This project would have powered over a million homes and made a huge dent in New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is not happening now because of a group of NIMBY activists and the Environment Court’s ruling.

This is a huge blow, in itself, to renewable and wind energy proponents, but it also brings concerns for future wind energy projects.

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The wind farm plans were announced earlier this week. The project will include 30 turbines and is expected to provide the nation with 75 MW of power, powering the capital city, their international airport, and more!

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However, is it changing its stance out of international moral pressure or a major financial incentive (recent deal) in the US? And who is to benefit the most from this shift?

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The articles of association for the DESERTEC Industrial Initiative (DII) were signed by the joint venture group of 12 companies and the DESERTEC Foundation in Munich on October 30.

Additionally, a CEO for DII was appointed — Paul van Son.

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Catch the Wind Ltd. of Virginia has just announced that its new Vindicator laser wind sensor has been deployed on a specialized buoy for a field test off Race Rocks Island in British Columbia.   If successful, the laser sensor would be part of the world’s first buoy-based wind power assessment system, which could shave millions off the cost of assessing conditions at potential sites for offshore wind turbines.

Conventional site assessments for large scale wind farms are done through the construction of a permanent offshore tower, which can cost up to $10 million.  Catch the Wind’s movable buoy-based system, called the WindSentinel, could virtually eliminate that expense and help open up sustainable offshore wind power to small communities, military bases, and other modestly scaled projects.

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The project, which could power as many as 180,000 homes, will require 240 2.5-megawatt turbines and the farm will occupy 36,000 acres of land in West Texas. Nearly shovel ready, the construction effort is projected to create about 30 permanent jobs and 300 temporary ones. Ground-breaking on the wind farm is slated for March of 2010.

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Kids enrolled in Wind for Schools shop classes in six Great Plains states (CO, ID, KS, MT, NE, SD) are learning hands-on to assist in assessment, design, and installation of small wind systems at their schools, with the goal of creating a knowledge base for wind energy within rural elementary and secondary schools through Wind Powering America.

The DOE is looking for proposals from wind companies who want to help out in expanding the program to six more states. You have till November 30 to get your bid in. And if you want to teach any aspects of this new shop class in wind, reach out to schools in these states.

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Then there’s the NIMBY neighbours: “Oh, we don’t want one of those here,” they say.  “Renewable energy: yes.  Somewhere where it’s inconvenient: NO!”  It’s as though they think a wind-energy solution can be integrated into every house with minimal visual impact.

Well blow me down, it can!!

Ridgeblade is a fabulous wind-turbine solution from UK based The Power Collective.  It’s very simple: instead of a large standalone windmill-like structure, put a long bladed turbine along the ridge of a building’s roof.

The blades are about the same length as a medium wind turbine, so you can catch about the same amount of wind.  What’s more, as these can be mounted along an existing roof, there’s no need for an additional NIMBY-provoking superstructure.

So revolutionary is this approach that the company has won $750,000 from the Green Challenge Awards.

“It’s beyond a dream,” said Power Collective CEO Dean Gregory when Skype founder Niklas Zennström announced him as the winner.  I’ll bet: he’d only entered the competition two days before the closing date!

This is the right kind of innovation, one which will bring a community together to provide energy together on a collective scale, rather than relying upon some far away power station to provide the same for a profit.

Let’s hope it succeeds.

It should be sending power to the Australian grid early next year. Unusually, for wave power concepts, this converts the energy of ocean swells under the platform into air pressure which turns a wind turbine. The company’s previous demo in 2007 proved it works.

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How serious are they? In a legally unprecedented move, OceanWorks CEO Adam Englund has booked the 40,000 square mile space on the Pacific with this claim holding “airport rights”.

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Of particular interest to DOE is WindFloat’s innovative three-corner design, which stabilizes the platform against turbulence and enables it to be deployed in deep water where winds are more favorable to energy generation.  In addition to its obvious use in the civilian world, the marriage of wind and wave power may also prove fruitful for its application to the U.S. military’s need for non-petroleum energy sources at remote bases.

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In some ways, very local; which actually makes this a conservative estimate. For example:

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Big shifts seem to be stirring in the wind turbine market. Foreign companies are backing out of China due to China’s move to use more home-grown technology. At the same time, China is looking to expand its wind turbine sales into Europe.

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A big factor limiting solar and wind power growth across the US is the current transmission network. It is disconnected. A new project proposed by Tres Amigas LLC in New Mexico would link the nation’s main power grids and, therefore, give hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of households links to already existing renewable energy sources.

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A more timid school district might have run from off-peak energy storage altogether. But not Hillsborough. They are taking what they learned and applying their school of hard knocks expertise in selecting from the many companies that now provide second generation night cooling technology to power air conditioning systems.

What’s changed since the eighties is the addition of more wind power to the grid, and the likelihood of more to come with RPS legislation requiring the purchase of more renewable power in many states.

Typically most wind power comes ongrid at night; much more than can be used.

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Coal power is not base-load electricity by itself. To enable coal to reliably deliver electric power, it took the creation of an entire other national infrastructure; the trans-continental railroad system.

Without the unceasing rail-car-load delivery, every 12 hours, on the hour, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, of every next 12-hour-supply of fuel for the fire; the fire would go out, the water wouldn’t boil, the steam wouldn’t rise, the turbine wouldn’t turn; the next 12 hours of electricity wouldn’t be made. The fire must never go out.

Coal plus railroad = base-load power.

Even today, a century later, every 12 hours in this nation a trainload of coal from Wyoming or Pennsylvania or Ohio, must arrive at an electric power station near your city, to make your coal power for the next 12 hours. No trainload of coal; no coal power. What does that have to do with wind storage?

Wind plus storage = base-load power.

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European energy giant E.ON “turned on” what is reported to be the largest wind farm in the world this week, in Texas.

The farm contains 627 wind turbines on almost 100,000 acres of land near Roscoe, Texas.

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The university is using a $6.3 million fund from the US Department of Energy, TPI, and and the Iowa Power Fund and has the assistance of scientists from Sandia National Labs and TPI, which operates a local turbine blade factory. Initially they are trying to see how they can boost the speed of the manufacturing process by increasing automation and by automating quality control.

They could improve the productivity of turbine blade factories by as much as 35%.

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Even if they can be seen from the shoreline, 67% support off-shore wind power, according to a new poll of coastal residents of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia .

If the turbines are out of sight, the level of support goes up to an astounding 82%.

A full 25% of the population of the US lives in the nine Atlantic states from Massachusetts to North Carolina. The potential is staggering.  So it is very fortunate that so many people in the middle of part of the region with such great potential for wind power feel this way.

Off-shore wind power off the Atlantic could take one third of the US population off the fossil grid.

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