Scott's Renewable Energy Studies in Europe: CRES Wind Farm & Cape Sounion

A couple of weeks ago, my classmates & I traveled to Lavrio (around 30 miles / 45 km SW of Athens) to visit a renewable energy research park. The site includes a wind farm comprised of wind generators from several manufacturers and is operated by CRES (Centre for Renewable Energy Sources, www.cres.gr/kape/index_eng.htm), the local research institute where we recently received two weeks of wind energy lectures. The wind farm allows CRES personnel to examine wind turbine performance in a "complex terrain" (i.e. hilly, non-uniform landscape). They also have other RE experimentation and demonstration equipment at the site, such as a large photovoltaic array, a wood pellet furnace, a hydrogen fuel station, a solar cooling demo building, and wind-powered desalination equipment.
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N-E-G Micon turbine (with blade tips turned for braking)
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Enercon wind turbine
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Wider view of the CRES wind farm
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Checking out one of the PV arrays
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After the research park visit, we ate a late lunch at a seafood restaurant overlooking the Aegean Sea. Finally, we visited the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion on the southern-most tip of Attica (the prefecture in which Athens resides). It's a place that Lord Byron wrote about in Don Juan: "Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, where nothing save the waves and I, may hear our mutual murmurs sweep..." It's a really beautiful spot, and thankfully this was a nice, sunny afternoon. It's supposedly quite a nice place to watch the sunset, although I didn't stay late enough to witness this.
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