Wind Power

I was always in favor of alternative energy, mainly wind power. May be my home town back in India is famous for high force wind. When i was kid, in our town, power cut normally ranging from 30-40 hours per week. But after private companies installed wind turbine through out our area, power cut reduced to 4-5 hours per week. It was excellent growth for under developed places like us, Indian and our state politicians don’t even notice us because we are 3000 KM away from Indian capital and 650 KM away from state capital (pun intended, but truth is we are like many other place in India, under developed,under utilized and mass migration to cities are happening in large scale now).


I was closely observed our Western Ghats Mountain’s (Sahyadri Mountains) rocks and they are shaped based on wind direction, the sea facing rocks are flat, because of high wind force from Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean wind was very strong because no obstacles from Antarctica to my home town, just open ocean water. The first barrier is our Western Ghats Mountain’s. There is adage in our area “adika adika ammi kalum nagarum’ loosely translated as “a rock can move after constant wind force after wind force”. When i was kid, i used to hear news that a car was lost control from road because of high wind and even larger truck was made accident because of high wind, I can’t imagine bicycles and motor cycles.This kind of high force winds are not suitable for wind mills so they would switch off power generators for some times.


In U.S, i felt the same, but not strong as my home town wind speed in 2 places, one is Livermore, CA, especially 580 corridor, and other one is of course our windy city Chicago, IL suburbs. But Livermore already has some wind mills and the geographical set up also just similar to my home town, a seashore, valley and mountain, mountain provides a barrier for sea shore wind to circulate in land with high force. I hope Obama will make sure to increase alternative energy investment and make use of high wind power, because of current economic climate and low oil price might tempt them to forget alternative energy plans.


Source :

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagercoil

Comments

sukumar said…
Good post Subba. Wind energy is quite easily tapped and we should do more on that front.
9:22 AM
Subba Muthurangan said…
Thanks Sukumar for your comment.
10:12 AM
Anonymous said…
On a sidenote, apparently Chicago got its name Windy City from early Windy politicians and not the weather (refer - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_Chicago_called_the_Windy_City)

many other cities have more average wind speed than Chicago.. I fully agree on your post on alternative energy though
10:57 PM
Subba Muthurangan said…
thanks Sibu for your comment. Yes..I agree many cities has more wind power than Chicago.
1:03 AM
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