Click on the above screenshot to see the Flash animation.
This interactive tells a story in pictures and words about three of the major types of renewable energy. The aim is to provide an accessible overview of hydro, wind and solar photovoltaic power generation.

Click on the above screenshot to view the interactive wind farm animation. (The animation attempts to recreate a partial view of the Hau Nui wind farm in New Zealand’s Wairarapa district as seen from the access road.)

To find out more about this wind farm and how wind farms are planned and the optimal sites located see my post the fieldtrip I went on with wind farm engineers.

To visualise greenhouse gas emissions please check out my ‘emissions visualiser’ , created using Adobe Flash CS4. View animation here: Best explored in full screen mode (press F11 to toggle).

I had flown down to Wellington on the 7:00 am flight and was picked up at the airport by wind engineers Simon and Nina from Aurecon (a large consulting firm involved in wind farm development).

We then drove over the Rimutaka ranges into the south Wairarapa, fuelling up on coffee and food en route. Travelled along the wide plains through Featherston and Martinborough towards Genesis Energy’s Hau Nui wind farm.


Driving down towards the plain we stopped to get an overview of the hills in the area. Directly across the valley three hills known as the Canoes of Kupe (Nga Waka O Kupe) stood prominently on the skyline and to the right of them a gentle curved hill where the Hau Nui Wind Farm is located. Even though the weather was fine the Hau Nui turbines were barely visible through the atmospheric haze. The next time I saw the turbines they were looming impressively through the cars windscreen.

The Hau Nui Wind farm consist of a total of 15 wind turbines, scattered in four groups of two to seven turbines along the ridgeline. The first group we encountered consisted of seven German-built Enercon E40 turbines. These mid-size turbines stand 46m high with 40m diameter blades. The E40s are a slightly older design and you can clearly see the generator (alternator) directly behind the hub with its large stator.

A few hundred metres away rise the next cluster of turbines which from the road look like they are in a single group due to the perspective. These are the more recent E44s which have a 44 m diameter span and produce up to 600 KW of electrical power, slightly more than the 550MW nameplate capacity of the E40s. The E44s have a more streamlined appearance with an egg-shaped housing for the nacelle.

The blades were spinning around at a fair clip in the wind which was probably about 10 m/s at the hub height. Contrary to reports often reported in the media of unbearable noise created by the turbines they were barely audible above the ambient noise of the environment. A gentle swishing noise was all that could be heard above the stiff breeze.

The generators (alternators) on the turbines output variable frequency AC with a raw voltage of around 800 volts. This is immediately rectified to DC and then inverted to 50 Hz AC. After inversion to AC it is at about 800 volts and is then stepped up to 33 KV by a transformer at the base of the tower and fed into the grid.

From here Simon and Nina went into reconnaissance mode, the main purpose of the trip being to evaluate other potential turbine sites identified in the office through computer modeling.
For a wind farm to be successful it must be located in an area of high average wind speed and not be subject to excessive turbulence caused by topography and nearby objects such as trees and buildings.

One of the early stage evaluations of wind potential is through meso-scale modeling. Initially there is unlikely to be actual wind measurements at the desired height (50m above ground level) in the area of interest. Therefore the likely wind flows are modelled over a broad area using powerful computer simulations. The meterological data set (6 hourly, three dimensional weather data for NZ over the last few decades) is used to model average wind flows at grid scales of several kms to a reasonable level of accuracy. The resulting mesoscale map is usually normalised to a level of 50m above the land surface, roughly the height of the turbines hub and above.

To narrow down suitable locations further analysis follows, combining different data sets in a GIS (geographic information system). Once this has occurred sites are visited in the field and if they still look favourable (this will depend on factors such as accessibility) a wind mast may be erected to measure real wind speeds, wind directions and durations at multiple levels.

The wind mast we looked at was 80 m high and has 4 anemometers (spinning cups to measure wind speed) spaced at regular intervals up the mast. Data is collected at 10 minute as well as 1 second intervals. The average wind speed had picked up by then and was howling at around 20 m/s with unusually little wind shear (meaning that the wind speed was fairly constant from ground level to 80m).
Another way to measure wind speed at multiple levels is to use a remarkable piece of equipment called a LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) which avoids excessive construction of further wind masts with all of the attendant engineering of concrete pads and guy ropes.
This type of LiDAR uses a laser beam to measure the wind speed using the Doppler effect. Small particles suspended in the wind reflect and back-scatter the laser light. The reflected light is Doppler-shifted in frequency due to the particles motion. By measuring the amount of frequency shift between incident and reflected photons the velocity can be easily calculated, The Doppler LiDAR data (which also contains information on turbulence) is then correlated with the wind mast data and calibrated. The LiDAR can then be easily moved from site to site collecting accurate data on wind speed. Typically the LiDAR, about the size of a large dishwasher, would stay on site for 4 to 5 weeks.

See source website here.
Airborne LiDAR is also used for very accurate 3D mapping of the land surface and vegetation height which can be an important data set used in the modelling of wind farms.

Statistical analysis of the wind data can then be performed and used to inform a more detailed level of micro-scale modelling for the design and planning of wind farms. Software such as Windographer or WindPRO is used for this purpose and can predict the expected energy yield for different turbine locations and arrangements. This allows the wind farm to be optimised to the specific location and evaluated for its feasibility.

For a wind farm to go ahead it has to be granted a Resource Consent under New Zealand’s Resource Management Act.

Also see the Hau Nui wind farm animation I made with Adobe Flash.

Making the turbine (a linear to rotational kinetic energy converter) was the first stage in the creation of a working model of a hydroelectricity generator. I have  recently found a bit of time to actually build the whole thing.

It is based on plans that I linked to in the earlier instructions – this is the excellent website now called GreenLearning Canada.  It involves building a permanent magnet alternator and installing it and the turbine in a housing made from a large plastic bottle.

My variation on the plans was to use a thin steel rod I brought at Surplustronics instead of wooden dowel, and to use old CDs for the rotor and stator. The CDs provide a free, readily available, flat  strong disc on which to mount the magnets and copper coils.




The whole setup is rather rough and ready but I tested it with a jet of water from the hose outside and it worked pleasing well. Using a multimeter I measured an a.c. voltage of 2.3 volts and a current of about 0.25 amps. The output was a lot less under the kitchen sink but still measurable.

Instead of hot glue I probably need to use another glue as it doesnt adhere that well to the CD surface and the heat may have caused some warping of the CD surface.

• www.lynda.com is a huge online tutorial database for many different software packages. It is very good with Flash CS4 and actionscript and it has probably been worth the US$25/month.
• One good free site ican be found at http://www.developphp.com/Flash_tutorials/
• Youtube also has some good free tutorials on specific topics but they are not so well organised in terms of a progression.