General Electric and Wind Turbine Co. Team Up

NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2003 - A company in Bellevue, Wash., is working on a new design for wind turbines that officials believe could lower the cost of wind energy in the electric power marketplace, according to a report in the January 2003 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine, a publication of ASME International (American Society of Mechanical Engineers).

The Wind Turbine Co. is developing a turbine with the rotor blades set in a down-wind configuration. This radically different design, which is aided by flexible towers, allows for significant weight and load reduction in the blades and other components, resulting in higher energy producing efficiency and lower costs.

Meanwhile, energy giant General Electric is going the route of very large wind turbines, including a 3.6-Megawatt machine featuring a rotor 330 feet in diameter atop a tower nearly 40 stories in height. According to Mechanical Engineering, GE plans to situate multiple 3.6-MW turbines in the waters of the Irish Sea later this year.

In addition to GE and Wind Turbine Co., other organizations supporting environmentally sustainable wind energy include the U.S. Department of Energy. In the mid-1990s, the DOE granted $40 million in seed money to private companies to develop low-cost, utility-scale wind turbines, reports Mechanical Engineering.

The commitment to technology development notwithstanding, many experts in the power business are dubious about the future of wind energy in the United States, as well as other countries. Wind turbines currently account for less than one percent of electrical energy produced in the U.S.

The main problem with wind power is cost.