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2013年8月29日 星期四

Government delays $450m wind turbine

Transport Minister Norman Baker announced that, whilst the Planning Inspectorate panel appointed to consider the application for the development had recommended granting consent, he wished to receive further evidence relating to ecological compensation measures and the protection of a local rail line.

Baker asked for further information on these two issues to be supplied by 25 September.

Should it get the green light the park is to cover 906 acres, providing 1,279 metres of quayside facilities purpose built for the manufacture, assembly and installation of offshore renewable technologies. It is expected to create 4,000 local jobs and establish the Humber area as a "world-class centre for the renewable energy industries", according to Able UK.

Neil Etherington, Able UK group development director, said: "It is obviously good news that the panel which carried out the very detailed and complex examination of our application recommended granting consent. It's also good news that in today's announcement Ministers do recognise the regeneration and economic benefits for both the local area and the wider development of the offshore renewable energy industry."

"At the same time it has to be said that a further delay in a decision is disappointing."

Baker's report stated that the government recognised that "facilitating the regeneration and economic development of the area around the project, and supporting the development of the offshore renewable energy industry are matters of substantial public benefit" but that it realised that the project "would be likely to have a number of adverse environmental impacts, especially in relation to the ecologically-sensitive Humber estuary."

Renewable UK's deputy chief executive, Maf Smith, said: "Today's announcement marks an important step forward in the development of the UK's offshore wind manufacturing sector. This project demonstrates the massive scale of the opportunity we have to revitalise coastal areas around the country, creating tens of thousands of green-collar jobs by focusing specifically on marine renewables."

Etherington added: "We will be taking immediate steps to address the issues raised in the government's announcement today."

Read the full story at scfwindturbine.com web! If you love wind turbines, welcome to contact us!

2013年8月25日 星期日

Wind turbines spinning

Wind turbines spinning on the Palouse are the final piece of Avista Utilities’ strategy to meet Washington’s new renewable energy standards.

Energy from the 58-turbine Palouse Wind farm, which started operations last year, has pushed the Spokane-based utility over the top. Even with future customer growth, Avista officials say they’ve lined up enough qualifying renewable energy to meet Initiative 937’s requirements through 2020.

Passed by voters in 2006, the initiative requires most utilities serving Washington customers to get 15 percent of their electricity from new renewable sources by 2020. The initiative’s goal is to diversify green energy production in Washington, prompting investment in wind, solar, geothermal and biomass in a state long dependent on hydropower, said Danielle Dixon, senior policy associate for the NW Energy Coalition in Seattle.

More than $8 billion has been spent on wind, solar and biomass development in Washington over the past 15 years, with the majority funneling into wind. At least part of that investment can be attributed to I-937’s passage, initiative backers say.

Some utilities “acquired early and acquired sufficiently,” which means they’ve blown past the upcoming deadlines, Dixon said.

In addition to Avista, Puget Sound Energy has enough resources in place to generate 15 percent of its electricity from new renewable resources, said Ray Lane, PSE spokesman. The utility, which serves about 1.1 million customers in the Interstate 5 corridor, built its own wind farms.

Avista provides electricity to about 237,000 Eastern Washington electric customers. The utility is ahead of the game for several reasons, said Jason Thackston, the company’s vice president for energy resources.

Avista was able to count toward I-937 requirements additional energy produced from the installation of new turbines at its Clark Fork River dams, because the turbines produce more kilowatts from the same river flow. Avista can also count energy from two long-term wind contracts, along with upcoming work at two Spokane River dams that will increase electrical output.

Through a legislative amendment, Avista will be able to count electricity produced at its existing Kettle Falls biomass plant toward the renewable tally beginning in 2016. However, the utility will have to document that the wood waste burned at the plant doesn’t come from old-growth forests, said Jessie Wuerst, an Avista spokeswoman.

Avista spent about $3.6 million last year to meet I-937’s requirements, according to information filed with the state. The cost represents less than 1 percent of a residential customer’s electric bill, officials said.

As a result of I-937, Avista invested sooner in new generating resources than it otherwise would have, Thackston said. But the utility got a good deal on its 30-year contract to purchase electricity from the Palouse Wind farm near Oakesdale, Wash., he said.

Buying energy from the Palouse was cheaper than Avista’s projected cost of putting up its own wind turbines on land it purchased near Reardan, Thackston said.

While Avista has met I-937’s requirements with relative ease, its smaller neighbor – Inland Power – is in a different situation.

Inland Power is an electric cooperative that serves 39,000 customers spread across 13 counties. Most are rural residents and 42 percent are low-income, said Chad Jensen, Inland Power’s chief executive officer.

Inland Power is already one of the nation’s greenest utilities, purchasing 81 percent of its electricity from federal hydroeletric dams, Jensen said. Because its customer base is relatively stable, complying with I-937 will force the utility to invest in renewable energy it doesn’t need, he said.

“It’s a frustrating piece of legislation,” Jensen said. “We’re having trouble getting sensible changes that we think should be easy tweaks.”

Inland Power lobbied the Legislature this year, saying that upgrades at federal hydroelectric facilities should count toward the utility’s I-937 requirements. That’s one of the inequities in the initiative, Jensen said: If utilities own the dam, they get credit for upgrades that increase electrical output. If they don’t own the dam, they can’t count the upgrades toward I-937.

Inland Power is spending nearly $3.4 million to help finance major upgrades at Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams, two federal dams on the Columbia River that produce power the utility purchases.

Though Inland Power couldn’t get the Legislature to adopt the change this year, Jensen said the utility will continue to push for an amendment. More than 50 bills related to I-937 were introduced during the last legislative session, which hampered the effort, he said.

“There were so many bills trying to change Initiative 937 that we couldn’t get any traction,” Jensen said.

Read the full story at scfwindturbine web! If you love wind turbines, welcome to contact us!

2013年4月2日 星期二

Rankin to build wind turbine

While students revel in their spring break, work will begin Thursday on erecting a 100-foot-tall wind turbine at Rankin School in South Pekin as the foundation for the monopole will be dug and poured.

Rankin Community School District 98 received a grant of up to $40,000 from the Illinois Clean Energy Foundation, according to District Superintendent Steve Johnson, to install a wind turbine to use as an educational tool.

“We’re not going to be installing it for the purpose of saving energy,” Johnson said. “We’re going to be using it as an educational tool for our students. We have some software that will feed the energy data from the turbine into the classrooms so our students can learn about clean energy and energy produced by the wind.

“We’re excited about it — we’re looking forward to it. It should create enough energy to light about 40 bulbs, so (we) won’t really see much savings from it.”

According to the grant application documents, the district will pay at least 10 percent of the installation costs, which will come from the building and maintenance budget.

Windy City Green Power, a Palatine-based firm, is helping coordinate the installation efforts, Johnson said.

Having recently received the go-ahead from the Tazewell County Regional Office of Education, the digging for the foundation is set to begin at 8 a.m. and finish at about noon Thursday, Johnson said.

The Rankin School District has already committed to alternative energy education, and the turbine should make its offerings more comprehensive.

The school already has a solar panel system that is used for educational purposes. Information about the power output of the panels is streamed to a website — available through a link on the district’s website — where students can view the effect the weather has on the panels’ output.

According to the district’s grant application, math and science teachers for the district’s junior high school are applying for a grant from the Illinois Wind Schools program for resources to develop a curriculum centered around the wind turbine, with topics including “fundamentals of wind energy, principles of wind turbine operation and ideas for integrating wind energy into the existing curriculum.”

The district also said in the grant application that it would work with the parents’ organization to host a “Wind Celebration Event” to raise community awareness about the importance of the turbine.

 Dan Hayden with Capitol Power says “There was a very low risk of the fire spreading on the ground and at that point we realized there was not much they could do expect let it burn itself out.”

It was the first fire involving a functioning wind turbine in Ontario, and Dave Hemingway with Central Huron Against Turbines is among those who are concerned.

“The local municipalities don’t have either high-level rescue capabilities, as high as these turbines are, or they don’t have any fire equipment to put out a fire like this. Then you also wonder how far pieces off the turbine will travel in the wind.”

A crane will be brought in to remove the destroyed nacelle and blades as soon as possible, then a decision will have to be made about whether the burned-out parts can be replaced.

2013年3月24日 星期日

What is a good price for nuclear power?

There are two questions about such cost comparisons: what rival technology is the most sensible benchmark for nuclear power; and how quickly will the costs of less mature, rival technologies like offshore wind and CCS fall?

Regarding benchmarking, nuclear is baseload, dispatchable (but less flexible than gas and coal), low carbon and with low marginal costs.

The best comparisons may be hydropower (now fully exploited in Britain) and tidal power (untested and probably hugely expensive), both of which tick all those boxes.

Biomass and fossil fuels with CCS are zero carbon (although there is a question mark over biomass), dispatchable, baseload options but they have high marginal (fuel) costs.

Zero carbon and zero marginal cost wind and solar power are neither baseload nor dispatchable and require grid expansion or expensive battery technology to reduce their intermittency.

Given all of the above, the best benchmarks may be CCS and tidal power, both of which are untested, and large-scale offshore wind. Regarding potential cost reductions, offshore wind is a good example.

In its 2011 “Renewable energy roadmap” DECC targeted a reduction in offshore wind power costs by 2020 to 100 pounds per megawatt hour, still more expensive than a 90 pounds nuclear tariff.

Alternatively, the cost of a 90 pounds nuclear power purchase agreement can be compared with support rates for renewables, through an existing tradable certificate scheme.

The value of renewable obligation certificates (ROCs) is set by an administrative buy-out price plus the amount of redistributed penalty payments for non-compliance, which adds roughly an extra 5-10 percent, making for a total ROC value presently of about 42 pounds. Renewable power generators get a certain number of ROCs per MWh plus the wholesale power price.

For example, onshore wind gets 0.9 ROCs per megawatt hour, which works out at around 38 pounds, plus a year-ahead wholesale power price of about 56 pounds per MWh, adding up to 94 pounds.

Various technologies receive the following, in 2012 pounds per MWh: co-firing biomass with coal (77 pounds); onshore wind (94 pounds); hydropower (98 pounds); dedicated biomass burning (119 pounds); and offshore wind, large-scale solar and geothermal power all on 140 pounds.

So a nuclear tariff of 90 pounds so far appears competitive both according to a levelized cost and subsidy comparison with alternative technologies.

But there are enough other considerations to allow both supporters and detractors to claim the economic argument.

Given the scale of capital costs it has to recoup, EDF may insist on a power purchase contract of more than 30 years.

That is longer than the present ROC scheme contracts (20 years) or its replacement scheme from 2014 (15 years).
But nuclear power plants will last longer than wind farms and solar panels: EDF anticipates a lifespan of 60 years for its proposed giant 3.3 gigawatt Hinkley Point C power plant. And then there are the big, less tangible items: the benefit to the UK economy, and the waste disposal problem.

The discounted, estimated clean-up cost at the country’s main nuclear waste site is 37 billion pounds and rising, according to the National Audit Office.

That does not appear to include the cost of long-term storage in a geological disposal facility whose site and therefore costs are still unknown.

Meanwhile, EDF is eager to trumpet a 2 billion pounds investment in the regional economy over the lifetime of its proposed project, and 25,000 new jobs over the construction period.

That might be the clincher for the British government. For the rest, and in answer to the question in the headline above — 90 pounds per MWh is competitive, but the uncertainty over waste disposal is a big concern.

2012年10月25日 星期四

Work set to begin on Columbia Pike face-lift

Drivers on busy Columbia Pike in Arlington can expect years of construction delays as the county prepares to give the entire neighborhood a face-lift.

Construction is set to begin in August between South Wakefield Street and South Four Mile Run Drive, where crews place utility lines underground, widen sidewalks, plant trees and install street lights, benches and bike racks.

But the $7 million, 18-month project is only a small part of the planned Pike-wide makeover. The county has a total of $80 million set aside for street improvements on the road that stretches westward from the Pentagon to the Fairfax County line.

"To complete the entire 3.5 miles of Columbia Pike is going to take three to four years," said William Roberts, who manages transportation projects for the county. "It's going to be done in phases."

From the short-term pain of construction will come long-term gain, county officials said.

"These street improvements bring us one step closer to realizing Arlington's vision for an accessible, diverse and vibrant Columbia Pike," Arlington board Chairwoman Mary Hynes said earlier.

The county is also installing larger, more comfortable bus stops and energy-efficient LED streetlights on the Pike. And roadwork may stretch even longer if the county board adopts a plan Monday to install a $249 million streetcar system.

"First all the utilities have to go underground, then you have the streetcar. So it's going to take a while," said Kamal Taktak, who will oversee the utility project and who promised work would be done only during non-rush hours and at night.

The county board is expected to vote on the streetcar Monday. A report issued earlier this month promised that the streetcar would generate hundreds of millions in property tax revenues and other benefits.

But critics complain the streetcar will cost too much; others worry the increased development will push out poorer residents along the Pike and change the street's historic character.

"We don't want Columbia Pike so gentrified that we drive away small businesses, like car repair shops or small venues that have been here for years, only to be replaced with chain restaurants," said Sarah McKinley, vice president of Arlington's Columbia Heights Civic Association, in a letter to the county board.

According to an arrest affidavit, a Ouachita Parish Sheriff's deputy approached a vehicle sitting in the median on U.S. 165 early Saturday and turned his lights on. The suspects fled, running a red light and turning left on East Street. The vehicle turned right on Temple Street, proceeding across numerous intersections, ignoring stop signs and red lights and reaching speeds of over 100 mph before crashing on South Grand Street.

The driver fled on foot while the deputy tended the injuries of the passenger. Reed later turned himself in and admitted to driving the vehicle. He said he fled because he was on probation.

Reed was booked on charges of aggravated flight, driving under suspension, two counts of ignoring a traffic signal, nine counts of ignoring a stop sign, improper exhaust, improper parking and reckless operation.