire world's wind-generated electricity...
- Wind power in TexasWind power in TexasWind power in Texas consists of many wind farms with a total installed nameplate capacity of 10,223 MW from over 40 different projects. Texas produces the most wind power of any U.S. state, followed by Iowa with 3,708 MW...
- Wind power in the United StatesWind power in the United StatesAs of the third quarter of 2011, the cumulative installed capacity of wind power in the United States was 43,461 megawatts , making it second in the world, behind China. In 2010 wind power accounted for 2.3% of the electricity generated in the United States...