Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

The following article is one in a series of case studies to be included in AWEA's upcoming Small Wind Turbine Market Report Year End 2011, which will be published soon.  A fact sheet on the report is available here.

Despite the severe climate, the warming tundra, rising energy prices, and moving into the cash economy, life in rural Alaska continues. Traditional ways of life in rural Alaska remain strong as the indigenous people continue whaling, commercial and subsistence fishing, hunting and trapping as their ancestors have done before them.

As part of the villages' economies, autonomous wind-diesel systems are helping to ...

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The fossil-fuel-funded Heritage Foundation's David Kreutzer has the latest in its ongoing series of blog posts bashing wind power. Mr. Kreutzer's post, published Friday, omits a number of important facts:

Wind energy keeps electricity prices–and risk–low. Regions of the country that have experienced significant growth in wind energy over the last several years have also seen significant declines in wholesale power prices, according to Wall Street analysis firm Bernstein Research. With no fuel costs, wind energy contracts can lock in energy prices for a 20‐year term or longer, similar to the stability ...

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The campaign to extend the federal wind energy production tax credit (PTC) passed a milestone yesterday, when Congressman Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) became the 100th cosponsor of H.R. 3307, the extension bill sponsored by Congressmen Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.).

H.R. 3307, the American Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit Extension Act, has 22 Republican cosponsors, making it one of the few legislative concepts in Congress to have strong bipartisan support.

Two Cabinet secretaries met with 14 wind industry leaders at the White House recently to discuss how to get the PTC extended before Congress takes its summer recess.

Extension of the tax credit appears on a “To-Do List” for Congress and the administration to act on by ...

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Big news for the growth of distributed wind power: the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Wind Program and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently published 30-meter height, high-resolution wind resource maps for the U.S., including all 50 states.

The maps are a key piece in understanding a state's wind resource potential from a small wind project development and policy perspective and represent the first modern national map of the resource for small wind turbine deployment available to the public.

Wind resource maps are now available on the DOE’s Wind Powering America website for small (30-meter height), community (50 meters), utility-scale land-based (80 meters), and utility-scale offshore (90 ...

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This week the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI) released a white paper on eagles and wind power entitled “Eagles and Wind Energy: Identifying Research Priorities.”  AWWI brings together leading conservation organizations, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, and members of the wind industry including AWEA to invest in strategies and tools that facilitate wind energy development while protecting wildlife.

The goal of the white paper and of AWWI’s eagle initiative, of which the paper is a part, is to help resolve challenges relating to wind energy development and eagle protection.  AWWI developed the white paper with extensive input from eagle ...

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Michael Rucker, the CEO of Juwi Wind Energy USA, focuses on the benefits of wind power in a recent op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that calls extending the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) "a smart idea."

Notes Mr. Rucker, "Jobs is one of [the benefits]. A four-year extension of the tax credit is expected to create another 25,000 jobs by 2016. Without the tax credit, we'll lose jobs.

"Cheaper energy is another benefit. Wind-power prices have dropped 90 percent in the past 30 years, making wind the least expensive form of electricity in some parts of the country. Prices are expected to fall further if we don't stall the ...

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In a recent article on fossil fuels, Larry Bell, a columnist for Forbes.com, made several misstatements about wind power. The following response was posted as a comment.

Wind power is unlikely to provide a "big growth opportunity" for natural gas. When the wind is blowing, it displaces the most expensive (and typically most polluting) power plants on the utility system--often coal or older, less efficient gas plants.  In 2008 (under the George W. Bush Administration), the U.S. Department of Energy looked at a scenario in which wind expanded to provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030.  Under that scenario, the use of natural gas for electricity generation dropped by 50 percent (!) in ...

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The following article is one in a series of case studies to be included in AWEA's upcoming Small Wind Turbine Market Report Year End 2011, which will be published soon.  A fact sheet on the report is available here.

In November 2011, Clarissa Allen and Mitchell Posin, owners of Allen Farm in Chilmark, Mass., became the proud owners of the tallest wind turbine on Martha's Vineyard, an Endurance E3120 on a 120-foot tower. The 50-kW turbine was commissioned on Thanksgiving Day.

The installation was also memorable for Gary Harcourt, co-owner and manager of Great Rock Windpower, who installed the turbine with his team. The turbine at ...

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Economic analysis finds households would save $65 - $200 per year if more wind were added to the power mix; savings far exceed cost of new transmission to tap wind in the Midwest

WASHINGTON, D.C.  – Adding more wind power to the electric utility system could reduce wholesale market prices by more than 25 percent in the Midwest region by 2020, according to a new analysis conducted by Synapse Energy Economics on behalf of Americans for a Clean Energy Grid.  The report found that wind power could cut the wholesale price of power by $3 - $10 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the near ...

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"A Museum Turns Wind into Gold" was the headline of a recent New York Times story focusing on the Maryhill Museum of Goldendale, Wash.--an institution that was also previously the subject of an AWEA WindTV segment.

According to William Yardley of The Times, "[I]n addition to a sculpture garden featuring artists of the Pacific Northwest, Maryhill’s grounds—all 5,300 acres of them—now include 15 wind turbines, part of a vast installation that sends 500 megawatts of electricity to Los Angeles and about $250,000 each year into the operating revenues of one of the most isolated art museums in the contiguous ...

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