Archive for the ‘windmills’ Category

Tilting At Windmills

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Last weekend on our trip to Kirkwood, Amy and I drove on I580 over the Altamont Pass. It’s been a few years since I last drove through there, and it seemed like there are far more windmills than before. I did a little searching and although I didn’t find anything specifically pointing to growth at the Altamont Pass site, overall wind production did rise from around 3500 GWh in 2000 to about 4400 GWh in 2005. (see here and here).


(more pics)

Also, there used to be some really crazy looking ones that I have now learned are called Darrieus wind turbines. I was looking for them as we drove through the pass but didn’t see any, and Amy thought I was nuts when I tried to convince her that I had seen windmills that looked vaguely like a piece from a DNA strand. Of course when we got home I had to go and do some research. :)

Darrieus Windmill

There is a lot of interesting information about wind power and the Altamont Pass wind farms here, here, and here. Apparently wind farms are a controversial source of green power, with the two main problems being their propensity to kill birds, and offend some people’s sense of aesthetics. In any event, California is one of the largest producers of wind power in the US, and according to this page cited above, about 1.5% of our total 2005 energy production came from wind turbines.