Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

The Houston Chronicle business section had a nice spread Monday on BP Wind and how the international oil giant is transforming a piece of the "oil patch" into "one of the nation’s leading hubs for green energy production."

Adds reporter Simone Sebastian, "Skylines dominated by nodding pump jacks are increasingly spotted with spinning turbines," and perhaps more to the point, "Economies tied to the ebb and flow of commodity prices are finding stability in supplying the power grid."

She quotes Pecos County Development Director Doug May: "We’ve been through lots of booms and busts with the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas areas deplete over time. ...

Read more

First-ever Midwest Regional Wind Energy Summit kicks off in Windy City

Yesterday, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) kicked off its first-ever Midwest Regional Wind Energy Summit in Chicago, a national center for wind power headquarters operations and manufacturing facilities.  Chicago is home to 13 major wind energy companies including Acciona, E.ON, Invenergy and Nordex. Meanwhile, wind manufacturing is powering as many as 10,000 Illinois jobs at almost 30 different Illinois factories, including those of companies like Winergy Drive Systems and NTN Bearing.

Over the next two days, more than 450 attendees will be a part of this event at the Fairmont Chicago Millennium Park, to hear about the key issues that are impacting the ...

Read more

Today's online edition of the Wall Street Journal carries an editorial criticizing the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), but with enough errors of fact to make an astute reader wonder whether the publication has any fact-checkers at all.  So, let's set the record straight on a few key blunders:

Item: The wind energy Production Tax Credit does not apply to solar power.  Shocking, I know, but there you have it: solar is solar, and wind is wind, and the two are not the same. The two technologies have not had the same incentives since at least the 1980s, if ever. And America's largest newspaper doesn't know this?  Clearly, the widely lamented hollowing-out of mainstream journalism has gone much farther and deeper than I had imagined.

...

Read more

As the Wisconsin state legislature nears adjournment, AWEA has learned that a late-session effort will be made to repeal the state's wind farm siting guidelines, which were the subject of lengthy negotiations between the wind industry and other stakeholders in the state.

The following alert was sent out this morning.

-------------

Urgent need for action this morning by everyone who supports wind energy in Wisconsin --

As you may know, the Wisconsin Legislature is scheduled to wrap up its regular session calendar on March 15. With the end of session approaching, there has been a  lot of legislative activity, as lawmakers attempt to push through legislation before time runs out. 

Unfortunately, it comes as ...

Read more

In the Canadian province of Ontario, where the health effects of wind turbine sound have been hotly debated for many months, the public doesn't seem convinced that there's a problem.

According to a public opinion poll commissioned by the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) and conducted by Oracle Research, 78 percent of Ontarians responding said wind "is one of the safest forms of electricity generation."  The poll was conducted between February 22-29 and has a margin for error of +/- 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

“This poll indicates that the majority of Ontarians clearly believe wind energy is a safe form of electricity generation despite a minority voice that suggests otherwise. We will continue to ensure wind energy is developed in a safe and ...

Read more

Two more Colorado newspapers, the Pueblo Chieftain and the Greeley Tribune, have called for an extension of the federal wind energy production tax credit (PTC), joining the Denver Post.

In a recent editorial, the Chieftain endorsed a PTC extension amendment proposed by U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kans.) to a transportation bill pending before Congress, and quoted U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) as supporting the amendment as well. Pueblo is home to a Vestas Americas Wind Technology wind turbine tower factory that employs 450 workers.

...

Read more

New video provides snapshot of Central Washington wind farm manager’s family

They are a family that’s becoming increasingly common in the U.S. these days: the American wind power family.

Eric Melbardis, an operations manager at EDP Renewables North America’s Kittitas wind power facility in Kittitas County, Wash., wife Sharon, and daughter Emma recently vacationed in Washington, D.C., “to see our [nation’s] capital,” as Eric says. The Melbardis family and their visit to Washington, D.C.—along with how that city impacts their lives 3,000 miles away—are the subjects of the latest segment of

Read more

Wind-generated electricity briefly topped 25 percent of total electricity supply on the main Texas utility network March 1, and provided 17-23 percent for a roughly 24-hour period on March 2-3, according to data supplied by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the system.

The high point was not quite a record either in percentage of supply or total instantaneous power from wind for the ERCOT system, which reached a wind penetration of 27.97% in early December 2011 and a power record of 7,400 megawatts (MW) in October 2011.  Still, it serves as a reminder that wind farms can generate a substantial amount of the electricity on a large, modern utility system.

Related articles:

Read more

We often run "Fact check" articles on this blog when fossil-fuel-funded "experts" exaggerate the cost of electricity generated with wind power (for a particularly bald-faced recent example, see Fact check: American Enterprise Institute epic FAIL on study of wind costs, Feb. 29), but perhaps this one should be titled "Reality check."

Reality: the Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC) recently issued a report that finds that electricity generated from renewable energy sources, at an average cost of $91 per megawatt-hour (9.1 cents/kilowatt-hour), is almost one-third cheaper than the cost of electricity from a new coal-fired power plant ($133 per MWh, or 13.3 cents/kWh).

Further, ...

Read more

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Eau Claire, Wis., newspaper The Country Today and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

To the editor:

A letter to the editor on Feb. 8 commended the Brown County Board of Health for recent resolutions requesting compensation for families living near the wind energy project in the town of Glenmore.

Though many hours have been spent researching a “sickness” (coined “wind turbine syndrome”), the medical community has yet to discover any scientific basis for recognizing it as a valid illness. Epidemiological studies such as those from Ontario, Oregon and Massachusetts all say the same thing — wind turbines annoy people who don’t want them. Our state emergency ...

Read more