Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA), a rural electric cooperative serving the interior of Alaska, recently approved the proposed 24-MW Eva Creek wind project. When built, the wind farm will be Alaska's largest.

In so doing, the cooperative expects to displace some of the expensive oil it now uses to generate electricity at a pricey 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to an

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It's taken a while to get started, but wind power is moving steadily forward in West Virginia, according to a recent report from Charleston, WV-based WOWK-TV.

Highlights from the article:

- There are currently 431 megawatts (MW) of wind generation installed in the Mountaineer State, enough to power the equivalent of 100,000 homes, and additional wind projects are moving through the permitting process.

- Wind generation in March 2011 was 215 million kilowatt-hours (kWh), an increase of 25 percent from the same month a year earlier, which likely reflects the installation of 101 MW of new ...

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Wind turbine manufacturer Vestas said last week that it has successfully tested a turbine using "stealth" technology rotor blades that reduced radar reflection by 99 percent compared with a normal turbine.

The test was carried out in the United Kingdom, where the Ministry of Defence has been in discussion with wind companies on radar issues for a number of years.

Reuters quoted Vestas Technology R&D President Finn Strom Madsen as saying, "Our testing has demonstrated that we have successfully adapted military stealth technology to make Vestas wind turbines viable for placement in many locations that have been restricted by radar concerns."

The company said an estimated 20,000 megawatts (MW) of wind projects around the world (enough to power 6 ...

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Manufacturers and retailers take note: Consumers worldwide are more likely to recommend, buy, and pay extra for brands they perceive to be climate-friendly, and two-thirds say they would be willing to pay more for products made with wind energy. Overwhelmingly they either prefer or don’t mind seeing wind turbines in their daily life.

The Global Consumer Wind Study by TNS Gallup for Vestas polled 31,000 people in 26 countries in May 2011, and found that they consider climate change to be the number one problem facing the world today, and that 90% want more renewable energy.

Many are willing to vote with their pocketbooks: 50% would pay extra for products produced with renewable energy.

And wind leads the renewable sector in consumers’ ...

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[AWEA Manager of Transmission Policy Michael Goggin contributed to this article.]
 
An article that appeared recently in a new energy trade publication, Energy AOL, purported to show "the reality of wind" by extensively quoting negative comments from Kevin Gaden, a spokesperson for the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN).

Here are some facts that contradict Mr. Gaden's remarks and that should have been included in the story:

Reserve costs: Utility system operators constantly adjust the output of power plants and other resources to accommodate changes in electricity demand and supply. Large amounts of wind energy can marginally add to the variability that is already on the system, causing an modest increase in the need for ...

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A recent article on the environmental blog TreeHugger discussed Denmark's plan to increase the percentage of electricity it obtains from wind from the current level of about 20 percent to 42 percent by 2020 and perhaps much higher--as high as 100 percent--by 2050.

The mention of 100 percent, even though qualified by the article's author, brought a sharp reaction from one commenter, who pointed out that if that could be done, it would only be due to Denmark's ability to export excess power to Germany and Sweden (presuming they also don't decide to go 100 percent ...

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For Immediate Release

Friday, July 1

Contacts:

Ellen Carey, 202-249-7357, ecarey@awea.org

Shawna Seldon, 212-255-7541, shawna@rosengrouppr.com

New poll: In Iowa, the state that knows wind energy the best,

voters overwhelmingly support it and the companies that make it
Iowa voters give wind energy companies 85% approval,

favor wind 3:1 over all other sources for state’s energy needs

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 1, 2011) —Voters in Iowa, the state that launched the wind energy revolution with the first renewable energy purchase requirement in 1983 – and where this year so far, wind has generated 18.8% of the ...

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Three items in the news yesterday offer an opportunity to connect some dots, something that doesn't always happen when our nation's policy makers deliberate.  Here they are:

(1) Wind turbine parts makers say they are losing contracts, jobs to foreign competitors

(2) China and the EU strive for the lead in wind energy

(3)

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With characteristic bravado, America's foremost news source, The Onion, blew the whistle yesterday on a nefarious wind industry plot to destabilize the Earth's orbit by building "thousands of propellers" that "make things move."

Relying on a group of impeccable sources including the "American Coal Lobby," "some leading scientists at Coal University," "the environmental activist group Americans for Mining-Based Energy," "a recent Center for Coal Policy conference in the Bahamas" (do I detect a theme here?) and even an upcoming documentary film, "Terminal Gust," a panel of experts unanimously agreed the danger is real and requires immediate action. As one panelist noted, "Wind slips through your fingers--it's dishonest!"

(One wind industry insider, speaking on ...

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A study from the World Policy Institute (WPI), presented recently before the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., finds that droughts may hamper the development of natural gas from shale (shale gas) and some renewable energy technologies, notably hydropower, biofuels and solar thermal electric generation.

An article in the British newspaper

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