| |
| Home : Volume 33 : Spring 2007 : | |
| Power is blowing in the wind | |
Associate Professor Giri Venkataramanan (center) and a team of workers built a wind turbine in the Scottish Highlands. The community there is not connected to the electrical grid. (Large image) |
The rolling hills of the Scottish highlands are dotted with small stone houses. Their residents, mostly farmers and craftsmen, enjoy a peaceful existence miles from the nearest city—so far, in fact, that they are not connected to the nearest power grid.
That is where Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Giri Venkataramanan began his sabbatical. He did not travel to Scotland to enjoy its peace and tranquility, but rather as part of a team building an electricity-generating wind turbine. Without connection to energy utilities—power lines cost between $50,000 and $1 million per mile, says Venkataramanan—the region’s inhabitants must generate their own power.
Wind turbines, machines that use the energy from the wind to turn a generator, are common in the area. “Every house has one or two turbines. They also use solar panels and have batteries to store charge for when there’s no wind or sun,” says Venkataramanan.“They live pretty comfortably.”
The team had no prior turbine-building experience, but came prepared to saw, drill and weld. It took the team one week to build the turbine, by hand, from the raw materials. Turbines the size of this one generally average 200 watts at a reasonably windy site. At this rate, one turbine can generate enough electricity in a day to power the modest needs of a small home, says Venkataramanan.
“That was a very eye-opening experience for me. Even in that primitive setting, we were able to accomplish something. I was quite impressed,” says Venkataramanan. “I thought, we ought to do something like that on campus.”
Inspired by that thought, he spent the rest of his sabbatical learning how to implement a program about this clean, sustainable solution for rural energy on a university campus.
A few months after returning from Scotland, Venkataramanan traveled to the Tokyo Institute of Technology to lecture about his research activities. While he was there, he investigated a new undergraduate program in international development engineering, which focuses on sustainable global development.
Venkataramanan then spent three months as a visiting research associate at the University of California-Berkeley. While conducting research and writing a paper on rural electrification for the Journal of Energy Engineering, he also assembled a team of students to build a wind turbine like the one he built in Scotland. Although without a full-scale workshop or credit, the students worked weekends to assemble the turbine in a team member’s garage.
The students’ enthusiasm for the project did not wane after Venkataramanan’s departure, and the workgroup continues to meet. “Since I left Berkeley, they’ve developed more wind-focused activities and are planning to install two or three more wind turbines,” he says.
While at UC-Berkeley, Venkataramanan also visited other schools and institutions focused on sustainable energy development. The efforts he witnessed inspired him, such as the University of Colorado-Denver student team that not only built a wind turbine, but also installed it in a tribal community in India.
For the spring of 2006, Venkataramanan received a fellowship as a visiting researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. “The first thing I did in Brazil was get a bunch of students together to build a wind turbine,” he says. Despite bureaucratic red tape, the team found the parts it needed and finished the turbine.
To finish his sabbatical, Venkataramanan spent the summer as a visiting scientist at Gazi University in Ankara, Turkey, where he also recruited a team of students to build another wind turbine, bringing his number of construction endeavors to four. With these experiences fresh in his mind, he returned to UW-Madison in fall armed with ideas for ways Wisconsin students could help develop rural energy.
Venkataramanan is planning several courses
that will give students opportunities to learn about and work with
energy technology. This spring, he piloted a section of Introduction to Engineering (InterEgr 160) that focuses on small-scale wind turbines,
intending to integrate it into the curriculum long-term. He also has
integrated renewable energy technologies and developing
electric grids into his
Venkataramanan (right) helped a team of students in Brazil build a smaller scale wind turbine like the one he built in Scotland. He also built turbines with student groups in Turkey and California. (Large image) |
To give students hands-on experience, Venkataramanan is planning a section of the service-learning program Engineering Projects in Community Service that will enable them to build and install a renewable energy system, such as wind turbines, in an off-grid community.
Venkataramanan believes that adding rural, renewable energy development to an engineering curriculum could make a difference not only for the students involved and the communities they reach, but also on a global level. “There are two billion people without electricity access in the world. That’s one-third of the population. Many of these communities don’t have economic wealth for people to go and build power lines. By engaging our students in projects like this, they can learn to think globally and perhaps come up with creative solutions for the future,” he says. “The potential for what our students and faculty can do is unlimited; we just have to be creative.”
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Web services: webmaster@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: 05-Jun-2007
Date created: 05-Jun-2007
Thank you for visiting!
