windmill

Windmill. Harbec Plastics. Rochester, NY. February 17, 2006.

This windmill generates up to a quarter million watts of power. It is one hundred and thirty feet tall. The windmill was manufactured in Germany by Fuhrländer AG, a company that builds windmills. This is their "FL 250" model, which might be described as an "entry level" electrical generation windmill. It cost a third of a million dollars. It produces fifty thousand dollars of electricity every year for its owner, Harbec Plastics, a small business just outside Rochester, New York. At this rate it will pay for itself in six years. Fuhrländer also manufactures much larger windmills. The FL 2500 model generates nearly three megawatts of power and stands more than five hundred feet tall. Twenty people can stand in the base of the FL 250. I know this because yesterday I was standing with nineteen others in the base of this one.

gas microturbines

Gas microturbines. Harbec Plastics. Rochester, NY. February 17, 2006.

Harbec Plastics uses a lot of energy. The energy that doesn't come from the wind comes from these gas microturbines. Each unit looks kind of like a front-loading laundry machine yet contains a scaled-down version of a jet engine, coupled to an electrical generator. Each one generates thirty thousand watts of power. Each one has only one moving part, and is virtually maintenance-free. The exhaust gas—550 degrees Fahrenheit— is collected and run through a heat exchanger; the captured heat is used in the industrial process, for heating, and, counterintuitively, for cooling too, via an absorption chiller [link?] (on the right). The result is vastly improved efficiency. Lower costs. Less pollution.

The process of generating heat and electricity simultaneously (or utilizing the "waste heat" from electrical generation) is known as Cogeneration. The bizarre thing is that it is 2006 and this is still considered a novel idea.