Wind Power to the People

While this isn't about building per se, I just couldn't resist passing this story along. The energy of this young man (and the energy he's producing) is awe-inspiring.

William Kamkwamba, a 19-year-old high-school student from the East African country of Malawi, had to quit school at the age of 14 because his family couldn't afford to send him anymore. William, fortunately, made the best of a bad situation. Using objects like scrap wood and a bicycle, along with information from a book on electricity, William built a windmill. As a result, he was able to supply electric lights for his family, replacing the candles that caused eye irritation and respiratory problems. Soon he was charging batteries for other people in the village.

William was invited to the second biannual TEDGlobal conference (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design), where his three-minute presentation about his windmill won him a standing ovation. At the conference, he was introduced to the internet. Two weeks later, he started his windmill blog. The donations he has received from all over the world have allowed him to start new projects and to finance his return to school. His next goal is to build a solar- or wind-powered water pump to supply water to his home and irrigate the family crops.

While we're not advocating that everyone starts building windmills in their backyards (or the roofs of their apartment buildings!), this story certainly shows wind's potential as a source of power. Although wind power currently accounts for just over 1 percent of world-wide electricity use, it accounts for approximately 20 percent of electricity use in Denmark, 9 percent in Spain, and 7 percent in Germany. Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006.

In New York City, wind power is used to power some high-profile buildings and monuments. Last year, the General Services Administration, the U.S. government agency that oversees management of federal buildings and federal monuments, announced that it will be buying all of the electricity needed to light up and power the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and 22 other federal buildings from windmill farms in western New York, Pennsylvania and three other states.

Wind power still has a long way to go before being an economically viable energy alternative. Despite state and federal tax credits for suppliers and purchasers, many more windmills will have to be built before wind power is cost competitive with coal-burning and other, traditional electricity generation methods. In a bid to add visibility to the issue, BQ Energy, with the encouragement of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, is investigating the feasibility of installing at least five windmill towers on the tallest mound at the former Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. These turbines could produce enough electricity to power 5,000 homes.