Harvesting the Iowa Wind

If you thought I was talking about Oklahoma, think again. In my last 3D Perspectives blog post, I wrote about Keokuk, Iowa leading the world in renewable hydroelectric power, way back in 1913. Today, according to the American Wind Energy Association, Iowa ranks second in the United State in wind power installations (by megawatts). Go Cyclones! Iowa State University’s sports team’s name seems to be a good nickname for Iowa’s efforts to harness the wind for clean, renewable energy production – Cyclone Power!

While from a distance, windmills look elegantly simple, they really are complex-and extremely large-systems – consisting of the foundation, the tower, the blades, and the turbine (see animation at U.S. Department of Energy website). To meet the multidisciplinary design and engineering challenges, wind power manufacturers are leveraging Product Lifecycle Management solutions from Dassault Systèmes, including 3D design, composites modeling, manufacturing automation, finite element analysis, multiphysics simulation, design optimization, as well as process and data management. Check out the coverage on DS solutions for wind energy at Eureka Magazine.

The wind energy industry also has plans to accelerate innovation through cross-industry collaboration. Check out this announcement between Boeing and Vestas discussing the benefits their respective companies plan to achieve by sharing research on light-weight materials and aerodynamics.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both companies use PLM solutions from DS.

China prototype using offshore platforms

The wind energy industry is also leveraging the experience and infrastructure developed for offshore oil exploration. Research is underway in China to evaluate the viability of using abandoned offshore oil platforms as the foundation for wind power turbines, with the help of Abaqus FEA from SIMULIA.

If you’re not already benefiting from wind power, it seems you will be in the near future. In fact, with the steady wind blowing across the lake in my backyard, I am seriously considering building a small-scale windmill of my own. I guess that idea – should it become a reality - will really take me back to my ‘renewable energy’ Iowa roots.

What do you think of Wind Energy? Will it continue to grow or do you think the industry has reached a plateau?

Go Cyclones!

Tim

Related post:

20% Wind Power by 2020

George Jetson flies a family car.  Every morning he dispatches his family to their various destinations, and once at work, George neatly folds the family transport vehicle into a briefcase.

Is this where our transportation innovations are taking us?

You may have heard of the car that flies, Terafugia.

Or what about the car that scuba dives, sQuba.

And just the other day someone sent me an article about a dune-buggy/paraglider called SkyCar.

I wanna know.  Is this just marketing buzz, or do these examples represent real, viable transportation solutions?

Ooops!  I forgot Richard Branson’s Necker Nymph!

On paper these eclectic transport concepts look legit.  So legit that right now you can, for example, put down a refundable deposit for SkyCar (delivery promised end of 2010).

So I’m calling all aviators, divers, gliders, drivers and engineers, and hey, why not Richard Branson, to help me understand:

A)    Are these George Jetsony concepts safe?
B)    Will regular folks (not just James Bond fanatics) really buy and use them?
C)    What’s next in the world of unexpected transportation solutions?

Merci!

Kate

Well that’s what Shai Agassi wants, so he decided to create a company called Better Place to, as they say,

accelerate the transition to sustainable transport by globally providing electric vehicle (EV) services

Better Place is one of the few, if not the only, company that is working on the challenge of providing the total infrastructure to support electric vehicles.

Surely, I hear you ask, what could we need other than charging points?

Let’s imagine a scenario where at 7 p.m. we all arrive home from work, we park our EV cars in our garages or on the side of the road and then….plug them in! Sounds cool for us, but this is in fact a nightmare for today’s electricity generation & distribution companies. For example, the Football World Cup, viewed by millions at home, has hundreds of thousands of fans all rushing into the kitchen at half-time to turn the kettle on…

With EVs there’s potentially going to be a much higher demand when they plug in. But at the same time not all the EVs will be fully discharged, so some clever energy management could help to balance electricity demands & availability, by discharging some EVs to re-charge others. It’s almost like managing a power station in it’s own right – perhaps a scary thought for today’s Power Gen companies…?

Denmark,on the other hand, is turning this challenge to their advantage. Twenty percent of their electricity is generated by wind turbines. But turbines are generally most active at night when winds are most stable (turbines will automatically shutdown when winds are gusty), but electricity demand is low at night so batteries are needed to store the energy produced, so why not put wheels on the batteries…

That’s not all, there are Quickdrop stations to change your discharged battery if you haven’t time to wait for a charge; there’s clever navigation software combined with the vehicle’s charge level to find the best solution for your journey. . . I could go on, have a look instead at the video, albeit a little too “perfect and shiny white teeth” it does show well the general idea.  Oh – and check out the EV’s registration plates

The great news that DS is already working with Better Place, providing them with the software for battery and mechanical design and for exchanging data with Renault.

I hope that DS can work on lots more projects with this innovative company. Stay tuned…

Sustainably yours,
Jonathan

Ps. check out my previous posts…