On the after noon of February 22, 2007, Fletcher Miller presented his GEO power point to 75 students, a few profs, and a dozen members of the public in a classroom at Case.
Mr. Miller has been a wind energy enthusiast here in NEO for years. His day job is at NASA Glenn where his expertise is fire in space (Fletcher brought to my attention several years back that without gravity heat doesn’t rise, so fire sensing and control is totally different in space than on earth – a burning candle in space will have a spherical flame). Several of Mr. Miller’s NASA colleges also attended the Case lecture.
Here are a few interesting points Mr. Miller made:
1. When the anemometer mast was installed on August 29, 2005 on the Cleveland water intake crib in Lake Erie, the installation helicopter - which was carrying the top section of the tubular steel mast out from Burke lakefront airport - had to return to shore twice to refuel – the third attempt was almost aborted due to the copter’s fuel again running low – but luckily the 4 individuals (a mix of 2 volunteers and 2 professional steeplejacks) who were clinging at the top end of the base section of the mast where just able to get the bolts engaged and release the secured top mast section from the helicopter. Mr. Miller showed a dramatic slide of the hovering copter with the hanging top mast and workmen below it.
2. After a year of data collection, there appears to be very little “wind shear” at the crib. Usually wind velocity at a higher elevation (ie further from the ground) is greater than the wind velocity near the ground. High “Wind shear [1]” is an undesirable condition for wind turbines. Mr. Miller was a little perplexed as to why there was so little wind shear at the crib.
3. When Mr. Miller began to discuss the future Lake Erie wind turbines proposed by the Cleveland Foundation and Cuyahoga County Mr. Miller said that presently the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has emphatically said that the DNR is against any wind turbines placed anywhere in Lake Erie.
4. Mr. Miller went on to say that the way around this that the County was considering was to use an old lake bottom land lease that the State had issued to Burke Airport years ago – when Burke was discussing using more dredge materials to make a new landing strip out 3 miles from shore. This old "lease" is where it seems the “about 3 miles from shore” figure that Ronn Richards refers to comes from.
Fletcher Miller is, quite curiously, not on the Cuyahoga Wind Task Force.
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Links:
[1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=fmR&defl=en&q=define:Wind+shear&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
[2] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/system/files/Fletcher-Miller%27s-wind-pres.gif