Wind Energy

Edited by:
  • Robert W. Thresher
Wiley. 4/yr. $320 (institutional), $245 (individual)

The wind bloweth where it listeth; and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.  St John, ch. 3, v. 8

Man has harnessed the wind to power sailing ships, turn windmills to grind corn and, latterly, to generate electricity. Wind is fickle and unpredictable, as those who race yachts may know to their cost. But now wind energy, or rather, electricity generated by huge wind turbines — each producing two megawatts of power — is big business and growing at 30% a year. Worldwide there are 15 gigawatts of wind-generated electricity capacity.

As is so often the case, the practical engineering is well ahead of the science. The international journal Wind Energy has been set up to try to redress this imbalance and “offers a major forum for the reporting of advances in this rapidly developing technology … to harness clean energy from the wind”.

The papers range widely, from “Wind power meteorology”, through “Modelling methods for wind turbine wakes” to ”Mature offshore wind technology”. They are generally rigorous, with a nice balance of theoretical and practical content. The fluid mechanics of wind systems is crucial for energy to be generated efficiently and the journal's contents reflect this. Surprisingly, despite the journal's mission statement, the economics of wind-generated electricity and socio-political issues seem not to feature as yet, although a section on “Broader perspectives” is promised.

There is some competition from Wind Directions, a journal published by the European Wind Energy Association, and from Renewable Energy World , published by Edward Milford, but these are essentially trade magazines and so Wind Energy fills an important gap.

→http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jtoc?ID=6276