Located near Arlington, Ore., the project consists of 300-plus wind turbines staggered over 30 square miles in the eastern part of the state. Construction of the Shepherds Flat wind farm began in 2009, and despite controversy over funding and a delay by the Air Force, progressed fairly quickly for a project of such size. The installation has a 20-year power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison, and was one of the first to use the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program.

Besides producing an estimated 2 billion kWh each year, Shepherds Flat is expected to have an annual economic impact of $37 million for the state. Sustainable Business Oregon reports that New York-based Caithness Energy employed more than 400 people to develop and will employ another 45 full-time workers.

In 2007, the state legislature created a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that requires the largest utilities in Oregon to provide 25 percent of their retail sales of electricity from newer, clean, renewable sources of energy by 2025. In addition to wind and solar energy, a recent survey shows that Oregonians strongly favor the development of tidal power resources as well. Ocean Power Technologies plans to deploy at 150-kilowatt “PowerBuoy” off the coast near Reedsport.

Photo credit: Loco Steve/Flickr

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One ad, paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, contained several contested claims relating to the Record Hill project, such as that King’s political connections allowed his company to receive a loan that he ended up profiting from. That ad was swapped out for another NRSC spot that features an assortment of citizens (who just happen to be members of an anti-wind group) complaining about how the turbines ruin their view. King’s campaign manager called on television stations to stop running both commercials, which he says constitute “deceptive advertising.”

So did King profit off wind power? Yes, but not to the extent claimed in the commercial. Until last year, King and his business partner held a 10 percent stake in the 22-turbine Roxbury project. But according to the independent candidate, he only earned $212,000 off the deal, not the “millions” claimed in the ad.

Was there a sweetheart government deal? The project did receive a $120 million government-backed loan, but it came through seven months after King sold his share in the project.

The advertisements, however, conveniently forget to mention that the Record Hill project paid the town of Roxbury $610,000 in taxes, bringing residential property taxes down significantly. The River Valley Sun Journal found that before the turbines residents paid $16.86 per $1,000 of property value. That number has dropped to $6.93.

After reaching out to television stations airing the current spot, King campaign manager Kay Rand said the campaign will take legal action if the ad continues ti air. Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee said that his organization stands behind both ads. It’s unclear whether the stations will acquiesce to King’s demands, but in the past stations have pulled commercials found to be misleading. The decision is up to each individual channel.

For its part, the King campaign is also fighting back with its own commercial, starring a man named “Rolly” who sits with the turbines behind him and says, “My taxes went down and I can hunt here. What more could I want?”

Main photo credit: Shutterstock

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With gray, cloudy Scandinavian winters, Denmark isn’t exactly known for its sunshine. Solar panels, however, still perform well there. Demand has been driven partly by a net metering program set up in 2010. Net metering, which is also available in many places in the United States, gives homeowners credit for extra solar power produced by the panels on their roof. If someone’s away during the day, or is simply using less power than the solar panels are generating, their electric meter will begin to spin backward. At a later point, when the homeowner needs that power, they can access it from the grid without paying for it. That’s an especially good deal in Denmark, which has some of the highest electricity prices in the world.

Danish citizens have an appetite for innovative products, so they’ve been quick to embrace solar power, according to a manager from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Denmark benefits from a strong design tradition and this also characterizes the Danish solar sector in which aesthetics and thinking ahead of user needs is a central part of product development,” said Kim Schultz, from Invest in Denmark.  “This means that solar solutions are more likely to meet consumers’ demands.”

Denmark also has other strong renewable energy programs, which have made the existing infrastructure ideally suited for solar power. Wind power has been well developed, especially offshore, and is continuing to grow. Denmark plans to get 50 percent of its electricity from wind power by 2020, and is already over halfway to that goal. By 2050, the country plans to get 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. If Denmark’s solar use is any indication, the country may even reach that ambitious goal there early. This is the kind of leadership we need to fight climate change in time.

Main image credit: Carsten Medom Madsen/Shutterstock

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Taking to Twitter of all places, Trump proclaimed his displeasure with turbines located in the California desert. “Ugly wind turbines have destroyed the entrance to Palm Springs, CA,” he tweeted. “These monstrosities are ruining landscapes all over the globe–expensive & bad electric.” In an interview with The Desert Sun, Trump took his feelings one step further, calling the area a “sad person’s version of Disneyland” which one may imagine was a bit of an insult to some Coachella Valley residents who don’t see the turbines the same way.

“Tell him that only HE can afford the huge power bills we would have without them,” wrote David Ross on Facebook. “There are many uglier things that could be there.” The Palm Springs area has plenty of wind and sun to spare and is taking full advantage of both of them to provide for the energy it needs.

As drivers approach the Palm Springs desert from Los Angeles, they are greeted with acre after acre of several different generations of wind turbine technology. It’s a little like a working museum of the history of the industry, with different kinds of blades and tower construction dotting the landscape.

I’ve driven by the fields of wind turbines in and around Palm Springs dozens of times and each time I am amazed at how beautiful a sight they are. I’ll take turbines generating clean energy over water and land-hogging golf courses – or really bad hair cuts – any day of the week.

[via The Desert Sun]

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According to Recharge News, the new fee “plunged a knife into the heart of its renewables sector, leaving development dead in the water for the next few years.” The true impact has yet to be seen, but the new grid-access charge could amount to a 39 perent retroactive grid tax for PV operators.

The reason behind the price hike is surprising. Using a basic feed-in tariff that pays renewables high prices for their electricity over long-term contracts, solar and wind did very well in Bulgaria. Better, in fact, than anyone expected or projected.  Bulgaria’s aging power grid will soon be unable to handle it. The government needed to tamp down the industry’s success, so decided it would add require payment of a retroactive tax to access the energy grid.

Even though the renewables industry was doing well, the unexpected fee has left companies scrambling.

Investors said they would sue, and have looked into several possible bases. The regulator’s failure to hold a public discussion or inform the investors about the new fees constitutes a breach of contract, they say. On top of that, they also complained that the regulator breached competition rules, thereby abusing its position. Undeniably, they are looking at the money they owe to the banks – said to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars range – and worrying how they will ever pay them back. Even if the renewable energy companies win in court, industry insiders say many developers will not be able to meet the terms of their loans and will go bankrupt.

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Right now, homeowners wanting to get solar power on their rooftop can take the federal solar tax credit. When tax time rolls around, you can claim up to 30 percent of the cost of your solar system on your taxes. If your tax liability isn’t that high, the extra credit will roll over to the next year. The tax incentive has been an important part of helping solar power quickly grow; wind and solar have grown six-fold even in the middle of a deep recession. But the new report, from the Climate Policy Initiative, says that a cash incentive could work as well for much less money.

According to the study, a 14 percent cash incentive would provide the same benefit as the tax credit, while costing government 57 percent less. By providing up-front investment, the government could help homeowners reduce the need to get outside financing, which would help reduce the overall cost of the project. The other benefit of the cash incentive is that it can help anyone, regardless of their tax liability. The report recommends that the government offer homeowners options for both the incentive and the tax credit.

The study also found that a cash incentive could improve wind policy. By extending the current wind production tax credit, but delivering it as a cash incentive, the government could help wind project owners get the same benefit while reducing government costs by nearly half.

Main photo credit: isak55/Shutterstock

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In a study published in the journal Wind Energy (PDF), the authors detailed how their five years of modeling studies determined that by placing 144,000 offshore wind turbines – each 270 feet high and each capable of generating 5 megawatts of power – up and down the coast from Maine to Florida we could provide enough electricity for the entire region.

While looking for the best places to capture and utilize wind energy, the researchers looked for regions with a low hurricane risk, a water depth of less than 100 feet, and areas without any conflicting uses such as shipping lanes or bird migration paths. The offshore area from Virginia to Maine was found to have “the most exceptional overall resource” due to wind patterns and a significantly less chance of devastating hurricane activity in the future. For the area south of Virginia down to Florida, the report stated that quite a large area could be available for offshore wind if the concept of floating turbines were developed into more feasible units from their current prototype-like state.

“People mistakenly think that wind energy is not useful because output from most land-based turbines peaks in the late evening/early morning, when electricity demand is low,” said Mike Dvorak, principle author of the study. “The real value of offshore wind energy is that it often peaks when we need the most electricity — during the middle of the day.”

With the $2.5 billion Cape Wind Project starting to take shape off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and lawsuits opposing it being dropped, we could soon see much more offshore wind development in the near future. Currently the U.S. gets just 4 percent of its electricity from wind power. Would residents up and down the East Coast trade off the distant sight of 144,000 turbines off the coast of their beach to know all their power is coming from a clean and renewable source? Would you?

[via NBC News]

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Exelon, which owns about 2 percent of the country’s wind capacity, has been lobbying members of Congress to kill the tax credits. Company executives say the credits disrupt the energy market in a way that’s counterproductive for nuclear power. They argue that the credits have been intact long enough to jumpstart the industry. Extending them, the argument goes, would unfairly favor wind power over other clean energy options.

That viewpoint doesn’t jive with the majority of AWEA board members, who voted to oust the company last week. The trade group has recently made attempts to secure an extension of the wind tax credits the hallmark of its efforts to advance the wind power industry.

Exelon became a major player in American wind power generation when it bought John Deere Renewables in 2010. The company now runs more than 35 wind projects in 10 states. Its stake in wind power production is so valuable that the company, though deeply involved with nuclear power, earned a spot of AWEA’s board.

Despite the company’s support for wind production, Exelon officials claim the wind farm tax credits effectively lower the wholesale price of electricity. That’s not good for Exelon’s bottom line. The company operates 10 nuclear plants and 17 reactors that account for about 20 percent of the nation’s total nuclear capacity. It is also vested in fossil, hydro, biomass, landfill gas, wind and solar power production. Politico reports that Exelon’s CEO told investors it has more than $400 million marked for wind development that it will funnel to other projects if the tax credits run out.

The incentives for wind farms are set to expire Dec. 31. If reelected, President Barack Obama has said he would extend the tax incentive. Republican rival Mitt Romney, however, has said he would let it expire.

Main photo credit: majeczka/Shutterstock.com

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Research led by Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira and published in the journal Nature Climate Change on September 9 shows that by combining ground-level and high-altitude atmospheric wind turbines, we could provide for 100 times the current power demands of the entire world. Combining surface-level wind turbines generating 400 TW of power and turbines floated high into the atmosphere on kites capable of generating 1,800 TW means that we could extract a whopping 2,200 terrawatts of power from the wind. Today the whole world uses just 18 TW of power, meaning that wind could provide all the energy we need for the foreseeable future.

Using models to study the effects of drag on turbines and how many could be placed in formation before winds slowed too much to generate any more electricity, the researchers set out to find the point at which energy extraction was at its highest. They also showed that there could a 0.1 degree Celsius rise rise in surface temperatures due to attempts to harvesting so much wind power, but contrary to some studies the overall effect on the environment would be very minor, especially considering that all our energy would then be from a clean, renewable source.

“Looking at the big picture, it is more likely that economic, technological or political factors will determine the growth of wind power around the world, rather than geophysical limitations,” Caldeira said.

We recently mentioned that wind turbines could solve the world’s water crisis and now it looks like if we set our efforts to it, energy derived from the wind could also power our entire world for hundreds of years. Just what are we waiting for?

[via Science Daily]

Image Credit: jinterwas/Flickr

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Wild Horse Wind Farm, located in Kittitas County, Washington, generates electricity for 80,000 homes via 149 wind turbines placed high across 10,000 privately-owned acres of Whiskey Dick Mountain ridge tops.

Each standing 351 feet tall with a rotor diameter of 264 feet, the 1.8-megawatt Vestas V80 turbines are capable of producing electricity with wind speeds of just 9 mph – which is easily reached most of the year – but generate peak power when winds are at 31 mph. The 273-megawatt facility broke ground in 2005 with plans for 125 turbines and was expanded upon in 2009 with additional 24. The area is also home to the Pacific Northwest’s largest solar-power array, capable of generating 500 kilowatts of electricity.

Visitors to the wind farm have access to miles of paved, gravel, and dirt trails winding their way around and up to Whiskey Dick peak, as well as the Renewable Energy Center at Wild Horse offering educational displays and tours. Most people don’t get a chance to see wind turbines up close like this and it must be magnificent to stand directly underneath one as its blades fly by. By allowing hikers, bikers, hunters and horseback riders to get up close and personal to the farm, Puget Sound Energy is encouraging interest in the technology which in turn could result in further support for more wind turbines when we need them.

Take a tour inside one of Puget Sound Energy’s wind turbines:

[via Seattle Times]

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