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Comparing Green Energy Suppliers

February 8, 2012 by Vicky Portwain
with 30 views

Insurance comparison websites have been around for a while and have helped consumers choose the cheapest and / or most suitable product for them without phoning a huge number of suppliers. A similar website service for household and business energy now helps people compare energy prices and features allowing them to decide which is the... [read more]

Dwarfing Cape Wind with a Patriot-sized wind farm

February 6, 2012 by Rich Maltzman
with 169 views

Take a look at the two areas above. The top one represents Cape Wind, about which we’ve posted several times. Now, a new area has been set aside for a wind farm which, according to a story in today’s Boston Globe, “could produce as much as 4,000 megawatts, 10 times as much electricity as the proposed Cape Wind project, which is slated to... [read more]

Cleantech Firms Paying the Price for Subsidies

February 2, 2012 by Geoffrey Styles
with 258 views

In observing the recent struggles of various segments of the global cleantech industry, including renewable energy and advanced energy technology firms, a pattern is emerging. Today's Wall St. Journal reports "Wind Power Firms on Edge," as the US wind industry hunkers down pending the renewal or expiration of a key subsidy at the end of... [read more]

GE: Like A Little Solar With Your Wind?

January 29, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 653 views

“Expertise in multiple technologies is the future of the renewable energy landscape,” Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s Renewable Energy business, said in a statement. “At GE, we’re uniquely able to partner on both wind and solar projects with customers like Invenergy.” [read more]

Should we lift the moratorium on offshore wind in the Great Lakes?

January 26, 2012 by Tyler Hamilton
with 417 views

For a year now there has been a moratorium on the development of offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes. The Ontario government issued the ban because it said more study was needed to make sure the projects can be developed safety and responsibly, even though such studies were supposedly already done when the previous moratorium was... [read more]

Are Hybrid Ribbons the Future of Renewables?

January 24, 2012 by George Green
with 403 views

Weather based renewables tend to be, by their nature, unpredictable. Your solar panel works most efficiently when there are clear skies and no clouds, while wind power clearly needs wind. Anything based on rain requires a good downpour. This means that, although you can store energy in batteries for later, these renewables are... [read more]

$1 Billion More Pumping Into U.S. Wind

January 21, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 684 views

Dire predictions abound for U.S. wind power development if a federal production tax credit dies as scheduled at the end of this year, but projects already in the works appear to retain solid investment appeal. Sempra Energy sure seems to think so. The sprawling California energy company said it is jumping in with BP on a couple of big... [read more]

Vestas Lays off 10% of Workforce, Restructures Management

January 16, 2012 by David Thorpe
with 280 views

How the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer Vestas is laying off 10% of it's global workforce, halting production at one of its 26 plants. What does this mean for the company, and, more significantly, for the global wind industry in 2012? [read more]

Wind Industry Just Hot Air? The Green Skeptic on FOX Business

December 28, 2011 by Scott Edward Anderson
with 300 views

On Tuesday I sat down with Stuart Varney & Company on FOX Business to talk about wind power and the relative merits of distributed generation versus big wind farms, including the need for transmission and grid infrastructure improvements to make big wind viable. Here's the video: Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com... [read more]

It’s Official – Wind Generates “Substantially” More Electricity

December 22, 2011 by Vicky Portwain
with 360 views

The latest Government figures on the amount of electricity generated by wind power have been welcomed by RenewableUK, the country’s largest renewable energy trade association, as proof of the increasingly significant contribution wind energy makes to UK households. Statistics for the third quarter of 2011, released by the Department of... [read more]

Offshore Wind Gets Its Bearings After NRG's Project Collapses

December 20, 2011 by Jim Pierobon
with 382 views

“Financially untenable” is how NRG Energy updates its outlook for what was a planned array of wind turbines offshore Delaware. And with that prognosis, the future of wind energy off the U.S. East Coast is very much in doubt. While the project’s fate may have been cast when the U.S. Department of Energy rejected its application for a... [read more]

The Battle to Extend Wind Incentives

December 9, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 625 views

With the end of the year approaching, the annual Congressional debate over extending a variety of expiring federal tax credits and other benefits is gearing up again. Few of these measures are as high-profile as the payroll tax cut, but each has a vocal constituency, including renewable energy. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA... [read more]

Massive Battery System Captures Wind Power

December 6, 2011 by Silvio Marcacci
with 1,254 views

One of the biggest challenges facing wind energy is intermittency. Wind often blows strongest when power demand is lowest, and weakest when electricity is needed the most. Because today’s power grid needs electricity to be consumed the moment it’s generated, that means wind turbines send energy to the grid half as often as an average coal plant. What if wind farms could store the power that isn’t needed right away and sell it later when demand is high? energyNOW! correspondent Patty Kim visited an energy storage system built alongside a wind farm in the heart of coal country. [read more]

Canada Doubles Its Wind Capacity in 2011

December 6, 2011 by Nathanael Baker
with 250 views

Canada's wind industry has had a record year. According to the latest data from the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA), 1,400 megawatts of wind capacity was installed in 2011, more than doubling 2010's output. With over 5,400 megawatts of wind energy at its disposal, enough to power 1.5 million homes, the country now holds the ninth largest wind generating capacity in the world. This year's record number of installations cumulatively represent almost $3.5 billion in investment as well as 13,500 jobs. [read more]

An Atlantic Wind Project: Big, Bold and Risky

December 2, 2011 by Marc Gunther
with 486 views

Building a low-carbon economy requires bold ideas and long-term thinking on a scale that matters. Ideas like The Atlantic Wind Connection. The Atlantic Wind Connection, you may recall, is a company that has embarked on a multi-billion dollar, decade-long project to build an undersea transmission cable stretching about 350 miles... [read more]