Vestas Delivers First V110-2.0 Wind Turbines

Vestas is now manufacturing its first V110-2.0 MW wind turbines that will be delivered to EDP Renovaveis (EDPR) for several wind energy projects in the United States. The turbines are part of a supply agreement to deliver 1,500 MW to wind power plants in the Americas and Europe. EDPR said it selected the V110-2.0 MW because of its competitive cost of energy compared with other options.

The V110-2.0 MW turbines are expected to be delivered and commissioned in 2014 and 2015. The new projects’ names and specific locations are not currently available.

“Vestas has successfully worked with EDPR for the past eight years to deliver many wind-power projects around the world,” said Chris Brown, President of Vestas’ sales and service division in the United States and Canada. “We look forward to supplying EDPR our new V110-2.0 MW wind turbine, which is a variant of the V100-1.8 MW that can provide over 13 per cent higher annual energy production compared with its predecessor. Our 2-MW platform has a long track record of success and reliability. The V110-2.0 MW will provide clean, reliable and low cost electricity for decades.”

Vestas’ factories in Colorado will manufacture the blades, towers and nacelles for these projects.

The projects include five-year service agreements featuring the Active Output Management (AOM) 5000 offering. AOM 5000 is an energy-based availability guarantee that ensures the turbines are operational when the wind is blowing. This service option includes the VestasOnline surveillance system that remotely controls and monitors the turbines and predicts potential wear-and-tear issues. This allows Vestas to plan maintenance so the turbines operate with the minimum amount of lost production.

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Democratic electric

Anti-wind campaigners are angry that areas including the forests made famous by the tales of the brothers Grimm are among the targets for new turbines.

For the first time they have formed a national opposition group to thwart the expansion.

They say the growth of wind will damage forests and tourism across the country.

Germany has embarked on a massive expansion of renewable energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Chancellor Merkel's government decided to phase out atomic plants more rapidly and instead increased the opportunities for green power.

With guaranteed prices for 20 years thanks to feed-in tariffs enshrined in law, solar farms, biogas plants and wind parks have boomed. There are now 1.3 million small co-operatives and households supplying renewable energy to the grid.

This Energiewende or energy transformation has been remarkably successful, with 22% of Germany's electricity being generated by renewables in 2012. Wind has played a major part in this change, and the public has been generally supportive, despite rapidly increasing energy bills.

To date, a majority of the 23,000 Home Wind Turbine in the country have been built in the flatter north and eastern parts of the country. But now the focus of expansion is on the picture postcard areas of dark forest and lush green hills in the central and southern areas of Germany.

One such region is the Rheinhardswald in the northern part of the state of Hesse. This is the home of the magical tales of Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and others, made famous in the books of the brothers Grimm.

This quiet, scenic place is a magnet for tourists from all over the world.

But now there are also plans to build up to 200 turbines on the surrounding hills.

Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg is a PhD student and a vocal opponent of the plans.

"

It is not because this is the area of Sleeping Beauty

," she says.

"I want the green movement, I want green technology, I don't want nuclear power - but they should be made in the right way and not by destroying the forest.

"We have here special, old growth forest and some species just live in this area and are in danger because of the turbines."

The campaigners argue that putting residential wind turbines company in this area makes no sense. The wind speeds are low and the area is home to some extremely rare birds including the endangered black stork.

Across Germany, the plans for expansion have pitted green against green - the potential damage to natural resources from the building of turbines seems to be the biggest concern for opponents.

About 170 regional groups opposed to wind energy have now formed a national organisation called Vernunftkraft, to fight the expansion of turbines. They are trying to get enough signatures on a petition to force the German parliament to debate the future direction of the Energiewende, especially the subsidies for wind energy.

Wind farms are a 'complete scam'

Wind farms have been branded a 'complete scam' by Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, reigniting coalition battle over green power.

As the government unveiled new powers for local residents to block turbines blighting their villages, Mr Paterson condemned many planned schemes as 'deeply unpopular' and causing 'huge unhappiness' across the country.

The outspoken remarks from a senior Tory minister in charge of environmental policy risks a furious reaction from Liberal Democrats pushing for more renewable power projects.

The Conservatives have taken a tougher line on wind farms in recent months, and this week unveiled plans to give communities a powerful 'veto' over controversial new onshore developments.

Schemes will have to gain local residents' consent before a planning application can even be made, effectively handing them the power to prevent turbines being erected.

Planning rules are also to be changed so that the drive for renewable energy can no longer be used as a reason for overriding environmental and other concerns.

Mr Paterson signalled that plans for wind farms will have to take into account the impact on the countryside and views as well as the desire to save the planet.

In an extraordinary intervention at the Royal Cornwall Show yesterday, the Tory Cabinet minister said: 'Turbines are regarded as a complete scam, but as of today we have given power to local communities to decide.

'The criteria is now that environment and landscape will have to be taken into consideration as well as the national energy requirement.'

Under the new rules councils must look at the cumulative impact of wind turbines and reflect the effect on landscape and local facilities.

There is also a major increase promised in the amount developers pay local communities to win them over,  including long-term electricity bill discounts of up to 20 per cent.

However, Mr Paterson suggested anger with many schemes would not be overcome by additional bribes.

He added:'I know there is huge unhappiness with some of these projects, both from what I hear nationally and from my own constituency in Shropshire.

'There are places where these projects are well prepared, the community wants it and it will be worthwhile. But in inland areas they are very often deeply unpopular,' the Western Morning News reported.

Leila Deen, Greenpeace energy campaigner, said: 'Wind farms may seem like a scam to a Government minister who questions the science of climate change and who's pushing for his Shropshire constituency to be fracked for shale gas.

'The public disagrees - two thirds of people would rather have a wind turbine near their home than a fracking site.

'Onshore wind powered almost 2.5 million homes in 2011, is falling in cost and will play a key role in our future energy mix.'

Mr Paterson's appointment to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs last September was controversial, with allies forced to deny he was a climate change denier.

In 2007, he  described wind farms as ridiculous, claiming they 'demand vast amounts of public subsidy and do not work'.

Wind farm seeks permit to avoid fines in case of eagle deaths

A wind farm being developed in Osage County has applied for federal bald eagle "take" permits for the deaths of up to three of the protected birds each year for at least five years.

Opponents of the permit, including conservationists and tribes in the area, say they aren't against "green" energy investments. However, they are firmly against the placement of the planned 94-turbine wind farm, which is surrounded within five miles by several active bald eagle nests.

Wind Capital Group, a St. Louis-based energy organization, battled the Osage Nation - which has local interests in oil and gas - until late 2011 over the right to build the wind farm on land the tribe said was former hunting grounds and would be damaged by the project.

Tom Green, senior manager of project development for Wind Capital Group's Osage Wind farm, said he's eager to get the project built and confident that turbine construction will begin soon and finish next year.

"When I started in this business, I never imagined that people would think that wind was the environmental problem," Green said.

Steve Sherrod, executive director of the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, said wind farms can lead to a multitude of environmental problems for eagles and ground animals.

Animals can mistake the moving shadows of wind turbine for predators, said Sherrod, whose organization helped rehabilitate the bald eagle population by raising eagles from hatchlings and releasing them into the wild.

Eagles may travel up to 50 miles between feeding area and nest, according to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, and Sherrod said he's opposed to the wind farm's being so close to the eagles' hunting grounds.

"If you look at one site, it's not that big of a deal, but you look at all the sites ... collectively, you're looking at a huge impact," he said.

According to the Department of Wildlife Conservation, 800 to 2,000 eagles inhabit Oklahoma each year, with peak numbers in January and February.

Sherrod said wind farms across the nation are being built in previously untouched areas and upset the ecosystem not just for eagles but for all wildlife.

The permit for Osage Wind - filed late last year - has not been approved, but Green said the government agency has been positive about its outcome and that the construction of turbines is still planned to start as soon as this summer.

Green said the company is working to protect eagles alongside the project as much as possible and that in the permit process it included plans to help the eagle population.

"The eagle permit is something that has been developed over the last several years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, environmental groups and outside agencies," he said.

The killing of bald eagles - even incidentally as part of some other action - violates federal law. The acquisition of permits to kill them is voluntary and is taken as a precaution to avoid steep fines of up to $500,000 per offense under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

Scott BigHorse, assistant principal chief of the Osage Nation, said that during the ongoing battle between the tribe and Wind Capital, it has wanted the business to compromise on the land use and project scope. He said the plans for the property began in 2007 but that little to no interaction took place with the tribe.

"These were our hunting grounds. It was our domain," BigHorse said. "I don't know why they didn't come to the tribe. ... We could have sat down at the table, ... and we could have strategically placed these wind turbines to where they are not so much in the path."

BigHorse said the issue is also of high cultural significance to the tribe because of the importance of eagle feathers. The feathers are used in rituals "from when their (Indian children's) little feet hit the ground to the time of their passing, when we put them in the ground."

Mindless "green" indoctrination of children

Although fracking has been used for 60 years, in combination with deep horizontal drilling it has sent US oil and gas production sharply upward for the first time in decades, turned "imminent depletion" into another century of affordable petroleum, generated millions of jobs and billions of dollars in government revenues, kept home heating and electricity prices from skyrocketing in the face of EPA's war on coal, brought a resurgence in US petrochemical and other industries, and helped reduce CO2 emissions (which should make Earth Guardians and other global warming true believers happy). It's meant fewer oil imports, improved balance of trade, and more opportunities to lift more people out of poverty worldwide.

A recent IHS Global Insight report documents that, in the United States alone, fracking has already created 1.7 million new direct and indirect jobs, with the total likely to rise to 3 million jobs over the next eight years. It's added $62 billion to federal and state treasuries, with that total expected to rise to $111 billion by 2020. And by 2035, it could inject over $5 trillion in cumulative capital expenditures into the economy, while generating over $2.5 trillion in cumulative additional government revenues.

By contrast, $26 billion taken from taxpayers and given to wind, solar and biofuel energy projects via Department of Energy subsidies and loan guarantees since 2009 created only 2,298 permanent jobs, at a cost of $11.45 million per job, the Institute for Energy Research calculates, using DOE data.

If more of this new natural gas were devoted to generating electricity – instead of just backing up 40,000 US wind turbines – millions of birds and bats would not be slaughtered every year, and vital species would not be driven to the brink of extinction in wildlife habitats that have been blanketed by turbines.

The Earth Guardians ignore all of this, and claim hydraulic fracturing is poisoning our air and water.

The facts say otherwise. As the film FrackNation and numerous articles and reports have documented, there has never been a confirmed case of groundwater contamination due to fracking, despite numerous investigations by state agencies and the US Environmental Protection Agency. There is no evidence of air or people being poisoned, and companies continue to improve their technologies, to reduce methane leakage and employ more biodegradable and "kitchen cabinet" chemicals.

But the Earth Guardians still deliver outright falsehoods about fracking, by children to children, in public schools funded by taxpayer dollars. Perhaps this goes on because teachers and school administrators fail to recognize the potential harm, or are themselves devoted to promoting extreme environmentalist ideologies. Certainly they failed to exercise their responsibility and authority as educators to provide a balanced curriculum and avoid being used by groups with political agendas, to inculcate a new generation of Americans in perverse Hard Green dogmas that are harmful to wildlife, people and the environment.

Why is it that the Earth Guardians, Sierra Club and similar groups detest fracking? Maybe because this technology demolishes their Club of Rome claims that mankind is about to run out of petroleum – or because it means fossil fuels are again on the ascendency, making wind and solar even less viable and further demonstrating that wind energy is a far less sustainable energy resource than petroleum.

Even older students are vulnerable to being spoon-fed incorrect information. And student voters who are reluctant or too disinterested to seek truthful information can have a profound impact on U.S. elections and national policy.

On Scituate wind turbine

A second study of the effects of the Scituate Wind turbine has been planned.

Tom Thompson, often acting as the spokesman for a group of residents living near to the turbine referred to as the Community Group, made the announcement to the Scituate Board of Health during its meeting on March 25.

This came shortly before Gordon Deane, president of Palmer Capital Corporation, the manager of Scituate Wind, LLC, gave an update to the board on the status of any Request for Proposals (RFP) received in connection with an acoustical study the board of health agreed to commission, and which Scituate Wind would finance.

According to Thompson, the Community Group decided to conduct its own study “given the inadequate scope of the study supported by the board of health.”

“We determined that it was best to commission a study that took the more appropriate scope consistently espoused by the Community Group,” he said.

The board of health agreed to have an acoustical study performed after residents complained that noise and flicker from the 400-foot turbine located off the Driftway was responsible for headaches, dizziness, nausea, and sleep deprivation, among other negative health affects, they have experienced since the turbine went online in the spring of 2012.

After several meetings of a steering committee, which was comprised of members of the community group, board of health and the wind turbine manager, it was clear the group would not come to a compromise.

The Community Group has long stated that in addition to the acoustical study, other factors – including shadow flicker – should also be studied.

“We will be looking for the acoustician to conduct a study that essentially reflects the approach presented in our Steering Committee scope of work from January 2013, including focus on low frequency sound, infrasound and aerodynamic amplitude modulation,” Thompson said.

Thompson said the Community Group wants to conduct their study at the same time as the Scituate Wind study to “ensure the consistency of conditions, i.e., wind speed, wind direction, etc.”

“We also want to ensure that we receive the operational data from the industrial wind turbine, otherwise known as SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) to confirm the operational integrity of the wind turbine during testing,” he said.

Deane said that two engineering firms send proposals to the board of health regarding the acoustical study - one from Tech Environmental of Waltham, and one from Noise Control Engineering of Billerica.

 “Scituate Wind had questions about how Noise Control Engineering proposed to conduct the study, along with its proposed timeline,” he said.

Scituate Board of Health Chairperson Russell Clark said a special meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 29 to interview the firms interested in conducting the study.

Deane said questions were passed along to the board of health and will presumably be addressed during the interview process.

Additionally, he said there remains a need to better understand each company’s approach and understanding of the work they will perform.  Something, he said, that will also be discussed during the interviews.

As for the Community Group proposing their own study, Deane said the group is “welcome to sample alongside the engineers selected by Scituate Wind for sampling, as long as they are not interfering.”

Clark said there would be no problem with the studies being done simultaneously as long as the two companies could work together, as the Community Group would like.