Last night our guest scientist was Dr. Steve Stadler. He's our Oklahoma state geographer, and through the Oklahoma Wind Power Initiative he's been instrumental in creating tools that help bring more wind energy to our state.
We started the program with "The Wind Energy Song." Here I am turning our group into a human wind farm:
We started the program a bit differently, and had everybody brainstorm about what factors might be important in determining where to locate a wind farm. Then we asked Dr. Stadler to comment on each one. We discussed the ways trees, buildings, water, and elevation might effect wind turbines. As it turns out, wind speed is the important factor in all cases.
We used the yellow windsock pictured below, in front of a fan, to demonstrate that the higher the wind speed, the more work the wind can do. In this case, a lower wind speed didn't carry enough energy to lift the windsock. But a higher speed did. In fact, the "wind power density" is related to velocity cubed - meaning that even a little increase in wind speed provides a big increase in the energy it carries.
Below is Dana, our Support Group Coordinator, helping the kids put together their own anemometers, a word I had plenty of trouble with last night. These little gizmos measure wind speed. We learned that there are 120 Mesonet stations scattered throughout Oklahoma. Each weather station has an anemometer and other instruments to collect weather data. These data points, combined with a mathematical model, allow Dr. Stadler to accurately predict average wind speed at any location in the state, at any time of year. That's good information for someone who wants to put up a wind farm!
Thanks, Dana, for supplying the anemometers!!
