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Sewanee is home to the University of the South and, according to wind resource maps, is also the home to strong wind speeds.
In the summer of 2010, The University's Sustainability Director contacted the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy about studying the feasibility of a wind turbine to generate energy for the campus.
SACE is able to provide wind measurement equipment on loan to the university through the Tennessee Anemometer Loan Program, a program that was made financially possible through the Department of Energy’s Wind Powering America initiative. SACE also collects and analyzes the data free of charge.
In a meeting between the University and representatives from TVA, the local power distributor Duck River EMC, and SACE, wind maps were compared with university-owned property, and a location for the anemometers was chosen based on an area with an unobstructed access to a steady wind stream from the West. Conveniently, the location already had a 110 foot-tall communications tower on site.
After permission to use the communications tower was granted, Duck River Electric Membership Corporation generously agreed to perform the installation. Duck River EMC also hired Johnson Crane Services to bring a bucket truck with a boom long enough to reach above the tower.
The equipment placed at the top of the tower sends information to a data logger. The data logger calculates and records the average wind speed and direction for every ten minutes. This data will be collected for at least one year.
Once the data is collected, the frequency of the wind speeds will be correlated with several wind turbine manufacturers’ power curves to determine its generation output. This will show what each wind turbine would have produced if it had been at the site. The electricity generation will then be multiplied by TVA’s Generation Partners Program rate for purchasing wind energy generated from small systems, which is currently three cents above the retail electricity rate per kilowatt-hour. The results will help the university make an informed decision on whether wind energy is right for the location.
Check back to this site for updates as the data is collected.
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