Using wind to power a groundwater circulation well—preliminary results

Abstract

In areas of the country where the U.S. Department of Energy has classified the available wind resources as Class 3 or greater, the use of wind turbines to provide power to relatively small remediation systems such as groundwater circulation wells may be technically and economically feasible. Groundwater circulation wells are a good candidate technology to couple with renewable energy, because the remediation system removes contamination from the subject aquifer with no net loss of the groundwater resource, while the wind turbine does not create potentially harmful air emissions. Wind data collected in the vicinity of the former Nebraska Ordnance Plant Superfund site were used to select a wind turbine system to provide a portion of the energy necessary to power a groundwater circulation well located in an area of high trichloroethylene groundwater contamination. Because utility power was already installed at the remediation system, a 10 kW grid inter‐tie wind turbine system supplements the utility system without requiring batteries for energy storage. The historical data from the site indicate that the quantity of energy purchased correlates poorly with the quantity of groundwater treated. Preliminary data from the wind turbine system indicate that the wind turbine provides more energy than the remediation system treatment components and the well submersible pump require on a monthly average. The preliminary results indicate that the coupling of wind turbines and groundwater circulation wells may be an attractive alternative in terms of the system operation time, cost savings, and contaminant mass removal. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Monte Carlo Simulations of Wind Speed Data

“…The following equation thereby results in a simpler wind probability calculation using the more commonly available wind velocity instead of the Weibull scale value. (2) Where Γ( ) is the gamma function. The typical values of k for most wind site conditions range from 1.5 to 3.0 as found in [8] but for this paper we calculated the values for the selected…”

“…This paper will build on earlier work regarding the use of low cost and readily available wind velocity data from regional climate center weather stations to predict wind turbine performance. Elmore et al [2] showed that the use of a regional wind map resulted in the over estimation of energy production for a Bergey Wind Company (BWC) 10 kW wind turbine used to partially power a groundwater circulation well (GCW) system at the former Nebraska Ordnance Plant (FNOP) Superfund site. The use of regional climate center data to predict the wind velocity and wind turbine energy production at the GCW location was further explored in Gallagher and Elmore [3].…”

“…One of the limitations of that study was that the length of the wind velocity record varied between the three stations and the study did not evaluate the impact of the data record length on the predictions. Our wind analysis indicates that a 10 kW grid intertie BWC wind turbine can partially power an existing groundwater remediation site [2]. The research test site at the FNOP (near Mead, NE) was used to provide measured test data.…”