Farm Windmills to Windmill Farms - Renewable Energy

It will be almost two years since my last trip to Hannover, Germany. Germany was a very nice place to visit—very clean. It reminded me a bit of a place where I used to live as a kid. Many attractive farmlands. Beautiful architecture in places like Munster or Olsenburg. Many people commute on bikes.

The Autobahn was fun. In some sections, there were no speed limits. A lot of bikers passed by us, especially in the no-speed limit zone. The interesting part of the whole trip was how environmentally friendly the Germans were. I experienced self-cleaning toilets, and I saw many windmill farms.

I will talk about the self-cleaning toilets on another day. I actually took a video of the whole mechanism. However, the most fascinating part of the trip was looking at the windmill farms. From far away, they looked like they were the size of the light posts, but when we drove closer and closer, they were huge.

It all evolved from the original windmills, which were used for grain grinding or pumping water by means of wind energy and blades. I came across this European magazine called Power Engineering International. They happened to talk about the design and manufacture of the wind turbines; the most important part of the wind turbine is the bearing on which the blades rotate. The whole idea is to have as little friction as possible or no friction, so even little wind activity will move the blades and convert wind energy into electric power.

A quick fact: one of the largest bearing systems made by SKF for 5M wind turbines is 1.5 meters in diameter and weighs 2700 kg.

Unfortunately, at times when we were driving through country roads, there was no wind, which meant no electric power was generated. In my opinion, the most effective location for the wind turbines is along the sea or ocean coasts. I would love to have one of those in my backyard.  Don't forget the wind turbine maintenance costs, but then sell the electric power you don't use, and the costs will be recovered.

Today I have been tagged. I do have a few tags saved up for the right time, so if you tagged me before and have not seen results yet, don't worry. The New Year's Resolution tag needs to be executed now, as who would want to make New Year's resolutions in mid-year? I probably would, because it is never too late to change. This tag came from a lovely lady I got to know a while ago named Max, who is smart, beautiful, and full of energy. I really enjoy her blog posts, as they are written with the purpose of making us think more about life. You will be surprised at how addictive her posts are. Sometimes I find myself going back 2-3 times to comment on the same post, and then I look at her visitors like Livingsword from Life on the Blade. Oh boy, I've got some competition going. Well, she always returns to my blog until we narrow down our comments to two words, like "Thank You." Max, your hard work and visits are always appreciated.

What are my new year's RESOLUTIONS?

My new year's resolution is always the same: to stay healthy, live a healthy lifestyle, exercise, live a stress-free life, and, of course, care for the environment.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT

As you can see, most of my resolutions are towards a healthy body, mind, and soul and to care for the environment. So I would like to give a special acknowledgment to Will Taft and his very resourceful blog. Doing things better means knowing more and applying it, and that is what Will does for us. He goes out of his way to do research on topics that we should know more about. I suggest that even if you don't have much to say or comment back, please visit, read, and learn. Once you live a healthy lifestyle, believe me, you will never want to go the other way.

Hey, TAGGING TIME!

For this game, I would like to tag the following bloggers: JB from JB's Big World, Roger from Idaho Daily Photo, Max-e from the Max Files, and MedaM from colored garden Blog I don't know if telling everyone why is a requirement in the tagging game, but I always do. I will always tell you I don't know who found who, just like what came first, chicken or egg (mind you, the latest answer is the egg), but in the end it does not matter; all that matters is that we became 'the blogger friends'. Starting with JB, explore interesting views from an intelligent blogger cat; from Roger, get laughs for life; from Max-e, explore the southern end of Africa; and why not pay a visit to the coloured garden of MedaM. Enjoy!

~ Anna