Windpower!

We have been finding out about renewable energy and investigating windpower. Some of the off shore wind farms ( called 'arrays') are enormous! The London Array will be the biggest in the world.

We watched an amazing video which shows the huge size of the turbines and how the foundations are put in to the sea with a big hammer. We found out about the jobs the  remotely operated vehicles or ROVs do under the sea and how they are needed to lay the cables safely under the seabed.

There must be lots of different jobs that underwater ROVs could do so we designed our own and build lego models to share our ideas. Here are a few of our designs which we made into lego models.

 

We chose a windy day to investigate the wind and the Beaufort Scale , and once we got them in the right place the anenometer and the model turbine were flying round! The anenometer measured F7 in the playground! This must have been a gust, but as you see in the chart below the photo it was definitely a steady F6.

No shortage of wind in our playground!

 

Wind speed  - we were measuring from 2pm to 3pm.

Power Station VIsit

We have visited the power station to see how power used to be generated for the whole of Orkney with diesel engines. The station is only used for back up in case of emergency nowadays. 30 people used to work there but now only 3 people look after the power station. We found out about how much power the engines can generate and how much power is sent to us through the submarine cable and eventually to our homes, and what is done with the extra energy generated by wind turbines. If you would like to find out more please read our comments below as we add them. Everyone will be sharing what they have learned.