OSU engineering students visit wind farm

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

A group of renewable energy engineering students from Ohio State University were in Van Wert on Friday to learn about wind energy at Iberdrola Renewable’s Blue Creek Wind Farm maintenance facility on Fife Road.

Neil Voje, manager of the wind farm, provided the students with a presentation on wind energy in which he explained the technological process used in the wind energy industry, as well as how wind turbines operate.

The presentation included showing the location of the company’s 152 wind turbines in the Blue Creek Wind Farm, and also gave them a look at an actual turbine housing used for demonstrations. The students later got a chance to view a 100-meter-high wind turbine up close when Voje accompanied them to a nearby turbine at the end of the tour.

Dr. Victor Ujor, assistant professor at Ohio State University and coordinator of the school’s renewable energy program, said he enjoyed the tour and was impressed with the technology used by Iberdrola at the wind farm.

“I think it was the best tour we’ve had so far,” he added.

The students also asked a number of questions, and were obviously interested in what makes a wind farm “tick”.

During the presentation, Voje also noted some of innovations suggested by local employees, including using a section of plastic drain pipe to protect wiring inside a turbine, rather than a less flexible hard-shell tube that didn’t work as well.

He also challenged the engineering students to come up with fixes for a number of problems he sees in the wind energy field, including creating turbines that require fewer different-size hoses, which would allow Iberdrola to cut back on inventory and decrease costs.

Vote also informed the students that, while Iberdrola has a contract to provide Ohio State with 25 percent of its electrical energy needs, that energy doesn’t flow directly from the wind turbines to OSU, but is placed on the power grid and the university gets the energy for which it contracted.

Because the wind is stronger in the winter, the Iberdrola manager added that the company was able to provide Ohio State with 100 percent of its energy needs for a portion of this past winter.

Voje said the tour, which was similar to ones provided to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown and U.S. Representative Bob Latta last year, was designed to make the students more aware of the benefits and challenges of the wind energy industry.

“We talked with these Ohio State students to familiarize them with the benefits of wind, not necessarily to indoctrinate them, but to improve their level of knowledge,” Voje noted.