Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

With wind power now a mainstream energy source, industry events dot every month of the calendar. One event set for a couple of weeks from now, however, is just a little extra special for a couple of reasons—location and speakers. In fact, the two are connected.

Scheduled to speak at the 2012 Annual Iowa Wind Energy Association (IWEA) Conference, which takes place April 9-11 in Des Moines, are Iowa Governor Terry Branstad (R), Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), and AWEA CEO Denise Bode, among others. Iowa, with wind penetration levels that approach 20 percent of the state’s electricity portfolio, is one of the industry leaders in that category and others. That’s in part thanks to policies championed by leaders like Branstad, who implemented the nation’s first renewable ...

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In an op-ed in yesterday's Helena (Mont.) Independent Reporter, Montana Public Service Commissioner Gail Gutsche reports on findings of two recent polls conducted by a bipartisan polling team--one in the Big Sky State and the other in six Western states--that both report strong support for renewable energy development and policies.

According to Ms. Gutsche:

The Montana poll found that three out of four Montana voters support increasing the amount of electricity we get from clean, ...

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Rick Boucher, a former U.S. Congressman from coal country in southwestern Virginia, told the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit last week that he believes Congress will extend the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) beyond its scheduled expiration at the end of this year.

Boucher said the PTC "has the strongest level of bipartisan support of anything," according to the publication Environmental Finance.  He also said the credit is popular and can be packaged with other less attractive tax provisions to increase the chances that the entire package will be approved.

A House bill seeking to extend the PTC has 85 cosponsors, including 18 Republicans, and has received the endorsement of a

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PTC uncertainty threatening industry’s ability to continue pumping dollars into rural America

A 41 percent spike in sales tax revenue. A $1 billion investment in the community. And clean, homegrown power for some 425,000 Colorado homes.

That’s what wind power is providing in Logan County, Colo., home of NextEra Energy’s Peetz Table Wind Energy Center, and the subject of the latest segment of WindTV, the American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) vehicle to highlight how wind works for America. The 41 percent revenue increase came in 2007, when wind power arrived in the county, and it ...

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Paul Mauldin takes direct aim at wind power's primary incentive, the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), in a column in SmartEnergyPortal.net. It's pretty stirring, but unfortunately overlooks some very basic facts.

The cost of wind power is coming down.  Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) said recently in a widely publicized report (which Mr. Mauldin seems to have somehow completely missed) that the cost of wind-generated electricity is now at an all-time low (see National lab report: Wind turbine prices drop as designs improve, U.S. supply chain develops, November 1, 2011).  LBNL said wind turbine prices have dropped ...

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AWEA Manager of Transmission Policy Michael Goggin contributed to this article.

Controversial Danish economist Bjoern Lomborg, well known for his articles and publications on climate change, but also for using references that don't support his claims, had an article in Slate yesterday attacking wind.

Mr. Lomborg's analysis omitted a number of facts which we would like to bring to his attention:

The cost of wind power is coming down.  Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) said recently in a widely publicized report that the cost of wind-generated electricity is now at an all-time low ...

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The city of San Marcos, Tex., is discussing a potential three-year contract for wholesale electricity from wind developer NextEra Energy, according to the San Marcos Mercury newspaper.

According to information presented to the city council Wednesday night, the article said, the average San Marcos residential customer would see a savings of about $1.12 a month on electricity bills under the proposal, while large commercial customers could realize savings running into the hundreds or thousands of dollars annually.  NextEra's generating portfolio in Texas is 46 percent wind and 54 percent natural gas, it said.

For a number of years, San Marcos has bought all of its electricity from the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), a state conservation and reclamation ...

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Ken Silverstein had a story in Wednesday's EnergyBiz insider questioning the likelihood of adequate transmission capacity being available for new power plants using renewable energy sources such as wind.

A few facts overlooked in Mr. Silverstein's analysis:

More electric transmission capacity benefits us all.  The existing transmission system is antiquated and the addition of new capacity has been very slow in recent decades. This has reduced system reliability and led to some widely publicized outages affecting large regions of the U.S., in particular the West. While renewable energy sources will certainly benefit from a stronger system, so will consumers who expect a reliable electricity supply.

Transmission is being ...

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