We were at UMPI for "University Day" yesterday, Wednesday April 14 and attended a presentation about an under-development vertical-axis windmill designed to be used on tall buildings, as in Boston. all day, UMPI's windmill was turning merrily, and the recent glitch in live turbine data had just been fixed with a flown-in device, so the "live turbine data" site was working again.
Currently, for some reason the rotor is reported at 28.4rpm but there is no power being produced! The big figure - 554332 kwh, should be labled "kwh produced since commissioning".
Efforts are being made to make more data points available. The whole on-campus turbine project has been a learning experience for everyone involved, and administrators mentioned that the attention paid to their turbine has has been surprising. Thay also noted that we have had a rather calm winter, wind-wise.
At 2:00 pm April 15, the wind was reported at 2.5 meters/second, and the rotor was turning at 29.9 rpm - this is a good, fast rotor speed- but for some reason power was reported at MINUS .3 kw /second. Yesterday at 11:00 am rotor rpm was 28.4 (which seems to be a common rpm) and power was reported at 6.6 kw.???? Yet overnight (4/14-4/15)kwh went from 552827 (at 11:00 am 4/14) to 554332 (at 2:00 pm 4/15).
It's kind of a puzzle.
There is no place on campus where the meters, etc. for the windmill are available to be seen - all that is apparently
inside the base of the tower. It is indeed a learning project. Harry Roper - Houlton/Danforth

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Comment by Esse Hammel on April 21, 2010 at 11:47am
Dear Long Islander,
That's interesting stuff. I have the readouts for Frenchville, monthly and daily but have never waded through it (and have no idea how to throw it into excel).
Esse
Comment by Long Islander on April 19, 2010 at 8:28pm
I looked up some historical wind data and found a multi-year track of average wind speed at:
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/avgwind.html and then threw it into Excel.

There are no data for Presque Isle but there is for Caribou, about 15 miles away.

While I know that Angus King and John Baldacci believe Maine is "THE Saudi Arabia of Wind", when you look at Caribou in our hot summer months, when air conditioning is most likely to be turned on, Caribou ranks a lowly 101st of all the places measured.


Also, those two hot months happen to be the two months that have the lowest wind speeds in Caribou. (Wind just isn't there when it should be!)


You can download the Excel file to see more (there are multiple worksheets) by clicking on the file called Historical Average Wind Speeds. Please note the bar graph is set to Caribou, but you can view other locations by using the drop down arrow.

Historical Average Wind Speeds.xls
Comment by Long Islander on April 19, 2010 at 8:03pm
Hmmm, just looked at the historical average wind speeds in MPH for Boston (where Harvard is) and Bridgeport, Ct. (20 miles from Yale) and I'm thinking that because they are quite windier locations than the two Maine data points available, we should see if we can disassemble our turbines and send them down there for emplacement on their campuses. They could then have a green off with each other and play their favorite college drinking game, Bayroot.

Comment by Ron Huber on April 18, 2010 at 11:31pm
The squirrels exposed!
Comment by Joanne Moore on April 15, 2010 at 11:16pm
(said in the voice of W. C. Fields)..... "Ah yes, the old live turbine data has just been fixed with a flown-in device trick."

(said in the voice of Karnack the Magnificent)....... "And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, you will notice there is nothing up my sleeve."

(said in the voice of the Wizard of Oz)...... "Do not pay attention to that man behind the curtain."

(said in my own voice)...... Of course! The meters for the windmill are hidden inside the base of the tower! No one at UMPI wants us to see or disturb the squirrels on their spinning wheels being fed NUTS by two highly trained windmill engineers. The more NUTS fed, the faster the wheels spin. And depending upon which direction the nuts are being fed, the squirrels in their wheels can be made to turn clockwise or counterclockwise which, in turn, merrily spin the little dials, and every hour a little birdie comes out of a clock and says (in his own voice)... "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

It's all very simple, really. It's just that, as Cool Hand Luke once said, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate."

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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