1/29/07

Wind Power: 400 Years After Don Quixote, Giant Windmills Return to Spain

The Spanish Center for Renewable Energies (CENER) builds the most complete trial windmill laboratory in the world

The Spanish Center for Renewable Energies (CENER) has big plans for future windmills of sizeable dimensions. Concerns regarding the profitability of the scarcity of land and sea wind farms are all contributors to the implementation of the windmill laboratory.

Windmills of the future will have 330 foot blades and a proportioned height significantly larger than existing mills. Advances in technology, the conquest of the oceans as a source of wind power resources and land scarcity will lead to a profitability of wind farms directly proportional to the size of their windmills.

Over the next few months, the trial will be conducted in a new windmill lab placed in Sangüesa, a city near Pamplona in the northern region of Navarra. The first facility to operate will be the blade factory, with two positions to capture physical properties and carry out resistance tests. Future labs will include: a potency train, an electric test bank, a turbine test bank, a wind tunnel, and an experimental wind farm. The entire project will serve manufacturers and will allow for the optimization of windmill energy production.

The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory has recently shown interest in the windmill laboratory, a project with a public investment that will total $60 million.