Alternative Energy / Wind Power

• Unsavory Facts About Wind Energy

  Wind energy has become a great cause and crusade by faux environmentalists and Obamists in and out of government. But big wind energy is most famous for the things it is not: Big wind is not affordable, it is not reliable, it is not dispatchable, it is not baseload. Big wind has become a dogma in a religion of pseudo-science -- a vital tenet in the implementation of a designed energy starvation. 1. Study after study shows that wherever wind development was put in place, natural gas demand went up and the environmental benefits were the opposite of what the…

• Cash Floods Into Offshore Wind Projects

  Investment in clean energy hit $37.9 billion in the third quarter, as a flood of cash into offshore wind infrastructure in the North Sea helped drive a record $32.8 billion in asset financing. The headline figure from information provider Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) was up 11.5% year-on-year and 12% on last quarter’s $33.9 billion. But it masked a slump in venture capital and private equity investment in the sector, which fell 39.6% to $1.4 billion in the third quarter. Michael Liebreich, BNEF chief executive said clean energy investment in 2010 revealed “hot spots and cold spots”. “The latest hot…

• Google to Invest in Massive Offshore Wind Project

  Google is to invest in a gigantic, $5 billion ‘backbone’ transmission project, which could connect up 6GW of offshore wind to the eastern US grid. If built, the Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) backbone will stretch from New Jersey to Virginia, connecting up offshore windfarms virtually out-of-sight of the shore. The first segment of the project, will cost around $1.3 billion to build, according to independent transmission company Trans-Elect, which is leading the development. The search engine and Switzerland-based renewables developer Good Energies will each take a 37.5% equity stake in the project, with Japanese trading firm Marubeni Corporation taking a…

• UK Becoming Leader in Wind Technology as World’s Largest Wind Farm Opens

  The world’s largest offshore wind farm opened on Thursday last week, taking the UK’s installed wind power capacity over the 5GW mark. Construction of Swedish utility Vattenfall’s 300MW, 100-turbine Thanet wind farm, off England’s Kent coastline, took two years and cost around £880 million ($1.4 billion). “Each successive gigawatt we install is taking less and less time and, with the right government policies in place,we expect to be delivering between three and four gigawatts per year by the time the consented Round 3 [offshore wind] projects begin construction,” said Maria McCaffery, chief executive of industry group RenewableUK. With 1.341MW of…

• The Political Steamroller Behind Wind Power

  1. Wind proponents are not asked to independently PROVE the merits of their claims before (or after) their product is forced on the public, 2. There is no penalty for making specious assertions about their product’s “benefits,” so each contention is more grandiose than the last, and 3. Promoting wind is a political agenda that is divorced from true science. True science is based on real world data — not carefully massaged computer models, which are the mainstay of anti-science agenda evangelists. _MasterResource If you have not yet watched the SlideShare presentation on wind energy by John Droz, you are…

• Exelon Blows Into Wind Market With $860m Acquisition

  Utility Exelon plans to expand its renewable energy portfolio by purchasing wind developer John Deere Renewables for $860 million. The Chicago-based utility said the transaction marks an expansion of its wind business, and will add 735MW of US clean energy capacity to its portfolio. As part of the acquisition, Exelon can also pursue a 1,468MW pipeline of wind projects that are in various stages of development, including 230MW in advanced development. John Deere will become part of the Exelon Power division of Exelon Generation, which includes more than 1,000MW of owned and contracted renewable power such as hydroelectricity, wind, landfill…

• France Plans €10bn Wind Turbine Tender

  The French government announced on Tuesday it will launch a tender next month to build 600 offshore wind turbines around the French coast at a cost of €10 billion ($12.7 billion). The environment and energy ministry said the tender contracts would be for the installation of 3,000 megawatts (MW) of wind energy at around 10 different sites. The first wind turbines resulting from this tender would not be expected to be up and running before 2015. The government hopes to install a total of 6,000MW of offshore wind capacity by 2020, which would mean an investment of €15-20 billion. The…

• How Much Power do Wind Turbines Use

  Most people wonder how much power a wind turbine can produce, and never stop to wonder how much power a wind turbine requires to operate. Mechanical engineer Jerry Graf believes that it is long past time for people to ask that question: Big turbines often incorporate rechargeable batteries or ultracapacitors to power their own electrical systems. When those get depleted, the power must come from the grid. This power goes into running equipment such as yaw mechanisms that keep the blades turned into the wind; blade-pitch controls that meter the spinning rotor; aircraft lights and data-collection electronics; oil heaters, pumps,…

• Is Wind Energy Storage Essential?

  Storing the energy from wind is obviously useful.  But is it essential?  Numerous studies cover the matter both asserting that storage can useful and asserting its not.  The practical common result is the continental U.S. could increase wind energy production another ten times before the capacity would merit storage at scale. It’s just not that simple.  In Hawaii where the ocean limits interconnection over a wide area the local conditions rule.  To get to high wind use a buffer needs to be in place between the source, the wind and to the consumer.  Hawaii has a 70% renewable target and…

• The New Challenges and Benefits of Wind Power

  The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) asserts in a study released last month that the power grid for five western states – Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming – the WestConnect territory – could operate on as much as 30 percent wind and 5 percent solar without the construction of extensive new infrastructure. WestConnect System Map The wind is packed with kinetic energy – molecules in motion that can be used to make other molecules move such as commonly seen windmill water pumps, or used to compress gas and converted into electricity.  When it blows.  When…