Wind

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday formally signed the nation's first lease for a major offshore wind project, as the Obama administration pushes forward to boost renewable energy output.

The lease for the controversial $1 billion Cape Wind wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts officially ends a nine-year regulatory process for the project.

"Our responsibility now is to take the lessons learned from that process--and from the growing pool of experiences with offshore wind development around the globe--and build a smart U.S. program," Salazar said at an offshore wind energy conference in Atlantic … Read more

IBM announced today it has partnered with Alstom Wind Power and Ikerlan-IK4 to develop an automated platform for better manipulating wind turbines and predicting their output of electricity.

The product improves the amount of power that can be gleaned from wind energy, which is often debased by critics for its unreliable nature compared to other energy sources.

Using IBM's existing Rational Software originally intended for model-driven development, and its BigLever Gears, originally intended for product line engineering, Alstom Wind Power and Ikerlan-IK4 have developed an automated wind control development platform.

Real-time electronic sensors on wind turbines gather data on … Read more

Optiwind is one the few companies searching for the middle ground in wind power--somewhere between the gigantic three-blade wind mills and the small turbines for individual homes.

The company has erected its first midsize, production-scale wind turbine on a family farm in its home state of Connecticut to test performance, the company said late last week. It received a $1 million loan from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund for the project.

Optiwind is targeting organizations that have electricity bills around $100,000 per year and are looking for on-site power generation to offset those expenses. Alternatives approaches have included … Read more

International Battery and Electric Marine Propulsion have partnered to build a yacht that runs on wind energy even when its sails are lowered, both companies announced on Tuesday.

The Tang is a 60-foot hybrid-electric Tag Yachts catamaran with twin E motion 18-kilowatt permanent-magnet motors powered by a 144-volt lithium ion battery pack. The batteries charge onboard from wind-generated electricity of sorts, though this boat isn't exactly sporting small-wind turbines.

"The main renewable energy input to the large-format battery pack is electricity regenerated by wind power as the boat's propellers spin in the wake, under sail. The propellers turn the 18-kilowatt propulsion motors, which automatically become generators and send electricity back to the batteries," according to International Battery.

… Read more

The densely populated U.S. East Coast could meet close to half its current electric demand by relying on offshore wind turbines, a study by an ocean conservation group found.

North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Virginia offer the most potential for easily captured wind energy, according to the Oceana study, which estimates that the 13 coastal states could together generate 127 gigawatts of power.

That represents the potential for far more wind power than the United States currently generates. At the end of 2009, the nation's land-based turbines were capable of producing some 35,000 megawatts of … Read more

WALTHAM, Mass.--Five years ago, energy storage on the U.S. electric grid was almost nonexistent, but demonstration projects have shown that storage makes the grid more reliable and cleaner, according to a Department of Energy official.

Imre Gyuk, the program manager for energy storage research at the DOE, was the keynote speaker today at an IEEE conference on grid technologies where he said the grid storage industry is in the process of scaling up. Costs remain a barrier to putting more storage buffers onto the grid, but the question of costs may be a "red herring," he … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--As people consider the best path to a sustainable energy future, two polar ends of a debate are emerging between those who argue for a big boost in technology research and those who advocate more aggressive use of existing technology.

Those who work at incumbent companies in the oil and gas industry don't expect miracles with the ability to transform energy overnight, according to speakers at the EmTech conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology yesterday.

At the opposite extreme are techno-optimists, such as Bill Gates and venture capitalist John Doerr, who say that much more money … Read more

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators will introduce legislation tomorrow that would require utilities to generate minimum levels of power from clean energy like wind and solar, after such a measure was stripped from a broader oil-spill bill in July.

Sens. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat who heads the Senate energy committee, and Sam Brownback, a Republican, will unveil the standalone bill in the afternoon.

"I think that the votes are present in the Senate to pass a renewable-electricity standard," Bingaman said in a release. "I think that we need to get on with figuring out what … Read more

BYD, a China-based electric car manufacturer, is expanding into the U.S. energy market and has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power to provide storage for its renewable energy sources.

Under the agreement, the Warren Buffet-backed company will develop a 5- to 10-megawatt power storage unit for the LADWP that will be housed at the utility's wind power facility in the Tehachapi mountains. The storage unit will help LADWP expand its delivery of renewable energy, and will help it comply with a recently passed California state bill that requires electric … Read more