Wind power in Ohio has a long history, and as of 2016, Ohio had 545
megawatt
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...
s (MW) of utility-scale wind power installations installed, responsible for 1.1% of in-state electricity generated.
Over 1000 MW more were under construction or pending approval. Some installations have become
tourist attractions
A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement.
Types
Places of natural b ...
.
There has been a sudden increase in generating capacity, as total wind power capacity in the state was just 9.7 MW in 2010.
By 2019, there were 738 MW of capacity, which generated 1.71% of Ohio's electricity.
[Wind Energy in Ohio](_blank)
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Ohio's first large wind farm, Timber Road II near Payne in northwest Ohio, opened on October 6, 2011. It was surpassed in June 2012 by the 304 MW Blue Creek Wind Farm
The Blue Creek Wind Farm spanning Paulding and Van Wert County became the largest wind farm in the U.S. state of Ohio at approximately 40,500 acres upon its completion in 2012. With a generating capacity of 304 megawatts (MW), it prod ...
.
History
Wind power in Ohio has a long (albeit discontinuous) history.
Brush's windmill dynamo
Charles F. Brush designed one of world's earliest electricity-generating windmills in Cleveland, Ohio in 1887–1888. His engineering company built the "windmill
dynamo" at his home. It operated from 1886 until 1900.
The Brush wind turbine had a rotor 56 feet (17 m) in diameter and was mounted on a 60-foot (18 m) tower, making it similar in size to some of the first commercial wind farm turbines of the 1980s. However, the machine was only rated at 12 kW; it turned relatively slowly since it had 144 blades. Brush used the connected dynamo either to charge a bank of batteries or to operate up to 100 incandescent light bulb
An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxid ...
s, three arc lamps, and various motors in his laboratory. The machine fell into disuse after 1900 when electricity became available from Cleveland's central stations, and was abandoned in 1908.
NASA Lewis MOD series
From 1974 to 1981, NASA's Glenn Research Center
NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is a NASA center within the cities of Brook Park and Cleveland between Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and the Rocky River Reservation of Cleveland Metroparks, with a subsidiary facilit ...
(then the Lewis Research Center) in Brook Park, Ohio
Brook Park is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States and a suburb of Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city population was 18,595 .
Geography
Brook Park is located at (41.399550, −81.818423).
According to the United States Census ...
led the U.S. Wind Energy Program for large horizontal-axis wind turbines, designing a series of 13 experimental large horizontal-axis wind turbines. In conjunction with the United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...
, NASA developed and tested megawatt-class wind turbines. The program's goal was to develop the technology, and then turn it over to private industry. While none of the program's wind turbine designs saw mass commercialization, the tests generated valuable data and pioneered modern design concepts such as tubular towers and computer control of blade pitch and rotor yaw.
Most of the MOD-series wind turbines went to sites outside of Ohio, but the first unit, the MOD-0 operated at NASA's Plum Brook facility near Sandusky from 1975 to 1988. Initially the wind turbine had a lattice tower, a 38.1m diameter two-bladed rotor mounted downwind from the tower, and a capacity of 100 kW. Lockheed Corporation
The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but ot ...
manufactured the aluminum rotor blades. The discovery of severe stress resulting from the rotor blades passing through the tower's wind shadow led to several redesigns. In 1979, NASA rebuilt the MOD-0 with an upwind rotor mounted on a teetering hub, with a steel spar reinforcing the blades. In 1982, a tubular tower replaced the lattice tower. Finally, in 1985 NASA tested a single-bladed rotor with a teetering hub. In 1981, two NASA Glenn engineers, Larry Viterna and Bob Corrigan, used the adjustable-pitch blade feature of the MOD-0 to invent an analytical method for calculating wind turbine output in high winds, which has since become widely used in the wind power industry as the Viterna method.
File:NASA MOD-0 model 1975 00594L.jpg, Model and display board of NASA MOD-0 experimental wind turbine
File:NASA MOD-0 construction 1975 03133L.jpg, Constructing the MOD-0 in 1975
File:NASA MOD-0 Plum Brook OH 1975 03490L.jpg, MOD-0, initial configuration, at Glenn Research Center
NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is a NASA center within the cities of Brook Park and Cleveland between Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and the Rocky River Reservation of Cleveland Metroparks, with a subsidiary facilit ...
's Plum Brook station near Sandusky, Ohio
File:NASA MOD-0 smoke test 1982 05937L.jpg, MOD-0, smoke test, downwind rotor configuration, 1982
File:Mod-0 Wind turbine.jpg, MOD-0 research wind turbine in one-bladed configuration
Wind Turbine Regulation
In 2014, the Ohio General Assembly passed HB 483. This codified a wind turbine setback of from the property line for significant wind farms. The change in wind turbine setbacks has discouraged investment of new wind farm development in the State of Ohio.
Installed capacity and wind resources
The following table compares the growth in wind power installed nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity, or maximum effect, is the intended full-load sustained output of a facility such as a power station, in megawatts (MW) for Ohio and the entire United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
from 2002 through 2019.
One large undeveloped resource of wind in Ohio is Lake Erie
Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also h ...
. Its shallow depth and shelter from hurricanes provide advantages in terms of both ease of construction as well as safety of investment. Although land based wind farms
Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few h ...
frequently have lower siting costs, offshore wind farms usually have better wind, as open water lacks obstructions such as forests, buildings, and hills.
On February 11, 2010, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US specializes in the research and development of renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded research an ...
released the first comprehensive update of the wind energy potential by state since 1993, showing that Ohio had potential to install 55 GW of onshore wind power nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity, or maximum effect, is the intended full-load sustained output of a facility such as a power station, , generating 152 TWh annually. For comparison, Ohio consumed 160.176 TWh of electricity in 2005; the entire U.S. wind power industry was producing at an annual rate of approximately 50 TWh at the end of 2008; and Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, central China, downstream of the Three Gorges. The Three Gorges Dam has been the world' ...
(the world's largest electricity-generating station) produced an average of 80 TWh/yr in 2008 and 2009.
Wind farms
In 2008, Ohio had one utility-scale wind farm, one single large turbine wind power installation, and two more in development.
American Municipal Power Inc Wind Farm
Th
AMP Wind Farm
located at the following coordinates:() west of Bowling Green
A bowling green is a finely laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of turf for playing the game of bowls.
Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, near Stroud, UK, invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep ...
in Wood County is Ohio's first utility-scale wind farm
A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turb ...
. It consists of four Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Un ...
V80-1.8MW wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each yea ...
s giving a combined nameplate capacity
Nameplate capacity, also known as the rated capacity, nominal capacity, installed capacity, or maximum effect, is the intended full-load sustained output of a facility such as a power station, of 7.2 MW. The first two units came online in 2003, and the second two in 2004, next to the Wood County landfill. In 2015 the wind turbines were paid off. Because the turbines are early models, the operators have had difficulty sourcing replacement parts. The US$10 million wind farm's wind turbines are highly visible for miles in all directions, and have become a tourist attraction, regularly hosting busloads of school children. A solar-powered kiosk on the site gives data to visitors about the project, the current wind speed, and real time power generation.
File:Bowling Green Wind Power.jpg, Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Un ...
V80-1.8MW wind turbine outside Bowling Green, Ohio
Bowling Green is a city in and the county seat of Wood County, Ohio, United States, located southwest of Toledo. The population was 30,028 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Toledo Metropolitan Area and a member of the Toledo Metropolitan ...
File:Bowling Green Wind Farm - entrance sign, south turbines - 18086.JPG, Entrance sign, south turbines
File:Bowling Green Wind Farm - turbine, kiosk, sign - 18077.JPG, Visitor area and information kiosk
Great Lakes Science Center
The Great Lakes Science Center installed a reconditioned Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Un ...
V27-225 kW wind turbine in 2006, outside its museum building on Cleveland's North Coast Harbor
North Coast Harbor is a district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie. The district serves as the home of the Great Lakes Science Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, FirstEnergy Stadium, the Steamship William G. M ...
between Cleveland Browns Stadium
FirstEnergy Stadium is a stadium in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, primarily for American football. It is the home field of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL), and serves as a venue for other events such as college and ...
and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (). The North Coast entertainment complex receives 1.5 million visitors per year, and the wind turbine appears regularly on local news broadcasts and Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...
NFL broadcasts, making it one of the world's most-viewed wind turbines.
The wind turbine originally operated on a wind farm in Denmark, which resold the wind turbine while repowering to newer, larger wind turbines.[Link is broken as of 2008-12-15.] The ground around the wind turbine features an art display entitled ''Shadow and Light''. The display includes walkways that align with the wind turbine's shadow at solar noon
Noon (or midday) is 12 o'clock in the daytime. It is written as 12 noon, 12:00 m. (for meridiem, literally 12:00 noon), 12 p.m. (for post meridiem, literally "after noon"), 12 pm, or 12:00 (using a 24-hour clock) or 1200 ( military time).
Sola ...
and two hours, eleven minutes after solar noon, respectively. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the wind turbine's shadow also aligns with the walkways by length. Thus the wind turbine functions as a large gnomon in an incomplete sundial. The display includes boxes of light bulbs encased in concrete on one side of a plaza around the wind turbine's base, representing the amount of electricity consumed by the average American household in a year.
File:Great Lakes Science Center.jpg, Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Un ...
V27 at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio
File:Clevelands Great Lakes Science Center.jpg, Another view of the GLSC and its wind turbine
File:Vestas V27 wind turbine at Great Lakes Science Center.jpg, Closeup photo of the wind turbine against the Cleveland skyline
One Energy ''Wind for Industry'' projects
Findlay, Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
based on-site distributed-generation wind energy company One Energy has developed and constructed nine ''Wind for Industry'' projects to date with three projects in construction as of October 2018. ''Wind for Industry'' describes wind energy projects in which utility-scale wind turbines are installed on-site and interconnected on a facility’s side of their utility meter (a process known as distributed generation
Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG), or district/decentralized energy, is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system-connected devices referred to ...
or behind-the-meter wind, which sometimes follows net metering). These projects are designed to achieve a significant reduction of an industrial facility’s electrical consumption from the grid
Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to:
Common usage
* Cattle grid or stock grid, a type of obstacle is used to prevent livestock from crossing the road
* Grid reference, used to define a location on a map
Arts, entertainment, and media
* News ...
. One Energy's on-site generation list includes:
Wind generation
Source:
See also
* Solar power in Ohio
* Energy sector of Ohio
*Wind power in the United States
Wind power is a branch of the energy industry that has expanded quickly in the United States over the last several years. From January through December 2021, 379.8 terawatt-hours were generated by wind power, or 9.23% of electricity in the ...
*Renewable energy in the United States
According to preliminary data from the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for about 12.6% of total primary energy consumption and about 19.8% of the domestically produced electricity in the United States in 202 ...
References
External links
Group says wind energy an economic boon in Ohio
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*
50m wind power map for Ohio
100m wind power map for Ohio
Working wind power sites in Northeast Ohio
Ohio Wind Energy Association
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wind Power In Ohio