A new company called General Compression says it will commercialize its idea for storing wind energy. Using compressed-air energy storage and a $5 million round of seed funding, the Massachusetts company plans to use compressed-air technology to store energy from wind turbines.
A typical wind turbine has a generator that sits on the turbine (the nacelle), and the electricity from the generator goes down the turbine and onto the grid. General Compression places an
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Hong Kong just announced a tiny wind turbine, and now the world’s largest is coming out of Germany. The Repower 5M is an enormous machine, standing nearly 400 feet high and producing 5 MW of power. It has a 400 foot diameter blade span and is the largest and supposedly the most efficient turbine in the world.
Manufactured by Repower Systems out of Hamburg, the first 5M turbine was erected offshore
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The tiny town of Rock Port, MO (pop. 1,395) has entered the renewable energy big leagues with its plan to get all of its electricity from wind power.
With the help of the Wind Capital Group to build the wind farm and John Deere Wind Energy to finance it, Rock Port may be the first town in the nation to get all of its electricity from wind power. The town will rely
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By Maria Surma Manka •
February 27, 2007
My post last week on offshore wind drew good discussion points on wind power, as well as folks skeptical of the whole industry. But wind power cannot be brushed aside as a treehugger’s fantasy. From coast to coast, wind power is a reality: Farmers own their own turbines, school districts power their facilities with them, or landowners lease their property to wind developers and collect royalty payments. I know of a hog farmer who
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By Maria Surma Manka •
February 23, 2007
A new study funded by the University of Delaware and Stanford University reports that offshore wind power could supply almost all of the East Coast’s energy needs. This is the first time a study has looked at just how much wind energy offshore farms could produce in this area of the country.
Wind power has had to fight some battles out East, most notably on Cape Cod, MA. There, some
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By Maria Surma Manka •
February 22, 2007
Some believe that wind turbines will dot the landscape of rural and suburban America as homeowners rush to get their power from the wind.
Business 2.0 reports that a dozen U.S. companies are positioned to sell turbines that can fit in a person’s backyard and power their home. For example, the Skystream 3.7 is a model created by Southwest Windpower, in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The Skystream can
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By Megan Prusynski •
February 9, 2007
As a graphic and web designer who cares about the environment, I am constantly trying to find ways to help my clients use fewer natural resources and become more sustainable.
One way I do this is to encourage clients to use the web as a marketing tool instead of creating printed marketing materials. Paper products constitute the largest portion of our waste stream (about 35%), not to mention the toxic pollutants
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By Maria Surma Manka •
February 2, 2007
The Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) is responsible for delivering hydroelectric power within a 15-state region of the central and western United States. WAPA – an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy – has a transmission system that carries electricity from 57 power plants to homes and businesses across a great portion of this country.
Stifle that yawn! The exciting news is that its new administrator is gung-ho on wind power.
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By Maria Surma Manka •
January 27, 2007
A group of municipal utilities in Iowa and surrounding states are planning to build the Iowa Stored Energy Park that would integrate a 75-150 megawatt wind farm with Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) technology.
Iowa will use the technology to store low-cost, off-peak wind energy in a porous geological structure 3,000 feet underground, beneath layers of impermeable rock. The air will be injected under pressure, push back water already stored in the rock, and then
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By Maria Surma Manka •
January 24, 2007
(That’s right; I dexterously avoided playing off of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and got a bit more creative by butchering Neil Young’s classic). The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that the nation’s wind power increased 27 percent in 2006. About $4 billion was invested, placing wind just behind natural gas as the largest source of new power generation. AWEA’s Executive Director, Randall Swisher, had this to say:
By Maria Surma Manka •
January 23, 2007
I’m still on the ski kick – probably because Utah’s mountains kicked my butt and my hobble shows it. The lack of snow out there was a bit depressing, and ski resorts around the country are becoming more and more concerned about how global warming will affect business.
Over 50 ski resorts across the nation are using renewable energy, and one of the most recent resorts to join the green ranks is Crystal Mountain
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