The SWEP team working on installing a wind anemometer at the Berkeley Marina (Image attributed to SWEP, 2013)

This past Thursday, the Green Grid Radio team spoke with Dr. Jeff Mirocha, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We were also joined by guest panelist Aaron Burdick, a graduate student in Stanford’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. We’ve explored a lot of issues related to wind energy technology on the show in previous episodes, but this time we went back to the basics to gain an understanding of some oft overlooked fundamentals. What are the mechanics of making electricity from wind? How efficient is wind energy? What kinds of engineering challenges are wind engineers currently working to overcome?

Aaron provided many insights about the topics discussed with Dr. Mirocha, and shared his experience working with the Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project (SWEP).

Note: During the show, we mentioned that wind energy delivered about 6% of America’s electricity in 2012. After the show aired, we found that as of 2012, wind energy comprised 6% of American electricity generation capacity, but only delivered about 3% of American electricity that year. We apologize for the error!

Listen here: