World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

March 5, 2006 – Vol.10 No.50

WORLD WIND WATCH.

Despite 12,000 miles of ocean front property, sites for offshore wind energy in the U.S. may be limited. Ocean view property owners will fight vigorously to stop wind farms from being built that may spoil their expensive views. The calamity of rising oceans from global warming is something future generations will have to deal with, not they. With money to spend on good lawyers and lobbyists they’ll often win in court or in the halls of government.

The only way for the U.S. to harness the vast energy source of ocean winds may be to push farther offshore, over the horizon where the curvature of the Earth hides tall turbines from shoreside view.

Offshore energy is no stranger to the United States and most of the oil and natural gas platforms can’t be seen from land. While far offshore fossil platforms are certainly profitable, the cost of planting the current generation of wind turbines in waters a few hundred feet deep would likely negate any profits. Bigger, more powerful turbines are needed and are on the way.

Already Enercon is testing machines up to 6 megawatts, Vestas up to 4.5 megawatts and Siemens up to 3.6 megawatts.

Now GE, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will up move toward wind turbines that could be as large as 7 megawatts.

The company has announced that it has entered a $27 million program with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to develop an offshore turbine of 5-7 megawatts capacity. The NREL will contribute $8 million through 2010 in the project, GE the remainder.

Currently GE’s largest largest turbine is rated at 3.6 megawatts. Seven of them are in operation at the Arklow Bank 25-megawatt offshore project in the Irish Sea. Arklow is a joint project of GE and wind developer Airtricity. Visit GE at http://www.gepower.com/ , Vestas at http://www.vestas.com/ , Enercon at http://www.enercon.de/ and Siemens (wind power) at http://www.powergeneration.siemens.com/en/windpower/index.cfm, Airtricity at http://www.airtricity.com/

Gamesa’s U.S. wind turbine operations have barely started in Pennsylvania and already they’re expanding.

The company is investing an additional $34 million in manufacturing facilities in the state. Its first $40 million was spent on headquarters facilities in Philadelphia where 30 people work and a plant in Cambria County where 234 people are employed building wind turbine components.

The new investment will be for 3 new facilities in Bucks County at the former U.S. Steel Fairless Hills industrial site. The new facilities will employ 300, making towers, assembling nacelles, and laminating turbine blades. The blade and tower facilities will have an annual production capacity of 300 megawatts of turbine capacity. The nacelle facility will be able to ship enough turbine components to generate 1000 megawatts of clean energy each year.

The Bucks County government chipped in $10 million in grants, loans and tax breaks to attract Gamesa to the site of the closed steel mill. Visit Gamesa at http://www.gamesa.es/