Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

Robert Bradley, of the misleadingly named and petro-funded Institute for Energy Research, has a new opinion article on Forbes.com attacking federal incentives for wind power. As always, Mr. Bradley is selective with his facts--here is a comment I posted with a few that he missed (and some added resource links).

Mr. Bradley has been attacking renewable energy sources for more than a decade.  This time, he uses as ammunition [a recent] EIA [Energy Information Administration] report that was ...

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As in many parts of the eastern U.S., the wind power debate has been contentious in Vermont, most likely because there are few areas of flat land and the best wind speeds are found on highly visible mountain ridgelines. Still, despite the noisy objections of some (including the state's former Governor--a bitter opponent--and Vermonters for a Clean Environment, a nonprofit), it's been evident for a while that most Vermonters favor this clean energy source.

A recent vote in northern Vermont underscored that preference. Wind opponents framed the contest over a transmission line as a "referendum on wind," and lost by a margin of more than 3 to 1. Here's a recent letter I received from the Clean Energy Program of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), a pro-wind ...

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Wind power will be the preferred energy source for the Visa Gymnastics Championships, running tomorrow through Saturday in St. Paul, Minn., according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  The event will also go paperless in what USA Gymnastics President Steve Penny calls its greenest event ever.

The wind-generated electricity used will be provided through Xcel Energy's Windsource program, the article said.

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Talk about ingratitude: Robert Bryce, who lives in Texas, attacks wind power, which helped protect him from rolling blackouts last week, in a new National Review article.

Mr. Bryce may want to check in with the company that operates the Texas utility system to get his facts straight before he writes his next article. In fact, the Texas system operator, ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), has been very clear that wind energy was the crucial factor keeping the lights and AC on for hundreds of thousands of Texans during last week's power shortages:

"Doggett [Trip Doggett, ERCOT CEO] said Monday that

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Robert Bryce, of the Koch Industries- and Exxon-funded Manhattan Institute, continues firing off anti-wind diatribes every day or two.  His latest, in the Huffington Post, breaks some new ground, advising Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) to beware of upsetting local citizens who oppose solar and wind power projects.

It's fascinating reading, not least because Mr. Bryce, who speaks so approvingly of citizens opposing energy projects, has been a longtime devotee of nuclear power.  Perhaps he is just running scared--it's front-page news around the world that following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Germany is ...

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Following last weekend’s articles citing local anti-wind activists and groups with very little balance, the Los Angeles Times published another article Wednesday with a variety of misleading allegations about allegedly unsafe practices in the wind power industry.

This latest article, like the ones before it, relied on uninformed speculation by people who oppose wind farms, rather than knowledgeable experts. The biased results show a lack of understanding of how federal and state officials regulate workplace safety, and the strict standards already in place. Nor were all the proactive safety efforts at wind ...

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Texas set a new record for electricity demand yesterday as the state continued to broil in a heat wave, and as it had a day before, wind helped keep the lights on and the air conditioning running.

The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state utility system, said demand topped out at 68,294 megawatts (MW) between 4 and 5 p.m., and that Texas wind turbines contributed 2,000 MW during that hour.

The 2,000 MW were more than double the 800 MW that ERCOT counts on from ...

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Here's just a start on the inaccuracies in Robert Bryce's latest diatribe about wind energy, this time in the Huffington Post of all places, where his column was misleadingly titled, "If Gov. Jerry Brown Wants to "Crush" Opponents of Wind Energy, He'd Better Pack a Lunch."

Gov. Brown (D-CA) was talking about solar opponents at the time, not wind opponents. And he did not say he would crush them — he was referring to unnamed local opponents on other issues, earlier in his career, in Oakland.

Here is what Brown actually said, as quoted by Greenwire and picked up ...

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 It's been touch-and-go again for the Texas utility system in the past day or two as a record heat wave bakes the state, but wind generation has shown up at levels above what was planned for, helping to keep the air conditioners running and the lights on.

As happened in February during an unexpected freezing spell, the stresses on the system appear to result from outages of conventional power plants during a peak demand period.  Some 3,000 MW of generating capacity (enough to serve the equivalent of 600,000 homes during high demand periods, or around 2.5 million homes during normal use), apparently conventional power plants, ...

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