New Solar, Wind, Wave, EV, & LED Projects (10 Stories)

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I go through dozens of sources and thousands of articles so you don’t have to 😀

Here’s some cool clean energy, EV, and LED project news from the past week or so:

1. 3 New Wind Projects in U.S. Order Wind Turbines

“Vestas has received a 59 MW order from Exelon Wind for 33 V100-1.8 MW turbines for the Harvest II Wind Project in Huron County, Michigan, USA,” Vestas announces. “The contract includes delivery and commissioning along with a 10-year service and maintenance agreement. Delivery is scheduled for mid-2012, and commissioning is expected in late 2012.”

Vestas has also received orders for two First Wind projects, in Washington and Maine, that total to 139 MW. 77 V100-1.8 MW turbines were ordered for the 104.4-MW Palouse Wind project in Whitman County, Washington (58 wind turbines) and the 34.2-MW Bull Hill wind power plant in Hancock County, Maine (19 turbines).

2. Apple Switching from Coal to Solar in North Carolina

“Apple, ranked the least green of the big tech companies earlier this year, is moving quietly to repair its reputation by switching its vast east coast data centre from coal to solar power,” the Guardian reports. “Local officials in North Carolina say the company is preparing to build a solar farm adjacent to its $1bn data centre in Maiden.”

3. Tower Bridge is Going LED

Tower Bridge in London is about to get a lot prettier.. at least to us Greens. The 117-year-old bridge is going LED and is going to cut its electricity usage by about 40%! h/t Crisp Green

4. Arizona’s Largest Wind Farm Almost Done

“Coconino County’s first wind farm, the state’s largest, plans to begin generating electricity in December,” azdailysun.com reports. “Contractors building these turbines are from all over, including Florida, Texas, Iowa and Minnesota.” (Clean energy doesn’t create jobs, right?) The project includes 62 wind turbines, each 398-feet-tall, and has an installed power capacity of 99 MW. It can supply power for about 29,000 homes when running at peak, and 8,700 homes on average. “The wind farm is to operate from this December or January 2012 into 2042 or beyond.”

The wind turbines will most likely replace electricity provided by burning natural gas. Coconino County officials expect to plan and build more wind power projects after this one is complete. “State regulations set by the Arizona Corporation Commission require utilities to supply 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and Arizona Public Service is now getting about 3 percent of its electricity from renewable resources.”

5. Navajo Homes Get Solar- & Wind-Powered Electricity

An off-grid solar and wind power generator now provides electricity to 200 Navajo Homes in New Mexico. CNET has more, & pictures.

6. 1st Commercial Wave Power Plant Is Up (.. or Under) in Spain

Voith Hydro Wavegen handed over its “first grid-connected marine power plant to the Basque Energy Board in the north of Spain” last week, Business Green reports. “The 300kW wave power plant comprises 16 turbines and is housed within a breakwater at the port of Mutriku. The plant has produced 100MWh since generating its first power in July, and is expected to provide enough electricity to power 250 homes during its 25-year life.”

7. Global Solar PV Installations to Hit 24 GW in 2011

A new report out by IMS Research finds that global solar PV installation will hit 24 GW in 2011, rising 24% from the 19 GW hit in 201o. However, European installations will only rise 3%. Other notable findings from the report are that:

• Italy will pass up Germany as the world’s leading PV market;
• over 8 GW of solar PV were installed in the first half of 2011, while about 15 GW are projected to be installed in the second half;
• Asia and the Americas will account for 80% of the global growth in 2011 (and a similar trend is expected in 2012);
• you can also see in the second chart below that a lot of the growth is in the utility-scale market, but there’s also significant growth in the large and medium commercial market and in the residential market.

8. Poland Getting Its Largest Rooftop Solar Array

“Photon Energy will take part in the construction of a 311 kWp rooftop PV installation in Ruda Slaska, Southern Poland,” Solarbuzz reports. “When completed in mid 2012, it will be the largest rooftop solar power installation in Poland…. It will be will be located on the roof of the Upper Silesian water utility company – Górnośląskie Przedsiębiorstwo Wodociągów S.A. (GPW), the largest water supplier in Poland, which will also act as an investor in the project.”

9. 3 EV Charging Stations Now at Indianapolis Airport

They are GE WattStation^TM Wall Mount EV charging stations. “An ongoing collaboration between Purdue University and GE Energy is at the heart of the new airport charging option,” GE reports. “Purdue acquired the units with funding from Energy Systems Network through a grant from the Indiana Office of Energy Development.”

“Purdue’s faculty and students will collect data from the airport chargers to use in electric vehicle and smart grid research,” Eric Dietz, associate professor of computer and information technology and director of Purdue’s Homeland Security Institute, said.

But, there’s a lot more green going on at the Indianapolis Airport than that, actually:

Additional sustainability initiatives at the airport include IAA’s recent completion of relighting projects in its parking garage and at the Indianapolis Maintenance Center that produce combined yearly savings of more than $250,000 and annually reduce CO2 emissions by 5,233 metric tons, equivalent to removing more than 1,000 gasoline-powered cars from the city’s roads each year.

IAA also has announced plans to develop one of the largest airport-based solar farms in North America, which will annually produce more than 15 million kilowatt hours of power, enough to meet the electrical energy needs of more than 1,200 average American homes for a year. The renewable power it generates will prevent approximately 10,700 tons of CO2 from being released into the environment each year, roughly equivalent to removing 2,000 gasoline-powered cars from the road annually.

10. Maui Looking to be EV Leader

“Chalk up Maui as the next hot spot for electric vehicle infrastructure. This month the Maui Electric Vehicle Alliance was launched with the support of the University of Hawaii Maui College, Hawaii State Energy Office, Honolulu Clean Cities from neighboring Oahu, and a host of other partners from government and business,” Greentech Media reports. “With the help of a $300,000 from the US Department of Energy, the group’s goal is to design a plan to prep the island for large-scale EV use through increased EV infrastructure development.” (Note that I also wrote about a leading smart grid demo project in Maui last week.)