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Can wind power stabilise transport costs?
WILL wind power ultimately takeover from petrol as the fuel of choice to drive cars? A series of announcements by carmakers that they will introduce plug-in electric cars, plus recent advances in wind turbines does provide opportunities for the two technologies to come together.
"This means that females will have a slightly higher horizontal shear stress component to the spine in rear-end impacts compared to males," Mr Jonsson says. Women are also inclined to slouch more while they drive and this may be because car seats are really tailored for men.
The idea is for DONG to construct 20,000 recharging stations across Denmark and feed in energy from its network of wind farms. (Currently Denmark produces 20% of its electricity needs from wind farms.) The recharging stations will be built in car parks and suburban streets and be ready for operation "in 2011".
"With this project, we hope to contribute substantially to reducing C02 emissions from Danish cars," says Anders Eldrup, DONG’s CEO. "At the same time we will achieve a new way of storing the unstable electricity output from wind turbines as EVs are typically charged during the night when the exploitation of power generation is low.
"This provides optimum exploitation of our resources for the benefit of the environment."
One of the participants in the consortium - and a leading advocate of wind-generated power for EVs - is the Israeli-American entrepreneur, Shai Agassi. According to a report in the International Herald Tribune, Mr Agassi is also working to have a similar scheme started in Israel and is in talks with "30 countries" for them to set up similar schemes too.
The Danish plan seems to suggest that today’s network of petrol supplying service stations could be facing some stiff competition. But if wind-power is to supply plug-in EVs, that also opens the possibility of home-owners generating their own energy to power their cars. In fact a search of the Internet quickly reveals that there are thousands of people around the world chatting and blogging about just such a development.
One of the topics often raised is about the progress of a Perth-based, Western Australian inventor, Graeme Attey who came to international attention last year for his development of a low-cost, roof-mounted, cylindrical wind turbine. At the time, Mr Attey had just received a small research grant from the Western Australian Government and was talking about how five of his turbines at the cost of around $1000 could provide all the power needs of a typical suburban house.
According to a notice posted on one US environmental website, Mr Attey has just completed tests at the University of Western Australia on a new turbine that performed so well that a typical home would only need three to generate all its power needs.
What is interesting the blog readers is that the same turbines could also provide a private source of power for plug-in EVs.
Lester Brown, of the US-based, Earth Policy Institute, says recent research by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that if every American suddenly switched to driving an EV, the existing US electricity infrastructure would be sufficient to deliver off-peak recharges to more than 70% of the car fleet. (5) According to Mr Brown, such a refuelling system might also prove highly competitive.
"While gasoline prices are probably headed to $US5 to $US10 a gallon, the wind-generated-electricity equivalent of a gallon of gasoline costs less than $US1," he said.
