Industrial Wind Energy News
These news and opinion items are gathered by National Wind Watch to help keep readers informed about developments related to industrial wind energy. They are the products of the organizations or individuals noted.
Battling becalming influences
With energy prices and global warming on the national agenda, the executive director of the American Wind Energy Association should be coasting through this political season.
Instead Randall Swisher is lobbying Republicans and Democrats in Congress to reauthorize a $334 million tax credit set to expire at the end of this year.
“You would think it would be a slam dunk to get it done, given the fact that all these candidates are using wind turbines in their campaign ads,” . . .
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Wind-power disconnect: Transmission problems, turbine demand threaten growth of wind-generated power
All the wind turbines in the world won’t reduce the need for fossil fuels if transmission lines don’t connect the power those turbines create to the energy grid.
In fact, transmission difficulties – along with high demand for wind turbines – are generating concern that Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy that it might not be able to meet a 2007 request to use at least 500 megawatts of power generated by community-based wind farms.
Xcel’s concern about the rapidly transforming state of the competitive . . .
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Proposal would bring 125 turbines to Kandiyohi County as part of $500M wind farm
ATWATER — If things go as planned — and there are a few ifs — a bumper crop of wind could be harvested in a 100-square-mile area around Grove City, Atwater and Kandiyohi within the next decade.
If enough land leases are secured, if there are enough local investors, if a large equity investor can be wooed and if access to the electrical transmission system is granted — a wind farm with 125 wind turbines sprouting from the ground and . . .
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Wind farm plan generating plenty of opinions; Input being sought on Innisfil proposal
Are the breezes blowing favourably for a wind farm in Innisfil?
Area residents will have an opportunity next week to comment on a five-turbine wind farm proposed by Schneider Power Inc. on about 200 acres of land between Line 5 and Line 6, east of Highway 400.
The public meeting will take place on Wednesday from 7:15 p. m. to 9:15 p. m. in the new town offices at 2101 Innisfil Beach Rd.
The company has requested a zoning bylaw . . .
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Tax on energy firms sought
LITTLE VALLEY — Cattaraugus County lawmakers rallied this week in support of a local law that would pre-empt the state’s automatic property tax exemptions for new wind power plants, solar energy systems and farm methane waste digesters.
The law would position the county’s Industrial Development Agency as the prime negotiator on payments- in-lieu-of-tax e s agreements with several wind farm developers scouting sites for about 200 turbines in the county.
Members of the county Operations and Finance committees meeting Wednesday . . .
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Planners change minds on turbines
Councillors have withdrawn three of their four objections to plans for a wind farm in Northumberland.
Members of Berwick Borough Council Planning Committee have unanimously agreed to amend their views on a proposal to erect turbines at Wandylaw, near Chathill, after the release of the Regional Spatial Strategy, drawn up by the North East Assembly to set out future land use.
One objection remains – about the effect of turbines on the air defence radar at RAF Brizlee Wood, Alnwick. . . .
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Deer cull ‘will be humane’; Estate manager seeks to reassure windfarm protesters
The manager of a Sutherland estate yesterday reassured people protesting against a proposed windfarm on the estate that there were no plans to corral deer and slaughter them as part of a mass cull connected with the development.
Objectors to the 35-turbine windfarm at Gordonbush, near Brora, produced a leaflet in which they criticised the habitat management plan (HMP) of developer Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE).
The leaflet claimed that “huge numbers of deer be drawn in from a vast . . .
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Harvard to install wind turbine on Holyoke Center
Harvard is planning to install small-scale wind turbines on top of the Holyoke Center and a parking garage, according to a media report.
While the wind turbines are not expected to generate a significant amount of electricity for Harvard, they will function as “outward symbols of our commitment to renewable energy and sustainability here on campus,” James Gray, associate vice president for Harvard real estate services told The New York Times.
Small-scale wind turbines, which are installed on top of . . .
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Garforth wind farm plan: Phase one set for approval
Stage one of a controversial wind farm scheme on land between Micklefield and Garforth looks set to get under way later this month.
Durham-based Banks Developments won permission earlier this year for a 60-metre ‘monitoring mast’ on green belt land at Hook Moor.
An exact date for the structure to go up has yet to be decided – but today a spokesman for Banks said it was “likely” to be in the next couple of weeks.
Data from the mast will . . .
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New Mesa Transmission plan sounding better to residents
VERNON (Special) — Area residents seemed to be more receptive to presentations made by representatives of Mesa Transmission LLC at a local meeting held Thursday evening than in previous meetings.
Many property owners were outraged earlier in the summer when letters from Mesa suggested T. Boone Pickens’ company might use the power of eminent domain to seize land for placement of water and power lines. But the language at the Thursday meeting was more palatable to most.
The project originally . . .
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