World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

December 19, 2004 – Vol.9 No.39

WORLD WIND WATCH.

The vast, wind swept plains of the U.S. interior are prime for wind power development, yet unfortunately are far from major electricity markets. Power can be pushed great distances, but not without a great loss of efficiency.

Still, new wind farms in the nation’s center keep popping up, or are planned to be.

OG&E Electric Services, which provides power to customers in 30,000 square miles of Oklahoma, has announced it’s exploring the idea of adding another 80 megawatts of wind generated electricity to their portfolio. Currently the company buys about 50 megawatts from a wind farm in Woodward, Oklahoma.

The company will decide by early 2005 whether to increase their wind capacity.

Of their 730,000 customers, almost 9000 buy all or portion of their power as wind generated electricity. Visit OG&E at http://www.oge.com/

Though as reported last week (ENERGIES week of 12/12/04) that business was a little slow at Vestas, the company has reported a substantial order for 32 V-90-3.0 megawatt turbines.

The turbines valued at EUR 80 million ($109 million) will be installed at the Pampilhosa Wind Farm in Pampilhosa da Serra, Portugal. Visit Vestas at http://www.vestas.com/ .

Gamesa has announced that it has received an order for eight G-80 2.0 megawatt turbines for the Misato Wind Farm to be built east of Tokyo, Japan. The purchaser is JF Engineering which will also build the towers for the turbines. Gamesa will be the installer.

Gamesa may also be supplying an additional 32 G-80 turbines to Japan. These turbines will be purchased by Eurus Energy Japan Corporation. Visit Gamesa at http://www.gamesa.es/ .

The seven test turbines planted in the Irish Sea, as the first phase of the giant Arklow Bank Wind Project, are churning out more power than anticipated.

Each GE 3.6-megawatt turbine is running at maximum output, providing more electricity than in planner’s best dreams. The 3.6 turbines are the largest wind turbines installed offshore on the planet.

Airtricity and GE Energy are co-developers of this first-phase and want to see a total of 200 turbines installed at the site. Airtricity, apparently, is now in discussion with Spanish wind farm operator EHN regarding the future of Arklow Bank. GE currently owns the project. Visit Airtricity at http://www.airtricity.com/, GE Energy (wind division) at http://www.gewind.com/ .