GOING GREEN

WIND ENERGY:

Being a Hot Research topic amongst the leading universities of the world, Alternative energy has always given people high hopes of having a 100% efficient environment friendly source of generating power. But hopes such as these normally comes having a rigid price tag attached to it, this unfolds in shape of the economy of scale, the storage and the regulation of the generated power. These are the three phenomenons that engineers and scientists have a dream of finding a solution to. 

With the overpowering breakthroughs in technology, scientists and engineers around the world can breathe a sigh of relief, as the money that went into storing the power generated has been brought to the amount that went into its generation.

This has led many public and private sector power generating industries to take this green energy concept a bit more seriously, and they have initiated some extravagant projects even in Pakistan. 

Taking the concept of Wind power generation, some of the Universities of Pakistan are in active collaboration with the Local and some Multi-National industries. This has led to an increase in the level of research that was initially undertaken in the universities and in turn has encouraged the R & D organization to fund such initiatives.

The First wind turbine used to generate electricity was constructed by Charles F. Brush in the year 1887, which generated a mere 10 Kilo Watt of Power and since then there has been significant increase in the amount of power that a wind turbine can now generate; this is now measured in Mega Watt scale.

Offshore and Onshore wind farms are now developed and running in many countries of the world. This however, invited a lot of criticism from people living in the vicinity of those areas for taking up a lot of recreational space and claim to have reduce the 'scenic beauty' of that area.

The new age advancement in Wind power generation has been the development of Green airports and highways. Currently, Private sector Industries such as, ECONOMIA, are engaged in active collaboration with the universities of Pakistan for the design and development of ' Vertical Axial Wind Turbine System'. 

This project has the basic idea of generating electricity via the wind energy that a car generates as it speeds up and down a highway. The aim of this venture is to power the highway lights and make the highway such as the famous ' Motorway N-5' self reliant on electricity.
With power shortages becoming the major hurdle in an already economically down trodden country, this might come as a gust of zephyr under a warm sun.

The wind turbine is similar to VAWT Darrieus type but not identical. The rotor is made from 9 blades made out of glass fiber reinforced plastic (FRP)

Important Specs of the System are as follows:

Blades Length:  1200mm

Tower Base diameter: 18 inches

Wind turbine type: Permanent Magnet

Tower height: 9-12m

Output Voltage DC: 24/48/60V

GPRS/GPS: Inbuilt

With the advent of such a small scale power generation using a novel concept of utilizing the wind energy from a source that wasn’t thought about before is certainly mouth watering for the people who want to do something different in this field.

This paves way for other techniques of utilizing more or less the same principles and using it to the best use.
Speed Breakers at the end of the streets could be used to generate electricity to power the street lights at night. The force with which the car traverse on the breakers can also be put to good, proving that the sky is the limit. God Speed!