CleanTechnica

Maldives, one of the most beautiful nations on earth, held the artistic, theatrical event of an underwater government meeting last month, to try to bring more attention to the threats of climate change. Now, they are getting more practical but still grabbing headlines — they are looking to build a wind farm that will generate 40% of the island nation’s electricity needs.

The wind farm plans were announced earlier this week. The project will include 30 turbines and is expected to provide the nation with 75 MW of power, powering the capital city, their international airport, and more!
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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about China’s new policy to focus on buying (almost entirely) “China-grown” wind turbines and wind turbine technologies with Chinese patents. That policy wasn’t a big hit internationally and China is back-tracking.

However, is it changing its stance out of international moral pressure or a major financial incentive (recent deal) in the US? And who is to benefit the most from this shift?
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Catch the Wind Ltd. of Virginia has just announced that its new Vindicator laser wind sensor has been deployed on a specialized buoy for a field test off Race Rocks Island in British Columbia.   If successful, the laser sensor would be part of the world’s first buoy-based wind power assessment system, which could shave millions off the cost of assessing conditions at potential sites for offshore wind turbines.

Conventional site assessments for large scale wind farms are done through the construction of a permanent offshore tower, which can cost up to $10 million.  Catch the Wind’s movable buoy-based system, called the WindSentinel, could virtually eliminate that expense and help open up sustainable offshore wind power to small communities, military bases, and other modestly scaled projects.

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A-Power Energy Generation Systems won one aspect of the clean energy race and made history, as it will become the first Chinese manufacturer to export wind turbines to the United States. A-Power Energy Generation Systems and a consortium of Chinese and American companies — U.S. Renewable Energy Group, Cielo Wind Power, and the Shenyang Power Group — are planning to build a 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas.

The project, which could power as many as 180,000 homes, will require 240 2.5-megawatt turbines and the farm will occupy 36,000 acres of land in West Texas. Nearly shovel ready, the construction effort is projected to create about 30 permanent jobs and 300 temporary ones. Ground-breaking on the wind farm is slated for March of 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

Kids enrolled in Wind for Schools shop classes in six Great Plains states (CO, ID, KS, MT, NE, SD) are learning hands-on to assist in assessment, design, and installation of small wind systems at their schools, with the goal of creating a knowledge base for wind energy within rural elementary and secondary schools through Wind Powering America.

The DOE is looking for proposals from wind companies who want to help out in expanding the program to six more states. You have till November 30 to get your bid in. And if you want to teach any aspects of this new shop class in wind, reach out to schools in these states.
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Wind turbines?  Dontcha hate them!  Horrible things going round-and-round. Roundandroundandroundandround.  They make a lot of noise, and bits seem to keep on falling off them.  Dangerous.

Then there’s the NIMBY neighbours: “Oh, we don’t want one of those here,” they say.  “Renewable energy: yes.  Somewhere where it’s inconvenient: NO!”  It’s as though they think a wind-energy solution can be integrated into every house with minimal visual impact.

Well blow me down, it can!!

Ridgeblade is a fabulous wind-turbine solution from UK based The Power Collective.  It’s very simple: instead of a large standalone windmill-like structure, put a long bladed turbine along the ridge of a building’s roof.

The blades are about the same length as a medium wind turbine, so you can catch about the same amount of wind.  What’s more, as these can be mounted along an existing roof, there’s no need for an additional NIMBY-provoking superstructure.

So revolutionary is this approach that the company has won $750,000 from the Green Challenge Awards.

“It’s beyond a dream,” said Power Collective CEO Dean Gregory when Skype founder Niklas Zennström announced him as the winner.  I’ll bet: he’d only entered the competition two days before the closing date!

This is the right kind of innovation, one which will bring a community together to provide energy together on a collective scale, rather than relying upon some far away power station to provide the same for a profit.

Let’s hope it succeeds.

Oceanlinx; another Australian wave power company that uses the floating oil rig as the model for its wave power began installation this month of its last test before grid-connecting a 2.5 MW unit off the coast of Port Kembla, near Sydney.

It should be sending power to the Australian grid early next year. Unusually, for wave power concepts, this converts the energy of ocean swells under the platform into air pressure which turns a wind turbine. The company’s previous demo in 2007 proved it works.
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OceanWorksDevelopment; a group of 40 architects and planners has come up with a pretty wild and grandiose (or brilliant and visionary) solution to San Diego’s siting problems for its much needed new airport. Float the entire thing off-shore.

How serious are they? In a legally unprecedented move, OceanWorks CEO Adam Englund has booked the 40,000 square mile space on the Pacific with this claim holding “airport rights”.
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Here’s a radical perspective change for wind power. Instead of harnessing wind power to turn blades tethered to a pole, the KiteGen simply harnesses that rapid unspooling motion of kites reeling out as they release upwards.
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Somewhere in the U.S. there is a justice of the peace who still refuses to perform inter-racial marriages, but Principle Power, Inc. has no such backward looking qualms when it comes marrying two different forms of sustainable energy.  Last week the company won a $750,000 development grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to adapt its patented WindFloat platform to bring wave energy generating capability on board, along with the wind turbines for which it was originally designed.

Of particular interest to DOE is WindFloat’s innovative three-corner design, which stabilizes the platform against turbulence and enables it to be deployed in deep water where winds are more favorable to energy generation.  In addition to its obvious use in the civilian world, the marriage of wind and wave power may also prove fruitful for its application to the U.S. military’s need for non-petroleum energy sources at remote bases.

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