Green Energy News | June 4, 2000

June 4, 2000 – Vol.5 No.10

ENERGIES... week of June 4, 2000

BILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS. ABB Group believes its share of world-wide opportunities in renewable and distributed power generation could reach the billion dollar per year mark in 5 years. The international company announced a new wind power technology and a combined heat and power (CHP) contract to support that claim.

Windformer (tm) is ABB’s new wind generator technology that, according to the company, will increase power output by 20 percent. The technology eliminates the need for gearboxes and transformers making them more reliable and reduces electrical losses. Wind farms from 6 - 300 megawatts - or more - can be built with Windformer to generate electricity at less than 4 cents per kilowatt hour.

ABB will also offer its proprietary HVDC Light (High Voltage Direct Current) power transmission technology to allow wind farms to be developed far away from population centers including out-of-sight over-the-horizon offshore installations. With HVDC Light power generated at variable frequencies - such as that from wind power - can be linked economically to large power grids.

ABB has also entered into a $100 million contract to build ten CHP plants for Scottish and Southern Energy. The natural gas fired plants will incorporate small gas turbine generators, presumably the ones being developed jointly with Volvo. Several of the installations will be used to supply heat and power for greenhouses. Carbon dioxide from the exhaust stream will be contained in the buildings to stimulate plant growth. ABB will use the Internet to monitor and control all of the installations.

ABB believes the Internet can also be used successfully to build microgrids - large numbers of small generators linked together - to create a virtual utility. Visit ABB at http://www.abb.com/ .

WINDPOWER NORTHWEST. SeaWest WindPower will build a 24.6 megawatt wind power project in Gilliam County, Oregon to be completed by the end of this year. The pilot project will be the first phase of a possible to 300 - 500 megawatts of wind energy SeaWest could bring to the area. If all were built, enough power would be generated to satisfy the needs of 150,000 to 200,000 homes.

In the planning stages for additional wind power in the Pacific Northwest is the 300 megawatt Stateline Wind Project to be built by FPL Energy Vansycle LLC (FPL Energy). Walla Walla County, Washington and the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA) are in the process of preparing an Environmental Impact Statement for the project. BPA intends to purchase power generated at Stateline Wind. Visit SeaWest at http://www.seawestwindpower.com and FPL Energy at http://www.fplenergy.com/ .

WASTE-TO-BUILD. A portion of the energy needed to build DaimlerChrysler pick-up trucks and minivans manufactured at two St. Louis, Missouri assembly plants will come from a renewable source. Two of the four boilers at the plants, which provide steam for process heating, space heating and power for three chillers to provide summer-time cooling, will be fueled with methane-rich landfill gas tapped from a local dump.

Though carbon dioxide is released from the burning of methane - a more-potent-than-CO2 greenhouse gas - landfill gas which would ordinarily be released into the atmosphere is put to productive use. Visit DaimlerChrysler at http://www.media.daimlerchrysler.com.