Then along came SWIFT.

“The SWIFT Wind Turbine design solves many of the challenges of previous residential and commercial scale wind turbines: it registers as a whisper on decibel charts, it’s efficient, it’s safe and it’s clean,” states Cascade Engineering’s Michael Ford, on their new SWIFT Wind Turbine system.

Available in the US and Canada, the SWIFT Wind Turbine system provides businesses and homeowners an effective solution to lower energy bills and reduce carbon emissions. The unique design of the SWIFT system lies in the outer ring that connects to the turbine blades. As the wind travels down the blades and is dispersed along the outer ring, the outer ring acts as a diffuser eliminating noise and keeping the turbine quiet.

It is the first very quiet rooftop mounted wind turbine for domestic, community and industrial use. And it generates electricity by harnessing wind energy both quietly and safely. The SWIFT Wind Turbine incorporates safety features that meet IEEE safety standards and has achieved the Underwriter Laboratories (UL) certification by MET Laboratories, Inc., a global symbol of safety.

Optimally sited this turbine will produce approximately 2000 kWh of electricity per year in a good wind location. This is about 20% of an average home’s needs. The initial cost of $10,000 to $12,000 per system can generally pay for itself in about 3 years and multiple units can be used at one location to supplement industrial and commercial needs. The SWIFT system has a 5 year manufacturer’s warranty and is designed for a 20 year life.

Click here for more information.

The SWIFT Wind Turbine has been designed to be environmentally sustainable. The product produces more energy in its lifetime than is incorporated in the material and processes used to manufacture it – it is therefore “harm neutral.”

Even with the height of modern day wind turbines, it is just not possible to build turbines tall enough to tap wind at very high altitudes. But kites could easily reach these heights and tap into the steady flow of wind above us. For space, or low-level wind constrained countries like the UK, the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark, flying kites to tap the high-speed jet stream directly above them is an exciting opportunity for them to participate in the wind power market.

‘Pretty much anywhere in the UK you could run a kite plant economically, but you couldn’t run a wind turbine economically,’ said Allister Furey of the University of Sussex.

Just how quickly will kite technology make it to market?  Well, that depends on how much investors are willing to put into the various projects already underway. 
 
Professor Wubbo Ockels, who leads the Laddermill project believes that commercial systems could be operational within five years if the money were available. But without significant funding behind it the technology could languish in the labs at Delft, Stanford, Sussex, Hawaii’s Makani Power, and Italy’s Kitegen for a decade or more to come.

Click here to read more about kites and high altitude wind.

 Click here to watch the video as Dutch scientists demonstrate their electric kite
 

The Iowa Stored Energy Park (ISEP) is a power supply project, being developed by over 100 municipal utilities across four states. The idea is similar to current methods being used to store natural gas underground in many locations around the world.

The Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) project uses wind generated energy to compresses air and store it underground in a natural geological formation for later use in making electricity. When wind energy wanes, the stored air is released, mixed with fuel and used to power combustion turbines to produce electricity.

Ok. So it may not be totally clean and green but it helps to make wind energy more reliably consistent. And, this process uses less fuel than a conventional combustion-turbine facility and will utilize some of the latest innovations in electricity generation.

When current testing is completed, the project will move into design, procurement and construction. Planners expect that this resource will be available to utilities and their customers in 2011. There are currently two other CAES wind energy storage locations in the world, a 110 MW facility in Alabama and a 290 MW facility in Germany.

But where does the grassroots organizing come in?

Well, you’d think that Iowa now being #4 in the country in wind energy generation would be totally focused on GREEN power. Not so.

“Iowa gets nearly 90 percent of electricity from coal, despite vast wind, sun and biomass potential.” states the Iowa Public Interest Research Group.  Iowa Public TV’s “Wind Energy In Iowa” (#153) show on The Iowa Journal had interviews with Iowa wind activists/engineers Ed Woolsey and Tom Wind.

Both pointed to a disappointing Iowa legislative session this year where it was nearly impossible to generate interest among state legislators in anything other than coal. Woolsey and Wind noted the importance of grassroots organizing for bringing renewable energy projects to the front of legislators’ interests. The large corporations have more money and power to get legislative attention. There needs to be a swelling movement at the grassroots level to get the attention needed to make policy changes. And, that’s where our Seventeen Steps to Success come in.  More on the “Power Struggle in Iowa“ later.  

The Seminole pilot project is a collaboration between the Office of Rural Community Affairs (ORCA), Texas Tech University, and this west Texas town. Groundwater will be pumped from the deep, brackish Santa Rosa aquifer to a reverse osmosis plant that will make the water drinkable for the town’s residents. To help power that osmosis plant – a wind turbine will do the job.

Charles Stone, ORCA’s executive diretor notes that if this project is successful, it “…could be a road map for how our rural communities can use wind power to help meet future water needs.”

To read more on this story and to follow the project as it unfolds, check out North American WindPower  (both on line and in print) for some of the latest, breaking news on “big wind” projects and the wind industry in general.

KiteShip Corporation builds wind systems to power boats, transcontinental shipping vessels, pleasure and racing yachts and industrial and aerospace applications. Its forward thinking sailors, designers and visionaries are developing and marketing what they call Very Large Free Flying Sails (VLFFS) and the control systems, technology and techniques for launching, controlling and recovering wind aboard small and large commercial vessels.

To actually see how a kite sail works on a large commercial vessel, take a look at the January 17, 2008, National Geographic News video of a German-built ship using the VLFFS technology.  The wind power system used on this ship was built by Hamburg’s SkySails.

“Not a sailboat and not a parachute—this German-built ship aims to save fuel by towing a kite to capture wind power high above the water.” Check out the video on line here.

Keep an eye on this technology. It definitely has promise and gives new meaning to say – go “fly a kite!”