World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

October 1, 2006 – Vol.11 No.28

WORLD WIND WATCH.

America’s corporations are (slowly) latching on to renewable energy. It’s certainly good public relations, but it’s also taking real and substantive action against climate change, air pollution and energy insecurity. Overall, when well-known companies buy renewable energy it’s a good thing.

Well Fargo, with $500 billion in assets and 23 million customers in banking, insurance, mortgage, loan and investment, as well as operating 6200 stores in the US, has announced it will offset 40 percent of its electricity consumption with the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) linked to wind energy. The purchase represents 550 million kilowatt-hours of wind energy each year for three years.

Wells Fargo says it is the largest-ever corporate purchase of renewable energy in the US. The RECs were purchased from 3 Phases Energy Services.

Kettle Foods, the leading potato chip maker in the US, has announced that it will offset 100-percent of its electricity use by purchasing RECs linked to wind energy. The wind energy RECS will be used to offset electricity consumed at its headquarters in Salem, Oregon as well as a new plant in Beloit, Wisconsin. The purchase is for 8,750,000 kilowatt hours of RECs.

The company also generates 130,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year with its own solar system and recycles its used cooking oil into biodiesel fuel. The RECs were purchased from Renewable Choice Energy of Boulder, Colorado.

Visit Wells Fargo at http://www.wellsfargo.com/ , 3 Phases at http://www.3phases.com/ Kettle Foods at http://www.kettlefoods.com/ and Renewable Choice at http://www.renewablechoice.com/

In many locations late afternoon is the windiest time of the day, conveniently coinciding with peak electricity demand. But in much of the world the wind the blows as strongly at night, when lights are out and economies are sleeping.

There are many indirect ways to store or put overnight wind to work: electric cars plugged into a wind-powered grid, operating factories that can produce in the dark as well as in daylight, or perhaps recycling metals such as zinc, aluminum and magnesium that can be used in metal-air fuel cells. But there aren’t any direct, inexpensive storage technologies for overnight wind.

One possibility, however is the VRB Energy Storage System (VRB-ESS) from VRB Power of Vancouver, British Columbia.

The VRB -ESS stores electricity chemically in different ionic forms of vanadium in a dilute sulfuric acid electrolyte. The electrolyte is pumped between separate plastic storage tanks into flow cells across a proton exchange membrane. One form of electrolyte is electrochemically oxidized, the other reduced. The result is an available electric current that can be fed into a power grid. The reaction is reversed by running power, such as from overnight wind, though the same flow cells.

Ireland, with its long Atlantic coastline, is one of those areas with available overnight wind capacity, thus a prime location to study the feasibility of storing wasted wind energy. Sustainable Energy Ireland, with Tapbury Management Limited, will be studying a 12-megawatt hour VRB -ESS to be installed at Phase II of the Sorne Hill Wind Farm in Donegal. The study will include the development of an integrated forecasting system used to optimize the storage capacity of the VRB-ESS.

There are 3000 megawatts of wind energy in the construction pipeline for Ireland. VRB says that there may be an excess of 700 megawatts of wind energy that could be stored. Visit VRB Power at http://www.vrbpower.com and Sustainable Energy Ireland at http://www.sei.ie/

Texas is the nation’s energy state. It’s well known for its oil and natural gas reserves, on and offshore, but not as well known as the nation’s leader in wind energy. While the state has had that first-place status for only a few months, it’s a leadership position it won’t likely give up soon. (Texans like to lead, if you haven’t noticed.) The state’s Governor, Rick Perry, has signed a public private partnership agreement that will result in more than $10 billion in new investment in wind energy.

In the deal, private companies have agreed to build the wind farms while the state, through the Public Utility Commission, will make sure the power grid is extended to connect them.