CleanTechnica

For the 5^th year in a row, China has doubled its installed wind power capacity. Wind power capacity in the world grew 31% in 2009.

The Global Wind Energy Council released a report on new global wind power statistics this week and these are some of its main findings.

In total, 37.5 GW of wind power were added in 2009, bringing total worldwide installations up to 157.9 GW. One third of these new installations were in China.

The US, despite projections that wind power would drop due to the recession, continued to see growth and remains on top in total installed capacity (but who knows for how long).

Read the rest of this entry »

Obama said just the other day that “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy,” and I got into a little discussion about the rivalry between Obama and the President of China, Hu Jintao, on this topic.

I thought I would leave that issue for awhile to cover other stories, but then this landed at my feet and I couldn’t resist. China’s upcoming Big Clean Energy plans are HUGE and are likely to dwarf what are currently the largest wind power and solar power projects in the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

FloDesign, an R&D start-up in the US that has created a wind turbine design based on jet engine technology, just secured $34.5 million to help begin commercial development of its turbines. Lars Andersen, former president of Vestas China, has also just been appointed as the company’s CEO.

FloDesign claims that its turbines are 3-4 times more efficient than traditional open-fan turbines. They have several other beneficial features as well that help economically, environmentally, and in other ways.

Read the rest of this entry »

The flywheel is an old technology that dates back to Neolithic-era spindles and potter’s wheels.  Flywheels made a huge splash during the Industrial Revolution (anyone remember steam engines?) and now they’re ready to take center stage in the new wave of sustainable energy.

In sustainable energy, flywheels come into play as a means of storing intermittent power. Wind power and solar power are notoriously fickle in many parts of the world, and some means of smoothing out the bumps is required.  Vycon is one of several companies exploring the potential of flywheels, and it has come up with some interesting twists. Read the rest of this entry »

Not only do off-shore wind turbines not harm marine life, but they actively encourage more of it, a very encouraging study has just concluded, after closely following the effects of the off-shore wind farms being built off the European coast.

A Swedish Scientist at the Stockholm University’s Zoology Department studying the effects of off-shore wind turbines discovered that marine life has become more abundant and diverse near the foundations.  Dan Wilhelmsson found that offshore wind turbines constitute habitats for fish, crabs, mussels, lobsters and plants. Read the rest of this entry »

Joint New Zealand-U.S. project begins harvesting steady Antarctic winds on Ross Island.

Besides the heavy snow, unrelenting wind, and bone-chilling temperatures, what’s the most difficult part of building a wind farm in Antarctica? The lack of daylight in the winter means construction can only take place in the summer months. And with only one supply ship a year, you better not forget any parts.

On Saturday, the $7.4-million Ross Island Wind Farm in Antarctica began feeding electricity at full power for the very first time. The new wind farm can generate up to one megawatt of electricity and will cut diesel use at New Zealand’s Scott Base and the U.S.’ McMurdo Station by 120,000 gallons and reduce carbon dioxide output by 1,370 tons annually, according to New Zealand’s state-owned Meridian Energy, the project’s developers. Read the rest of this entry »

Berkeley based Nordic Windpower has just moved from being one of the DOE-supported renewable energy start-ups – to getting its own VC funding. The Department of Energy support (funded under the Recovery Act) was intended to bridge the gap as Venture Capital lost its nerve during the recent financial crisis. This bet seems to have paid off.

According to an SEC filing Nordic Windpower just received $12 million in VC funding for expanding US production of its unique two-bladed design for smaller, lighter 1 MW turbines intended for community wind farms for schools, municipalities and tribal groups.
Read the rest of this entry »

New wind turbine technology out of Denmark can “see” the wind before it arrives and aim itself accordingly.

Read the rest of this entry »

In readiness for an expected flood of orders WePower has just held their first training workshop in Palm Desert to build a supply of competent and knowledgeable Authorized Dealers around the nation for their small vertical axis wind turbines.

What makes the turnout all the more surprising is that I could find no information on the WePower site about the cost of these units, so it is not that easy to do a cost/benefit analysis to find the cost per kilowatthour of these units.

The company will be producing up to 500,000 a year of their revolving wind turbines in four factories in California, Minnesota, Ohio and Virginia.
Read the rest of this entry »

When I read about the training workshops for small wind power dealers for WePower, I found no information on the site to let you know how much their units will cost. But if you want to sell (or buy) their vertical axis revolving wind turbines, you’d want to know how cost-effective they are.

Here is how you can calculate the cost per kilowatthour for (any given) small wind turbine install, once you know your wind speed range, the output, and how long you’d get power from it, plus the unit cost.

Once you know these numbers, you can do the math yourself. We have all the numbers we need to do the math, other than the cost per turbine. You can contact the manufacturer to get that.
Read the rest of this entry »