World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

June 4, 2006 – Vol.11 No.11

WORLD WIND WATCH.

In 2005, new wind farms were the second-largest source of new power generation in the US after new natural gas power plants, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

While natural gas power plants can be stuffed away in the back alleys of the industrial world, wind farms are in plain view of everyone. In plain view can mean passionate support or hefty resistance from the general public.

The Cape Wind 420-megawatt offshore wind project for the waters off Cape Cod has met hefty resistance. But a new poll from the Civil Society Institute shows that 81-percent of Massachusetts adults and 61 percent of residents of the Cape and the Islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard now support Cape Wind. Only 9 percent of the 600 Massachusetts adults in the survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation live on the Cape or Islands, however.

While Cape Wind has been under attack by opposition groups like the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the 700-megawatt Trillium Power Wind 1 being planned for Lake Ontario has been getting positive support from possible neighbors on the Canadian side of the lake, according to news reports. The proposed project will be 10 miles from the Canadian shore and barely visible on the horizon. The New York side is much farther away. If built , Trillium will be the largest wind farm in North America.

Visit Cape Wind at http://www.capewind.org/ , the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound at http://www.saveoursound.org/ and the Civil Society Institute at http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has received an order from wind developer/operator Babcock and Brown for 443, 1-megawatt wind turbines. Built in Japan, the turbines will head to US shores for four projects.

The Buena Vista project in Northern California will get 38 turbines. The Argonne Mesa Project in New Mexico will get 90. The expansion of the Sweetwater wind project in Texas will get 135. The remaining 180 turbines will be planted in Colorado.

The order represents the largest single wind turbine order for Mitsubishi. Visit MHI at http://www.mhi.co.jp and Babcock and Brown at http://www.babcockbrown.com/ .

GE will be supplying 14, 1.5 megawatt turbines for the Pakini Nui Wind Project to be built on the southern tip of the island of Hawaii which is also the southernmost tip of the United States.

GE will also be supplying 80, 1.5 megawatt turbines to the Pine Tree Wind Project to be built 110 miles north of Los Angeles,California.

Pine Tree will be owned by municipal utility Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and thus be the first wind farm owned by the city. The project will help meet the city’s self-imposed Renewable Portfolio Standard of 20 percent renewables by 2010.

GE, too, will be shipping a large number of 1.5 megawatt wind turbines to CPV Wind Ventures of Silver Spring, Maryland sometime in 2008. CPV is mum on the size of the order but says it has 1000 megawatts of renewable energy projects in the pipeline.

Visit GE at http://www.gepower.com/ LADWP at http://www.ladwp.com/ and CPV at http://www.cpv.com/

Composite Technology Corporation (CTC), an Irvine, California-based maker of power transmission cables, has formally signed an agreement to purchase EU Energy. EU Energy owns the rights to produce and sell DeWind wind turbines of 1.25 and 2.0 megawatt capacity. With the EU Energy purchase CTC is now in the wind turbine business.

According to CTC, EU Energy has purchase agreements for 1263 turbines representing 2526 megawatts of wind capacity slated for delivery in 2007-2012. EU also has license production and sales agreements with two companies in China and a joint venture agreement for DeWind products to be built in India. Visit CTC at http://www.compositetechcorp.com/