Week 3 - Tuesday - Tour of the Palm Springs Wind Farm

While the thermometer read 110 degrees F, the tour of the Palm Springs wind farms was a great success.  The tour company, The Best of the Best Tours, did a wonderful job with our group.  Our tour guide, Ken Huskey, was very knowledgeable about the wind energy field.  He engaged our students and was very willing to answer questions.  Ken is featured in the brief video shown below.

Shown here, to the right, is one of the largest wind turbines in this area.  A turbine this size is capable of generating enough electricity to meet the needs of 400 homes (per day - when in full operation).

In terms of size, the very large wind turbines have blades the length of football fields.  To further understand the size, one could overlay a jumbo jet over the blade span (tip to tip).  The nacelle (where the mechanics are housed) is the size of a bus.


Shown here, to the left, is a natural gas burning power plant that operates in this area.  The stacks that are shown are just part of the issue (emitting the green house gas CO2 into the environment). 

Another concern with natural gas burning power plants is that they take a fair amount of water resources to operate (for cooling purposes).  A wind turbine does not take other resources to operate (other than water for the concrete pad when it was orginally poured and for scheduled maintenance - such as oil for lubrication).