Eleven wind parks in the Idaho Wind Partner Project will have the capacity to generate 183 MW. GE Energy Financial Services, Atlantic Power, and Exergy will own a non-managing member equity interests in the project. Reunion Power will hold a managing member equity interest and will act as the manager of the project. The wind farms will sell all their power to Idaho Power Company under 20-year agreements. Once completed, the portfolio is expected to qualify for the federal U.S. Treasury cash-grant program intended to stimulate renewable energy projects. Construction company Fagen Inc initiated project construction in June and is expected to complete the wind farms by the end of the year.

The Hunton Willimans Ridgeline wind project in Idaho

Hunton & Williams LLP has acted as project counsel for renewable energy development company Exergy Development Group LLC in partnership with GE Energy Financial Services, Reunion Power, and Atlantic Power Corporation to invest in Idaho’s largest wind power project. All three companies made equity investments in the nearly half-billion-dollar portfolio of 11 wind farms developed by Exergy.

“This is a significant project for renewable energy development and for Idaho. The project underscores Exergy’s core values of supporting the environment while developing power generation projects,” says Raj Pande, partner in the firm’s energy and project finance practice, who led the Hunton & Williams team.

Hunton & Williams LLC

hunton.com

Met towers are a must for a proper site assessment. But it takes a while to get them ordered, shipped, and erected, and their cost gets close to $100,000. Wouldn’t it be great to get the wind data without the tower?

Engineers at WindPole Ventures agree, and so have devised a way to acquire real-time, hub-height-standardized wind speed data from a nationwide portfolio of towers 60m and more. The company addresses the challenge of wind integration and intermittency by improving the quality of data available to ISOs, wind developers and operators, resource analysts, power traders, and government.

The transmission tower is in Minnesota. About 6,000 towers of this sort are available across the U.S. for collecting wind data.

The company says it has access to 6,000 towers in 39 states. Wind for 85% of the current and planned wind generation capacity passes through its 80 to 100-m towers. A few plusses include:

• Long booms and standard instrumentation lead to bankable data.
• Hub height, real-time data comes within 90 days of order.
• It’s a lower cost alternative to erecting towers and maintaining the equipment.
• Pre-existing towers require no permits. Disclose your plans on your schedule.

Conventional data sources are intended for aviation and consumer weather markets. They do not meet the need for wind-speed data at the hub height and above the 80-m boundary layer. WindPole says it has secured the only national tower set capable of measuring above the boundary layer.

Typically, surface data from 10-m towers at an airport in a valley can help “guesstimate” to the hub-height wind speeds needed by utility scale turbines. Satellite data can also project some land based wind-farm projects. Both are inaccurate and inadequate to meet investor due diligence and support wind power integration into the grid. All parties are focused on satisfying investors’ need for de-risked projects recognizing capital as the top barrier to wind power deployment. WindPole’s plan instruments 580 existing tall towers that extend above the boundary layer of 80m to collect real-time wind speed and direction data.

A few comments on the table

1. These are mostly radio towers, such as Sabre 3600, and not cellular radio towers.

2. Hub height is assumed to be 80m, increasing to 100m.

3. Wide dispersion of forecasting up to hub height yields a ±10% error. Investors pick lower power and revenue estimates that require greater developer equity.

4. Figures exclude maintenance. The WindPole option includes maintenance. All configurations assume redundant anemometers at three heights (40, 60, and 80m), direction and temperature sensors at two heights, and one barometric-pressure sensor.

5. $7,000 (sensors) + $15,000 (tower) plus installation, shipping, land lease, and permit.

6. $7,000 (sensors) + $75,000 to $95,000 (tower) plus installation, shipping, land lease, and permit.

7. WindPole requires a two-year contract commitment.

8. WindPole is responsible for sensor maintenance and replacement under its “data as a service” model.

9. 6,000 towers are more than 80-m high and 1,500 are more than 100-m high. View WindPole sites at: windpoleventures.com/downloads/WindPole_Towers.kmz

10. Many jurisdictions require building permits and inspections.

WindPole Ventures

Windpoleventures.com

A manufacturer of retaining rings provides them in large sizes, high-carbon steel, and a variety of configurations to retain bearings and other components in wind-turbine assemblies. Wind-power applications for Rotor Clip retaining rings include pitch systems, main shaft bearings, yaw systems, gearbox bearings, generator bearings, and brake equipment.

Four large Rotor Clip retaining rings give an idea of how large the rings can be. Rings can be made up to 1,000-mm dia. to suit the specific requirements of any of the listed applications.

The retaining rings are engineered components with tooling designed by the company’s engineering staff and built by its tool room. All processes are performed in-house including forming the rings according to exacting specifications and heat treating them in our own in-house furnaces. Heat treating is critical because the ring’s performance depends on reaching a pre-determined hardness, which is assured through computerized feeding mechanisms and strict quality-checking procedures. The company is a recognized quality manufacturer holding a TS16949 certification and known globally as a supplier to many of the world’s largest OEM producers.

Rotor Clips

rotorclip.com

Ned Farquhar, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, addresses the guests at Terra-Gen Power’s ground breaking ceremony for Alta Wind Energy Center in Mojave, California. Photo: Rod Thornburg

It’s been a while since we’ve seen an honest to goodness gigantic wind power project actually start construction, so this is definitely worth noting: Terra-Gen Power has announced it has begun construction on what it’s calling the world’s largest wind energy project, the 1,550 megawatt Alta … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Despite Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s assurances that no such provision will be included in a climate bill this summer, 27 Democrats and one Senate Republican are nonetheless pressing the Nevada senator for inclusion of a renewable electricity standard (RES). An RES would require utilities to obtain a percentage of their power from renewable resources within a set time frame, and is considered one of the best ways to promote clean energy production in the United States over the long term. Last week, Reid came out saying that such language was not in his vocabulary.

Sam Brownback of Kansas (a state that already gets 20 percent of its electricity from wind power) is the lone Republican senator to join Democrats in signing the letter urging Reid to include a national RES in his bill. Brownback is, however, staunchly opposed to any carbon cap or tax being included.

Reid and many other Democrats in the Senate are apparently fearful of a Republican filibuster because they do not have the 60 votes necessary to nullify that option (although, why they don’t force the Republicans’ hand instead of constantly allowing the opposite is beyond me). Still, Brownback and his unlikely Democratic allies believe they can get the 60 votes and that there is enough bipartisan support in the Senate to pull off an RES-inclusive bill.

Senators Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Mark Udall of Colorado and Tom Udall of New Mexico led in drafting the letter, which argued, “A strong RES will give certainty to clean energy companies that are looking to invest billions of dollars in the U.S. to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels and other renewable energy components.”

29 states already have their own renewable energy mandates, but legislation would have to be uniform throughout the country to truly facilitate wide-scale, permanent growth in the national renewable energy industry.

Why the Opposition to RES?

The main opposition to a national RES comes from senators of both parties representing the American South, where only four states — Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and Texas — have state-level RES portfolios.

Many of these states are rich in coal and have a strong lobby against any legislation that would tax or otherwise inhibit its production. Senators from these states often argue that their states do not have the renewable resources that other states have, such as the Southwest’s sunshine or wind along the coasts and in the Midwest. Subsequently, their states would be at a disadvantage when trying to meet RES requirements and would pay an unfair amount of penalties for noncompliance.

How the South Could Benefit from Renewable Standards

However, Environmental Leader reports that a new study, Renewable Energy in the South, released by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Duke University, asserts that a national RES would be an economic boon to the South. It claims that southern states could obtain 20 to 30 percent of their energy from renewable resources within 20 years if strong federal mandates are passed, all while adding thousands of new jobs. The South gets less than 4 percent of its energy from renewables today. Most of what there is comes from hydropower.

Yet despite letters, broad support outside the South and intense pressure from RE industries, nearly all hope for a strong climate bill coming out of the Senate this year is gone. The heavily compromised bill Harry Reid is expected to release this summer will include some minor but largely ineffectual clean energy incentives and some oil and gas industry regulations in response to the BP oil spill. Reid has shown no signs yet of relenting on his no-cap, no-RES position.

Photo Credit: Switched

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From a blog post by Tom Content in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

American Transmission Co. announced Monday that it will seek to build a 345,000-volt power line linking Madison and La Crosse, with the cost of the project tentatively pegged at $425 million.

The Pewaukee-based power company says two years of study have shown that a 150-mile line would boost electric system reliability, savings for utilities buying power in the Midwest wholesale power market and improve access to wind power generated west of Wisconsin.

No route has yet been selected and the company will spend the next two years exploring routing alternatives in the corridor shown above. A detailed cost estimate will be available once potential routes for the line are selected, said ATC spokeswoman Anne Spaltholz.

The company will host open houses with the public and stakeholders beginning this fall to explore routing choices, she said.

The line, which has been given the name Badger Coulee Transmission Line, is expected to offset the need for about $140 million in lower-voltage upgrades in western Wisconsin communities, ATC said, citing its own studies.

ATC is a transmission-line company that is owned primarily by the local electric utilities in eastern Wisconsin.

Details about the location and cost of the line will be announced when ATC submits a formal application for the line to the state Public Service Commission in 2013. At that time, the company will submit detailed routing information about two alternatives for the commission to consider.

If approved, the line would be built by 2018.

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While a bill proposed by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman has received most of the climate change attention due to its controversial, if all but dead cap-and-trade provisions, a separate energy bill has been fumbling around Congress too. This bill, The American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA), is, as per usual in Congress, widely regarded by the renewable energy industry as too weak and watered down to make much of a difference. However, it would at least set a national renewable electricity standard (RES) requiring U.S. utilities to get 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2021.

Alas, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who appears willing to gamble (and compromise) on other climate legislation this summer, has decided to shelve any hope for a national RES until fall…at the earliest. The renewable energy industry, especially a wind sector that has seen a significant drop in new installations this year compared to 2009, have been clamoring for RES legislation for some time. Recently, the industry came out in support of ACELA after initially opposing the bill.

Desperate Times

The industry’s new view is that while the entirety of ACELA leaves plenty of room for improvement, a national RES is a provision that would at least have immediate and positive effects. However, a failure to pass such legislation is equally detrimental. Now, in the wake of Sen. Reid’s announcement, outrage has replaced reluctant acquiescence.

“A refusal to pass an RES is an attack on every American worker and consumer. Not passing an RES endangers at least 360,000 jobs: 85,000 currently employed in the wind industry and the potential 274,000 additional jobs created by an RES,” said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) in response to Harry Reid’s dismissal of the energy bill.

Indeed, the time to pass uniform national legislation promoting renewable energy is running out. The United States will soon fall too far behind the likes of China, India and Europe, which already have firm goals and plans in place.

35 states have passed their own energy mandates, and such measures carry fairly broad bipartisan support, including strong support from the public. Yet Congress will not move forward on any binding climate legislation for reasons, one can only assume, related to the corporate influence on Congress of non-renewable energy companies, which are afraid of rising costs, a reduced market for their carbon-emitting energy, the subsequent game of chicken being played by Republicans and the timidity of coal-state Democrats.

The fact that the renewable energy industry came out in favor of a bill they’d uniformly opposed until (what turned out to be) the eleventh hour is a sign of desperate times. Frustrated and increasingly insecure, the RE sector just wants something done, not to mention those of us with serious concerns about the effects of climate change and global warming. An RES would be a good first step, but one Harry Reid and cohorts are afraid to take.

Instead, Reid is hoping to capitalize on bad press created by the BP oil spill to get symbolic-at-best, progressive-constituency-placating legislation on the Senate floor. His bill would address offshore drilling regulation, as well as put a cap on carbon emissions from electric utilities–our largest polluters but still only about one-third of total U.S. emissions. And let’s face it, even weak legislation such as this is likely to die on that (hallowed or hollowed?) floor. It’s gotten so bad that Harry Reid won’t even utter phrases like “cap-and-trade” or “carbon tax.”

Desperate Measures

So now, in the midst of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, with a Democrat-controlled Congress, an eco-minded President and strong public support, we, as Americans, will get nothing done. Our Congress will continue to flatter and fawn over corporate interests and hem and haw when answering to the people. Our president will continue to speak loudly but carry a soft stick. And meanwhile, all of us face the most serious threat to humankind in our (admittedly short) history on Earth.

Even if you don’t believe in global warming or climate change, check out the air above Los Angeles or breathe deeply while walking alongside a freeway. Better yet, move into a home in a poor neighborhood within the vicinity of a power plant or other toxic site. Or step into a coal mine or coal plant. Or visit the Gulf of Mexico anytime in the next decade. Or research how so-called “clean” natural gas is extracted from the earth.

Dear Congress,

Why, members of Congress, go on with such energy sources when so many (obviously) better alternatives are waiting in the wings. Yes, they all–wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, wave/tidal, plug-in EVs, etc.–need further development, but YES THEY ALL NEED FURTHER DEVELOPMENT! Let’s get to it.

Dear Congress, while I understand that cap-and-trade is probably dead (I was never much of a fan of its convoluted, heavily loopholed structure anyway), please don’t kill all hope of a national renewable electricity standard.

So, see you in the fall…right?

Via SolveClimate
Photo Thanks: Wind Power Ninja, IN Denver, & Inhabitat

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 Comtec Solar Systems Group Limited, a PRC-based leading manufacturer of monocrystalline solar wafers, announced the Group expected the unaudited consolidated profit attributable to owners of the Group for the half year to increase significantly compared to the previous corresponding period.

The management of Comtec Solar believes that the Group will continue to benefit from the high demand on monocrystalline wafers from module and cell manufacturers. The Group is expected to complete its installation of 600MW production capacity by 3Q2010. In addition, the Group is planning to relaunch its expansion plan as the purchasing cost of equipment has declined over the past months, partially due to the depreciating euro, where Comtec bought its equipment. The Group is targeting 1000MW production capacity by 2011.

Improving Industry Outlook

According to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), global PV power installed reached 22.9GW in 2009, representing a CAGR of 36% between 2000 and 2009. In terms of new PV installed, the CAGR reached 20% in the same period. Europe has been a key contributor in world solar energy development, contributing 70% of the world’s cumulative PV power in 2009. In 2009, newly installed PV power reached 7.2GW, of which 5.6GW was in Europe. With 3.8GW of power installed, Germany was the largest market in the world. It is worth noting that Spain, the largest market in 2008, went down from 2.6GW to only 69MW in 2009 due to the impact of the global financial crisis and the introduction of the 500MW installation cap by the government in 2008. It is worthwhile noticing that European governments remain supportive of solar and are doing what they can to insure an orderly transition to a lower incentive environment. In addition, more established markets including the U.S., Japan, China, Canada, France and U.K. are picking up on the growth of solar installation.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance also reported that China might spend about RMB 5 trillion in the next decade developing cleaner sources of energy to reduce emissions from burning oil and coal. Mr Jiang Bing (Head of the National Energy Administration’s planning and development department) said in Beijing that the PRC government would submit plans to develop cleaner energy (including nuclear power and gas from unconventional sources) in 2011 to 2020 to the State Council, or Cabinet, for approval. He also mentioned that China needs between RMB 500 billion to RMB 600 billion annually to develop energy- conservation and low carbon technologies, according to the government’s 2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report published last year. The country attracted $11.5bn of asset financing in clean-energy technology in the second quarter, more than Europe and the U.S. combined.

According to a recent research report, the development of solar energy in China has been lagging behind its development of wind power. Its solar energy production only takes up 1.3% of the world’s total. By contrast, its wind energy was the second largest market in the world in 2009, taking up 16% of the world’s total in terms of cumulative installed capacity. The report stated that the passing of the revised version of the Renewable Energy Law in late 2009 reflects that the Chinese government has strong determination in boosting the development of renewable energy.

This positive profit alert announcement is only based on the unaudited consolidated management accounts of the Group for the half year, which are under the review of the group’s auditor and maybe subject to adjustments. Shareholders of the company and potential investors are advised to read the half year results announcement for the reporting year of the group, which is expected to be published by August 2010.

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Do you have central heating? You’d probably be lost without it, and many people feel strongly that their central heating is an integral part of their home life. Anyone that is fortunate enough to have central heating will need to follow this piece of advice from the experts – get your boiler serviced before winter strikes.

Central Heating Sheffield – People Are Forgetting To Get Their Boiler Serviced!

Despite the fact there are many homes in Sheffield with central heating, the number of people getting their system checked is rapidly declining. The central heating Sheffield suppliers have reported the decline and say that fewer people are calling up for an annual boiler service. Of course, if you haven’t heard about the boiler explosions that still happen in the UK, you won’t be any the wiser, but the advice here is to get your boiler serviced before you end up in a similar situation.

Faults To Be Aware Of

Boiler faults can range from carbon monoxide leaks to burst pipes, and sometimes you won’t even know something is wrong until you head to the boiler to investigate. By this time though, it could be too late. Everyone should look into central heating maintenance and a boiler service is important. A boiler of any age can have something wrong with it, but you’re much more likely to have problems with older boilers. By not having your boiler checked you run the risk of having to replace your boiler much earlier on. Realistically, central heating companies will advise that you get the boiler replaced every 10 years so that you minimise the risk. Naturally, there are still some people that choose to ignore this and don’t realise that one day they might be sorry for leaving their boiler un-serviced.

There are still some people out there who don’t know what the best course of action is with their boiler. A small number of homeowners will play around with their boilers thinking they can check if anything is wrong themselves, but this is a very bad idea. Remember that all boilers and central heating systems are complex pieces of kit and can be dangerous. When it comes to anything complicated like this, only the engineers should be the ones taking a look, not you, the homeowner.

So, all in all, if you still haven’t had your boiler checked recently, follow the expert advice and book a boiler service in ASAP. The advice detailed here is applicable to everyone, but especially those with central heating Sheffield.

Read more on Central Heating Owners Are Told To Get Their Boilers Checked For Problems…

Energy Tags: wind power, alternative

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Wind power is the best there is right now in terms of reliability and ease of deployment, at least in some areas of the world. The Californian government, for example, has set an objective to have 33% of their energy coming from renewable resources by 2020.

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