A Colorado-based wind turbine company believes it has the solution when winds are not enough to generate electricty: team the turbine up with clean-burning biodiesel.
Smartplanet.com says Hybrid Turbines Inc.’s SmartGen system will use biogas, biodiesel and natural gas to run a back-up power generation system fuel the back-up power system that will operate during the 70 percent of time when the winds don’t get the job done:
This would of course depend on the patent-pending design working and being installed throughout the country’s wind farms. According to Hybrid Turbines, the SmartGen system can be retrofitted for existing turbines, scaled between 3 and 100 kilowatts (possibly higher), and integrated into new turbine designs.
A turbo-compressor [right] located at the base of the turbine’s tower draws in ambient air, compresses it and stores it in a tank. When winds are calm, the compressed air travels skyward to the turbo-air motor* connected to the electric generator.
Nick Verini, president of Hybrid Turbines Inc., says in a statement:
If a biofuel is used then the SmartGen™ system is 100% renewable energy based (wind and/or biofuel). Even if natural gas is used the electricity produced by SmartGen™ is twice as environmentally clean as burning coal. This will be increasingly important as we move to electric vehicles with batteries charged from the grid.
Estimates are that wind power generation capacity would increase by 25 GW, the equivalent of 25 1,000 MW nuclear power plants
The U.S. is using less energy, but more of it is coming from renewable sources, such as wind and solar.