Via Energy Boom

Germany remains the European country with the largest installed wind power capacity, followed by Spain, France, Italy and the UK. The report underlines growth in onshore installations in Germany and Sweden, and offshore in the UK, besides continuing strong performance from some emerging onshore markets in Eastern Europe .

Overall, wind capacity installed by the end of 2011 would, in a normal year, produce 204 TWh of electricity, representing 6.3% of electricity consumption – up from 5.3% the year before.

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Technorati Tags: EU wind power, renewable energy EU, wind power EU

Photo: BWEA

The news was announced at RenewableUK’s Annual Parliamentary Reception last Wednesday. To give a better idea of what 6GW represents in terms of power, the UK now has enough installed wind power energy to supply over 3.3 million homes.

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Technorati Tags: Renewable UK, Wind, wind farms, Wind power, wind power UK

Photo: RESA

Suggestively called Eco Whisper, the wind turbine employs 30 smaller ones capped with a specially designed cowl ring that keeps them silent in most meteorological conditions. A cone shape allows the blades to automatically rotate into the direction of the wind, with no need for a heavy tail structure.

Besides being more silent, the blades are more efficient, too. RESA says the turbines increase efficiency by 30 per cent at average wind speeds, and will keep rotating even when winds are very slow.

Main features:
.20kW horizontal axis wind turbine
.Virtually silent operation
.6.5m blade diameter
.21.1m height
.30 blades extending outwards
.Dynamic slew drive
.Solid, lightweight structure
.High performance in all wind conditions

The manufacturer says EcoWhisper is suitable for commercial, manufacturing and industrial sites, airports, ports, mining resource facilities, council sites and industrial development sites. It can also be installed on shopping centres, industrial parks, schools, universities and others. Off grid rural communities could also benefit.

It sounds like an exciting new development in wind turbine design!

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Eco Whisper turbine erection:

Technorati Tags: Australian wind turbine, Ecowhisper, efficient wind turbine, silent wind turbine, Wind turbine

A new website called SaveUSAWindJobs launched by the American Wind Energy Association aims at involving Americans with wind power and put pressure on government to extend the Production Tax Credit (PTC), wind power’s key federal tax incentive.

There has been a huge growth in the wind power manufacturing sector, which currently provides 75,000 jobs. It is estimated the sector could create another 500,000 jobs in the next 20 years. But without fiscal support it may not happen.

Past experience showed than when PTC was allowed to expire, wind installations dropped between 73 and 93 per cent. The website provides detailed information on this issue, including a visual depiction of what it calls a “preventable boom-bust cycle”. It also features a 90-second video explaining how wind power energy means jobs, and how the PTC is a key driver of job creation.

“The SaveUSAWindJobs website is a powerful tool for the overwhelming majority of Americans who say they want more wind power,” said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. “The need for a PTC extension is urgent. I ask everyone who supports more clean, homegrown wind power and more American manufacturing jobs to engage their Members of Congress by tapping into this valuable resource.”

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Technorati Tags: AWEA, saveusawindjobs, wind power jobs, wind power manufacturing

Morocco has been chosen as the first location for a German-led, €400bn (US$550.9bn) project to build a vast network of solar and windfarms across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to provide 15% of Europe’s electricity supply by 2050.

The alternative energy plans were announced at a conference in Cairo on Wednesday; Morocco is the chosen location for the first project, which will be a solar farm.

According to a report in the UK Guardian, the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii) will kick off the first phase of the project with a 500 MW solar farm whose construction is scheduled to begin next year. The desert city of Ouarzazate is the likely location of the farm.

“It’s all systems go in Morocco. We have secured the support of politicians and investors”, said Paul van Son, Dii’s CEO. Dii will disclose the details of the first stage of the 150-Megawatt project at the start of 2012. Also in 2012 the organization will publish its “EUMENA 2050″, providing guidelines on restructuring the energy industry in the Arab nations and Europe based on renewable sources of energy.

It’s not all unfettered, brave-new-world optimism, though. Still according to the Guardian report, Germanwatch, an NGO that monitors German developments, is concerned as to whether local people will benefit from the scheme while Greenpeace Germany said it will follow the project carefully to make sure European companies to do get their hands on local resources.

Dii says any accusations of neo-colonialism are unjust. It said MENA nations themselves specify the condition of the collaboration. “It’s a “win-win” situation for industries in the region and Europe. It is a matter of working together on the same level”, it said.

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Technorati Tags: alternative energy network, Desertec Industrial Initiative, MENA, Middle East, Northern Africa

Photo: Via Area Development

Small wind turbines are defined as those that are 100 kilowatts and under. Small wind turbines manufactured in North America typically incorporated 80-percent domestic content.

“Across the country people are saving money and helping the environment by using small wind turbines to power their homes, farms and businesses” said Larry Flowers, AWEA Deputy Director of Distributed and Community Wind. “This report shows that the market for clean, affordable, homegrown wind energy is as good in small scale applications as it is for large utilities.”

Small wind growth in the US has pushed the sector closer to utility scale wind farms, as cumulative sales in 2010 reached 179 MW of capacity. AWEA said installations now annually displace 161,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of taking 28,000 cars off the road.

The organization added sound federal, state and local policies have been key to the growth seen by small wind. Those policies enabled more than $30 million in rebates, tax credits, and grants to go to small wind purchasers, users, and others. But it warned that a consistent federal policy is crucial for the growth of the American small industry to continue. The current Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for small wind expires at the end of 2016.

The 2010 U.S. Small Wind Market Report can be accessed here.

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Technorati Tags: AWEA, domestic wind power, small wind, small wind power, small wind US, wind turbines

Photo: WindMade.org

WindMade took effect immediately and allows interested entities to apply for use of the label to communicate the share of wind power and other renewable sources in their overall power consumption demand.

“WindMade is the first eco-label supported by the UN Global Compact,” said Georg Kell, Executive Director of UN Global Compact. ”It is fully aligned with our mission to promote greater corporate sustainability as the critical business contribution to sustainable development. As a tangible and meaningful consumer label, WindMade can go a long way in advancing the use of renewable energy around the globe.”

The WindMade Standard specifies the requirements for the use of the WindMade label, requiring participating companies to source a minimum of 25 percent of their electricity consumption from wind power. The wind energy share can be procured through a company-owned wind power generation facility, a long-term Power Purchase Agreement for wind power, or the purchase of high quality Renewable Energy Certificates approved by WindMade. The exact percentage of the wind energy share will be stated on the label.

“The criteria set out by the standard will ensure that companies using the WindMade label will contribute to more investment in renewables over and above what would be built anyway and hence boost clean power,” said Samantha Smith, Director of the WWF Global Energy and Climate Network Initiative, who were closely involved in formulating the standard. “We believe that the industrial take-up of the ambitious WindMade standard is a perfect market contribution to the needed strong governmental renewable energy targets for 2030. This will drive the development of new wind power generation.”

WindMade’s CEO Henrik Kuffner said interest in the label has been considerable. “Already now, many companies are committed to switching to green power, driven by strong consumer demand for sustainable and responsible corporations. However, to date, these forward-looking companies did not have the possibility of receiving an independent global certification for their power procurement. WindMade will now fill this gap, and provide consumers with the transparency they require to make informed choices”, he said.

The UN Global Compact will host a global launch event in New York on November 18th where WindMade will unveil the first companies and brands to become WindMade certified.

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Technorati Tags: eco labels, Global Wind Energy Council, Vestas, Wind power, WindMade, WWF

Photo: Via Area Development

A few days ago we wrote about Sauer’s WindCharger, a new, small wind generation turbine that is attracting a great deal of interest from potential distributors.

Small wind is the equivalent of rooftop solar generation. Small turbines are designed be set up on top of office towers, airports, shopping malls as well as residences.

As interest in it grows, so does manufacturing of the nearly 8,000 small parts necessary to assemble a small wind turbine. This, in turn, creates manufacturing jobs.

Area Development magazine, a trade publication focused on site and facility planning, wrote that small wind turbine manufacturing is driving job creation in some areas of the United States.

“Manufacturers of small wind turbines are knocking some of the rust off the Rust Belt. For example, Windspire Energy, founded in 2005 as Mariah Power, is producing small, low-cost silent wind turbines in Manistee, Michigan, at a former automotive parts factory”, the publication wrote.

What’s more, besides the current 30 employees, there are plans to increase personnel to more than 120 people over the next three tears. Priority will be given to those made unemployed by the auto industry.

The article said that former auto plants in states such as Michigan, Indiana and Ohio are “prime candidates” to produce small wind turbine parts. Many other types of hardware industries such as iron foundries and control device makers will be able to supply wind turbine manufacturers as well.

This is good news for the country. Half of the components used to manufacture wind turbines in the U.S. are also made in the United States, up from 25 per cent in 2004.

Besides the Midwest, the article mentions manufacturing plants of small wind turbines in California (WePOWER and AeroVironment) and Colorado (New Millennium Wind Energy).

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Technorati Tags: jobs, manufacturing, small wind, wind turbines

Photo: Sauer

This week we caught wind that Sauer Energy, which develops VAWT systems, has attracted huge interest in its small wind product after placing its preliminary application for distributorships on its website.

“News of the preliminary application was released scarcely one week ago, and already there have been over 800 queries, and increasing daily”, the company said.

The company’s trademark wind power product is called WindCharger. It says the turbine is one its “key innovation priorities”. Sauer plans on starting manufacturing and trading the product during Fall 2011.

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Presentation video:

Technorati Tags: small wind, vertical wind turbine, wind turbines, WindCharger

Photo: MNN

First, let’s take a look at what Japanese researchers have come up with.

According to Mother Nature Network, scientists at Kyushu University in Japan have come up with an aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called ‘wind lens’. Its main selling point is that it can triple the output of a standard wind turbine. This way, wind power becomes more competitive than nuclear, they said.

The mechanism of the turbine is simple. What makes it different and exciting is that the ‘wind lens’ can make the turbine rotate at a much higher speed (the video below explains in more detail the technical details).

In Japan wind power energy accounts for only 0.3 per cent of the country’s power generation. But as the country moves away from nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, it is looking at ways to make its energy mix more reliant on alternative energy.

Elsewhere, Marcio Loos, a Case Western Reserve University researcher, has built a prototype blade that is substantially lighter and eight times tougher and more durable than currently used blade materials, wrote Renewable Energy World.

The weight of large wind turbines is one of the challenges faced by the industry. Simply increasing the size of blades will not work because they will need more wind to turn the rotor. And they lose optimal shape to catch moving air as they flex with the wind. Working on better materials seems to be the best bet.

Loos built the first polyurethane blade reinforced with carbon nanotubes. He carried out a series of tests to make sure “the composite that was scoring best on preliminary tests could be molded into the right shape and maintain properties.” He used a small commercial blade as a template to manufacture a 29-inch blade which was simultaneously lighter, tougher and more rigid.

Preliminary tests showed that carbon nanotubes are lighter and more resistant than other materials such as aluminium and carbon fiber. The hope is that the material will be used in next generation wind turbine blades.

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Technorati Tags: Japan, wind lens, Wind power, wind turbine blades