Blowin' in the wind
MIT students and staff worked together last month to install wind-monitoring equipment on a lighting post in the west campus athletic fields to evaluate whether to erect a wind turbine there in the spring.The planned turbine, a Skystream 3.7 with a rated output of 2.4 kilowatts, about enough to power an average home, is a gift from Philip Deutch as a tribute to his father, Institute Professor John Deutch. In addition to providing some power for lighting on the Briggs Field, the turbine would provide a teaching and research tool for MIT students. Already, the spring-semester class Projects in Energy plans to use the new windmill as part of its wind resource component.But before installing the windmill, it's essential to quantify the wind resource that's available amid the many campus buildings. To do so, recording anemometers were mounted atop and at different levels on a light pole, and a Lidar...