+- MacResource (https://forums.macresource.com)
+-- Forum: My Category (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: Tips and Deals (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Thread: How cool (and green) is OWC? (/showthread.php?tid=85585)
Pages:
1
2
How cool (and green) is OWC? - SteveO - 10-06-2009
Has everyone seen this? http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=111670&id=82676111786
OWC is making their OWN energy, have a net negative carbon footprint...with their all-new totally Green facility. Seriously -- how COOL is that? I just wanted to start a thread on this and give a hearty KUDOS to Laurant and his trusted staff. I've been reading snippets on this for the past several months in various newsletters; they had to jump through about 942 hoops to make it all happen and I'm sure at monumental expense.
Shout out to SmallDog as well for all of their green efforts. Just goes to show the Mac community really does Think Different.
I have no ownership interest in either OWC or SD. Although I wish I did!
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - mattkime - 10-06-2009
hm, we need a write up / review of the turbine.
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - OWC Jamie - 10-06-2009
It's big
Really big.
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - OWC Jamie - 10-06-2009
Now needed: a way to make forum hot air keep it spinning. :-)
We need a way to extract energy from keyboards.
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - mattkime - 10-06-2009
OWC Jamie wrote:
It's big
I'm not joking! How did you pull this off?
I want details!
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - AllGold - 10-06-2009
There's a paragraph or so about it in their latest newsletter: http://www.macsales.com/newsletter/10-05-2009TipsnDeals.html
What is the rated capacity? It's definitely big--a commercial-scale wind turbine not a puny home power version. I'm guessing about 1MegaWatt?
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - OWC Larry - 10-06-2009
Working on a full project document and also possible case study as well. this is the culmination of a vision going back 3 years and over 2 years of research and paper work.
The politicians might have you think that there are market barriers to energy like this. It took a lot less time to get the foundation in and then erect the Turbine compared to the months and months of local and also regulatory (courtesy of ComEd/Excelon) paperwork to get the project completely green lighted. I elaborate a bit more in our 10/5 newsletter:
http://www.macsales.com/newsletter/10-05-2009TipsnDeals.html
Financially this made sense based on the wind profile for our location - this makes it a win win in terms of the green energy source as well as long term competitive cost advantage. in addition to general information indicating this county was good for wind energy, we paid for a wind study to allow for modeling of the different Turbine options that would make sense. From there we walked through the steps and voila - it's up and with planned 'maiden spin' first power generation come Monday the 19th.
What took a good two years for us once we got rolling definitely should be a shorter time line for anyone in our area who chooses to follow. in general it's more a lack of information and experience with the permits and such for this kind of project that substantially slow it down. We had good people at the county level and with the army core of engineers working on the various verifications needed for the approval - but this was a first for those doing so and they took their time and double checked and triple checked and reverified, etc, etc, etc before stamping at each step.... again - I think the next to put a turbine up in McHenry County, IL will have a much quicker and less mutually frustrating permitting process.
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - OWC Larry - 10-06-2009
this one is actually rated at 500KW. The 1MW units are very difficult to get as 1MW and 3MW units are in high demand going into WindFarm deployment.
Our building was built to and is in the certification process for LEED Platinum. It incorporates substantial energy saving technologies. Based on the wind study and the gearing setup on the V39 Vestas we've deployed, the estimated output is 2 to 2.5 times our own facility's power use.
who knows... all goes really well, we might look at putting up a 2nd turbine at 800KW which is now becoming reasonable available.
Also - to add to the prior post I made... I do give kudos to our local representatives and local processors who definitely made the effort to see this through. It's understandably new ground for this area and I fully understand why they were very careful to make sure all was 100% done correctly. If all does go well, it is a template for future local projects of this kind. A real proof of concept.
AllGold wrote:
There's a paragraph or so about it in their latest newsletter: http://www.macsales.com/newsletter/10-05-2009TipsnDeals.html
What is the rated capacity? It's definitely big--a commercial-scale wind turbine not a puny home power version. I'm guessing about 1MegaWatt?
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - M A V I C - 10-06-2009
Congrats Larry! Is this just for MacSales stuff, or are any other business operations being run from this facility?
Re: How cool (and green) is OWC? - OWC Larry - 10-06-2009
Our FasterMac.Net and OWC.NET ISP data center is also located on premise, part of the operation. Effectively all aspects of the OWC operation in countdown to becoming wind powered.