WIND ENERGY ENGINEERING

Reviewed 2/04/2010

Wind Energy Engineering, by Pramod Jain

WIND ENERGY ENGINEERING
Pramod Jain
New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011

Rating:

5.0

High

ISBN-13 978-0-07-171477-8
ISBN-10 0-07-171477-4 330pp. HC/BWI $100.00

The publisher's blurb for the book says:

"Pramod Jain, Ph.D., is founder and president of Innovative Wind Energy, Inc., a wind energy consulting company. He is recognized as a global expert in the planning of wind projects and has worked on projects in the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America that range from a single 100 kW turbine to a 100-plus MW wind farm. Dr. Jain's clients include Fortune 100 companies, the U.S. government, universities, utilities, municipalities, and land developers. He was a cofounder and Chief Technologist at Wind Energy Consulting and Contracting, Inc. He has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and a B. Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay."

This book is oriented toward wind-energy entrepreneurs. It includes very good coverage of the aspects of designing a wind-energy facility that make for a commercial success. These include evaluating the quality of the wind resource at the prospective site, properly connecting to the grid, and developing the appropriate business model for the facility. The author provides a thorough discussion of these areas, and cites the essential standards documents as well as a number of helpful Web sites.

He covers technical matters too. There is a great deal of material on aerodynamics, from the basics right on through derivation of the Betz Limit and CFD modelling of wind turbines. He refers often to Martin Hansen's text, and I have the impression that would be a better source for this topic. Jain's treatment is good, but he glosses over some areas, and I could not see how he arrived at some of his equations. He also provides a basic description of electrical machinery, but this is not as thorough as it needs to be. Finally, though he mentions vertical-axis wind turbines, he is too dismissive of them in my opinion.

In summation, this book provides a lot of information essential to anyone engaged in settting up or planning a wind farm, and it does so in a very readable and well-illustrated form. I think this justifies giving it full marks. I would qualify that with the warning that any technical details should be checked against other authoritive sources.

1 I checked into buying my own copy. It can be ordered for $71.50 through Amazon. I'll hold off for a while.
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