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Windmills: today's dreams … tomorrow's realities
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
opflow
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1551-8701
pISSN - 0149-8029
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8701.1981.tb00721.x
Subject(s) - electricity , tower , wind power , environmental science , electricity generation , power station , meteorology , electric power , mains electricity , new england , electricity demand , marine engineering , engineering , power (physics) , electrical engineering , civil engineering , geography , economics , physics , voltage , quantum mechanics , market economy , middle class
It is the year 2081, AWWA's bicentennial. Stretching across the Great Plains from North Dakota to Texas is a network of 300 000 wind machines. They tower 250 m (850 ft) above the prairies, spaced as closely as one every 3 km 2 (1 sq mi). Twin‐bladed propellers. 150 m (50 ft) in diameter, capture almost 60 percent of the wind's power, taming it to produce electricity and pump water. Fifteen kilometres (10 mi) off the New England coast is a network of windmills mounted on anchored buoys, continuously generating billions of kilowatts of electricity. The coastal winds yield enough power to supply most of the Eastern Seaboard. Where weather conditions are favorable, water treatment plants and other large industrial facilities are surrounded with towers containing wind‐driven generators. The electricity produced allows industries to reduce the amount of power they draw from electric utilities during expensive peak‐demand periods; during low‐demand periods, industrial power users become power vendors, feeding electricity back into the utilities' grids.