Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

Minnesota Public Radio carried a report last week ("Wind power surplus blamed for spike in rural electricity costs") to the effect that wind's variability, and the surpluses that are created for one utility when the wind is high and electricity demand low, are costing ratepayers money. When there is a surplus of wind, the report said, the utility must sell it on the spot power market, at a price lower than it is paying wind farm owners for their production.

While the article leads off with wind energy's variability, it also notes that the expected increase in rates is largely due to $400 million the company spent to upgrade a coal power plant, more than 20 times what the company estimates it has spent on wind due to the temporary conditions in the market. For the article and ...

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Guest article by John Arellano

Since 1927, Mountain Cement Company has been providing the building blocks of a vibrant economic future for Wyoming. Through those 10 decades, we have seen, like many Wyoming companies, many booms and many busts creating unique economic challenges for businesses in our state. We have been involved in many aspects of energy development in this State and have branched out to one of the newest forms of energy developing in Wyoming…wind energy.

We see wind energy as a positive step forward for Wyoming. It allows for our state’s economy to become more diversified and to lessen the impacts of our traditional boom and bust cycles. Wind energy has been very important to our business. In this recent recession, Wyoming wind ...

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Readers of this blog will know we've been running a series of posts about new wind equipment factories in the U.S. While I was scanning the news recently, it was striking to note four announcements in two days of wind factories headed to other countries:

- South Korea's Samsung is opening a turbine factory in Windsor, Ontario.

- Germany's Siemens plans a wind ...

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This past week saw two strong public statements on the sound emitted by wind turbines and the broader (positive) public health effects of wind energy.

The first article, largely concerned directly with wind turbine sound, appeared in the Oregonian and was authored by Robert McCunney, Robert Dobie, and David Lipscomb. McCunney is a research scientist in occupational and environmental medicine at MIT's Department of Biological Engineering. Dobie is a clinical professor of otolaryngology at both the University of Texas-San Antonio and the University of California-Davis. Lipscomb is ...

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If you caught Clifford Krauss’s very optimistic report in the New York Times on the growth in global fossil fuels supplies, don’t miss the rebuttal by J. David Hughes in Renewable Energy World.

Mr. ...

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AWEA CEO Denise Bode offers thoughts in today’s National Journal energy blog on the policy ingredients needed for America to build a strong, competitive wind turbine manufacturing industry.

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Still another public opinion poll, this time in Pennsylvania, has found remarkably strong public support for wind energy.  The numbers, as usual are very strong (85% of voters think it is important for Pennsylvania to support continued expansion of wind farms, 71% want the U.S. Congress to support a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) of fifteen percent by 2021, 58% said paying $2 more per month on their utility bills would have no impact on their support for clean energy).

It’s great to see that after a quarter-century of public opinion surveys on energy, people still understand that a clean energy source that is ...

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The International Energy Agency (IEA), which tracks global energy developments for the world’s industrial countries, recently reported that subsidies around the world for fossil fuels (coal, gas, and oil), at $312 billion per year, are nearly six times the $57 billion in subsidies for renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. The IEA also offered a simple policy prescription: take the money now directed toward supporting consumption of fossil fuels and switch it to supporting renewables.

An

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You might not think it, but panelists in the Transportation and Logistics session at AWEA’s Fall Symposium yesterday generally said that communication is the key to success in transporting larger and larger wind turbine components.

Why?

One major factor is shorter project lead time. As Gary Kowaleski, Logistics Director for Suzlon Wind Energy, pointed out, a few years ago it was common in the industry for turbine manufacturers to sign large-scale frame agreements, in which a major developer would agree to buy hundreds of turbines over a period of years. In that environment, turbine components might be manufactured in large numbers and transported to a storage location. With reduced demand and the transformation of the industry to a buyer’s market, developers ...

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Speaking to a rapt audience at the AWEA Wind Energy Fall Symposium in Phoenix, Ariz., yesterday, retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell challenged the industry to fulfill its “noble pursuit” to “make America safer, more competitive, and make sure there’s enough energy not just for us but for the people of the world.”

Amid a string of stories about his decades of service to his country, Powell shared management advice – “inspire the followers,” he said, “so that everyone understands one another and are united in a common purpose that is greater than just the goals we are trying to achieve.”

He urged the recovery of moral authority, saying “selflessness is the moral compass we all have to get back to in our country.”

In that ...

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