World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

October 26, 2003 – Vol.8 No.31

WORLD WIND WATCH.

With the best wind sites on land already taken, for Germany to expand its wind generating capacity it has only limited choices - replace existing onshore turbines with ones of greater capacity or move offshore into the North Sea where winds are brisk and the water is shallow.

If approvals are given, Germany’s first large offshore wind farm may be online by 2006.

German wind energy firm Plambeck and Danish electric utility ENERGI E2 have agreed to a joint venture that would, in its first phase, build a 231 megawatt facility at Borkum-Riffgrund to the north of the East Frisian Islands of Borkum and Juist. After the first 77, three megawatt turbines are planted in the ocean bottom a second phase would begin to add another 180 turbines to the project.

The second phase, to be built between 2006 -2010, would be able to use turbines of greater capacity than available today. In a few years turbines for offshore use should be available at least 5 megawatts capacity. Visit Plambeck at http://www.pne.de/ .

Soon it may be difficult to find a U.S. state that DOESN’T have at least some grid-scale wind generating capacity. (The states that may never have, because of lackluster wind conditions, lie in the Southeast.)

Colorado’s largest wind farm, the 162-megawatt Colorado Green Wind Project now under construction by GE Wind Energy, has been purchased for a reported $212 million by a partnership of PPM Energy and Shell WindEnergy.

The project, which will be the fifth largest in the U.S. when finished by the end of 2003, is near the town of Lamar in Prowers County, southeastern Colorado. The facility is spread out on 14 tracts of farmland. Power from the 108 GE Wind Energy 1.5 megawatt turbines will be sold to Xcel Energy.

Visit GE Wind Energy at http://www.gewindenergy.com/ . Shell Wind Energy at http://www.shell.com/renewables/ and PPM at http://www.ppmenergy.com/ , Xcel at http://www.xcelenergy.com/ .

On a considerably smaller scale, but always significant (every wind power purchase is significant) Dairyland Power Cooperative has announced it will buy the output from five turbines - at total of 7.5 megawatts output - at the G. McNeilus Wind Farm in Adams, Minnesota.

Dairyland will distribute wholesale power to 25 member distribution cooperatives and 20 municipal utilities. Visit Dairyland at http://www.dairynet.com/ .