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Wind energy

Sydney, 26th December 2009

Boxing Day! Traditionally a big day in Australia. On the commercial front because of the after Xmas sales with some shops and department stores opening their doors at 5am! But for Australia being a sporting nation, the two big events really are cricket and sailing. First there is the Boxing Day Cricket Test playing at the MCG. As I write this Australia is leading Pakistan 178-0 just after tea. And then there is the famous Sydney to Hobart sailing race across the Bass Strait with currently Wild Oats, Alfa Romeo and IPAC Leopard battling for the lead. The boats started this afternoon from the Sydney Harbour and with the wind and weather as it is at the moment (it is rainy and windy) they are expected to cover the distance to Hobart, Tasmania in less than 2 days.  I just saw them sail past along the East Sydney coast line. These leading maxi hulls are packed with the latest technology, with sails designed to maximize every rush of wind. Its quite an amazing sight.

Which brings me to wind energy to create power for our lights. Wind energy is fast becoming a main stream alternative power source for our electricity needs. While solar energy has been long accepted as a sustainable solution, wind energy is rather new. But more and more you can now find wind mill parks that generate consumable electrical energy. There are projects of the coast of Holland for instance where the wind generators are located on a bank in the North Sea. However the wind generators are generally big and not easy to integrate into building architecture like you can with solar panels. So creative minds have begun to look at ways to do so with some amazing architectural design concepts where sky scrapers have been designed with integrated rotators at various levels to capture wind.

I come from the country of tulips and wind mills, so to me there is something really familiar to capturing wind to generate power. I believe it wont be long before we will be designing our lighting with wind energy in mind like we already start doing with solar.

26. December 2009 by Martin Klaasen
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