Night With a Futurist April 7, 2008

The Future of Wind Energy
A shift in wind energy will mean a shift in the global power stucture

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In 1991, a national wind resource inventory taken by the U.S. Department of Energy startled the world when it reported that the three most wind-rich states of the United States--North Dakota, Kansas and Texas--had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Now a new study by a team of engineers at Stanford University reports that the wind energy potential is actually substantially greater than that estimated in 1991.

Advances in wind turbine design since 1991 enable turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to harness more of the wind's energy, and to harvest it at greater heights--dramatically expanding the harnessable wind resource. Add to this the recent bullish assessments of offshore wind potential, and the enormity of the wind resource becomes apparent. Wind power can meet not only all U.S. electricity needs, but all U.S. energy needs.

Over the past decade, wind has been the world's fastest-growing energy source. Rising from 4,800 megawatts of generating capacity in 1995 to 31,100 megawatts in 2002, it increased a staggering six fold. Worldwide, wind turbines now supply enough electricity to satisfy the residential needs of 40 million Europeans.

So where do we go from here? Wind is popular because it is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, widely distributed, climate-benign, and clean--attributes that no other energy source can match.

Join us as we explore everything from some of the exotic new wind technologies under review, to very real world scenarios that Wall Street is paying close attention to.

SPEAKER: Walt Musial is a principal engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where he has worked for 20-years. Presently he leads the marine-based renewable energy research activities including offshore wind, wave, and water current energy conversion technology. Prior to this, Walt was in charge of Laboratory Testing for NREL’s National Wind Technology Center and was responsible for the development of NREL’s structural laboratories which include testing facilities for wind turbine blades up to 50-meters and wind turbine drivetrains up 2.5-MW. Before NREL, Walt was a test engineer in the early days of the California wind farms. He studied wind energy engineering at the University of Massachusetts, where he received his BS and MS degrees.

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