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The Gaia-Wind turbine that was installed earlier this year in Trento, Italy, can now be seen live over the internet through a webcam. The owner of this wind turbine, Trento University, uses the wind turbine for research and for educational purposes.

The webcam shows a Gaia-Wind turbine together with another small wind turbine (left in the background) and a micro turbine (right, far in the background). Apart from these live images, also online data of the performance of the Gaia-Wind turbine can be seen. Further the website gives a number of background documents, pictures and videos. Please note that all material is in the Italian language.

Regarding the siting of the turbine; the average wind speed on this site is rather low. Due to vicinity of the mountains (Trento is at the foot of the Brenner pass in the Alps) the winds are changing over a day; typically from 2 pm until 8 pm there are strong winds where the rest of the day the wind speed is very low. The turbines therefore often only operate during the afternoon, but during that period they do work at significant power levels.

Due to the digital quality of the webcam the blades of the turbine, while rotating, get a curved-banana shape. In reality the blades are straight, as for instance can be seen on another video, which was made with a higher quality camera.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 8:11 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.