POWER Is blowing in the
wind
he 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 Associate Professor Giri
Venkataramanan began his year of 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.”
 |
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. (View
larger image) |
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 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 course 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.
 |
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.
(Larger
image)
|
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’s
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 this 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.
In the spring, he will pilot a section of “Introduction to Engineering”
(InterEgr 160) that focuses on small-scale wind turbines, with the intent
to integrate it into the curriculum long-term. He also has integrated
renewable energy technologies and developing electric grids into his
course ECE 714, “Utility Applications of Power Electronics,”
focusing on underdeveloped and off-grid communities.
To give students hands-on experience, Venkataramanan
is planning a section of the service-learning program Engineering Projects
in Community Service that will enable a team of students 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 engi-neering 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 communities don’t have the economic wealth for people to
build power lines. By engaging 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.”
