Navy study on Guam to see if windmills would make dent in fossil fuel use By Teri Weaver, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, May 17, 2008
This summer, the U.S. Navy will begin a wind study on Guam that, in coming years, might allow the Navy to generate enough power to light up a sizable portion of Guam Naval Base, according to engineers working on the project.
Estimating the actual energy potential is hard this early in the project, the engineers say, and it’s possible they won’t find the steady, 15 mph winds needed to make turbines routinely turn.
Yet, if the winds are favorable, a handful of turbines one day could generate 500,000 kilowatts to 8 megawatts of energy, according to Bryan Long, a project engineer on renewable and energy efficiency technology for the Navy.
It’s more likely the average power production would hover around 2.4 megawatts, or the equivalent needed to power up about 1,600 homes, according to engineers with the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center, a Navy office in California that specializes in energy efficiency.
That level of generation would make this one of the Navy’s largest wind projects to date, the engineers said recently.
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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54844uhc comment: Note the language --> "That level of generation would make this one of the Navy’s largest wind projects to date" . . . The Navy has spent a whole $80,000 on the project in the last year.