Sidebar 1: Wind energy - 'a work in progress'

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Wind energy production is "a work in progress," says former pork producer and cash cropper Richard Ross, who installed a five-kW, Chinese-made turbine on his Fergus-area farm. No one offers a turnkey operation that "doesn't have to be babysat," he asserts. "Some day we are going to be there. We aren't there yet."

Before he imported a turbine from China, he spoke to several turbine dealers in Ontario.

They all said that they had sold "a lot" but were unwilling to produce a list of names of customers so that Ross could check and see if they were satisfied. "I was never able to get a name and address of a customer," he says. "That's why I bought mine directly from China."

He thinks most generators have a serious flaw that drains a lot of power – a gearbox which converts a relatively few revolutions of the propeller to many revolutions of the generator.

Ross hopes he will soon be working with Bin Wu, associate professor in Ryerson University's department of electrical and computer engineering, who wants to establish a site to evaluate wind turbines in the rural Ontario countryside near Fergus.

Wu has applied to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for funding to setup a $1.8 million wind testing farm to test different turbine technologies. Objectives include maximizing efficiency, reducing costs and improving reliability, especially in winter. BF