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Wind Energy

Excerpt:   Wind power has seen historic growth and the blessing of President Barack Obama—but it's far from recession-proof. The American Wind Energy Association reported Tuesday that the amount of electricity generated by wind turbines grew by 50 percent last year and 55 new manufacturing facilities were built to make turbine components…

Overall wind-produced electricity still totals just under 2 percent of all electricity generated. But new wind turbines accounted for 42 percent of electricity growth in 2008, almost as big a share as new natural gas plants, said the association.
"Our numbers are both exciting and sobering," said Bode. She said the growth in wind energy production shows the industry is "ready to deliver" on Obama's call to double renewable energy production in three years. But the industry is not escaping the tough economic times, largely because of the credit crunch that has delayed projects. "We are already seeing layoffs in the area where wind promise is greatest for our economy — the wind power manufacturing sector," said Bode.

Source:   http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/energy/2009/01/28
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Excerpt:   Currently, wind, the fastest growing sector of renewable energy in the U.S., generates about 16.8 billion watts (gigawatts), or slightly more than 1%, of domestic electric utility power. Renewable electricity generation in total amounts to about 8% of U.S. of the total produced in 2007--70% of which comes from hydro power… At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., scientists have improved blade design, increased efficiency in the transfer of energy into electricity and improved gearboxes that attach the turbines to the shaft.

Humdinger Wind Energy, headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, is developing a "wind belt" that harnesses moving air across a vertical plane to generate electricity. A host of other projects are going on, aimed at improving the efficiency of converting wind power into electricity. Mustering the political will, however, is another matter. "Leadership is the critical need that will unleash other needs around capital regulation," says Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, an environmental business news blog. "We need change at the state and regional level on optimizing the grid. Nothing will happen without a national push."…

Getting the regulatory permission to install such lines and share the costs, however, gets more problematic--and starts to raise political issues. Many utilities are moving forward with their plans for necessary transmission lines, but crossing state lines makes the regulatory and siting process long and difficult, said Susan Tomasky, president of transmission for American Electric Power. "While we do think states play a really important role, especially for the balance of power supply, the big thing that is missing is strong federal authority to make sure lines are centrally planned, built and sited," she says.

Source:   http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/21/wind-power-pickens-tech-science-cx_stc_0721wind.html
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Excerpt:   Fascination with wind turbines small enough to mount on a roof is spreading from coast to coast. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York last month proposed dotting the city with them. Small turbines have already appeared at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, atop an office building at Logan International Airport in Boston, and even on a utility pole in the small New Hampshire town of Hampton.

These tiny turbines generate so little electricity that some energy experts are not sure the economics will ever make sense. By contrast, the turbines being installed at wind farms are getting ever larger and more powerful, lowering the unit cost of electricity to the point that they are becoming competitive with electricity generated from natural gas. The spread of the big turbines and a general fascination with all things green are helping to spur interest in rooftop microturbines, creating a movement somewhere on the border between a hobby and an environmental fashion statement.

Some people have long stuck relatively modest turbines on towers in the countryside. Those are capable of generating enough electricity on a windy day to provide a fair portion of a home’s needs and can eventually pay for themselves. The new rooftop turbines are much smaller, however, and few statistics are available yet on their performance.

Source:   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/business/04wind.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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Excerpt:   The acting chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says the nation should have a new network of power lines to carry wind power across the country, providing a rationale for Democratic legislation that would give the agency authority to permit power lines where it sees fit even over state and local objections.

FERC Chairman-designate Jon Wellinghoff says he envisions a new grid system that can carry electricity from the wind-rich Midwest to New York, Washington DC, Atlanta, and other eastern cities. Longer term, he says, wind turbines off the Atlantic coast that could generate wind energy that would flow in the other direction, from east to west.

One way to avoid controversy over the location of new power lines could be to run them along railroad rights of way, Mr. Wellinghoff said in an interview. "There is some discussion of investigating whether or not it's feasible to site these lines down existing railroad corridors in the United States," Mr. Wellinghoff said. Lines radiating out from the Midwest would be direct current lines, which "have a lot less interference in them" and could possibly run in a railroad corridor," he said.

Source:   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123749475998488063.html
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Excerpt:   Novi-based ITC Holdings Corp. on Monday unveiled plans to build a network of transmission lines intended to deliver 12,000 megawatts of wind power from remote windy areas in the upper Midwest to load centers such as Chicago, Minneapolis and Southeast Wisconsin. The company pegged the total cost of the so-called Green Power Express at between $10 billion and $12 billion.

ITC said it has formed Green Power Express LP, a limited partnership that plans to file today an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requesting approval of revenue recovery and construction incentives.

"This filing with FERC will be the first of many steps in the process to bring this project to completion to facilitate the delivery of the vast upper Great Plains renewable wind resources to demand centers and markets in the industrial Midwest and further east," Joseph Welch, ITC chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. "The Green Power Express is a portion of a bigger ITC vision of a super regional high-voltage transmission backbone." S

ource:   http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/02/itc_holdings_planning_12b_wind.html

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