North Carolina to Ban Mountaintop Wind?

North Carolina to Ban Mountaintop Wind?
By Kate Galbraith July 22, 2009 Link to full article below

Some North Carolina politicians consider this type of thing an aesthetic blight — and want to ban it from the state’s peaks and ridgelines.

A furious battle over the aesthetics of wind energy has erupted in North Carolina, where lawmakers are weighing a bill that would bar giant turbines from the state’s scenic western ridgelines.

The big machines would “destroy our crown jewel,” said Martin Nesbitt, a state senator who supports the ban, according to a report in The Winston-Salem Journal.

To read the full article:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/north-carolina-to-ban-mountaintop-wind/

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Very Cool: My Wind Turbine

My Wind Turbine
June 8, 2009
Link to full article below

For several years, I have wanted to install a wind turbine to do even more to mitigate my impact on global warming. For the past 18 months, I've waited patiently for our local alternative energy company, Earth Turbines, to ready their product for market. Faced with ongoing delays while they perfect their technology I decided to go instead with a 10 kilowatt Bergey wind turbine.

Step one in the process is clearing the site where the turbine will be installed. That took much of my weekend. (There is something cathartic about clearing land. I always experience a degree of absolute physical exhaustion that is uncharacteristic of any other type of exercise.)

The next step in the process is permitting. Vermont has been sadly hostile to wind power, though residential turbines are much simpler to get approved than commercial installations. Recently a new law was passed that guarantees any electricity generated by a residential turbine must be purchased by the local utility at $.20 a kilowatt hour. This is called net-metering, and it's not a bad deal considering that here in Vermont we pay between $.10 and $.13 for the energy we purchase. Solar gets an even better deal at $.30 a kilowatt hour.

To read the full article: http://www.seventhgeneration.com/learn/inspiredprotagonist/my-wind-turbine-part-1?source=email&utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_term=READ+MORE+&utm_content=fidyl%40yahoo.com&utm_campaign=7Gen+-+June+24%2C+2009+-+Non-Nation

Wind turbines could more than meet U.S. electricity needs

Wind turbines could more than meet U.S. electricity needs, report says
The Interior Department report, which looks at the potential of wind turbines off the U.S. coast, is part of the government's process to chart a course for offshore energy development.
By Jim Tankersley
jtankersley@tribune.com
April 3, 2009

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-energy3-2009apr03,0,7532220.story

Reporting from Arlington, Va. -- Wind turbines off U.S. coastlines could potentially supply more than enough electricity to meet the nation's current demand, the Interior Department reported Thursday.

Simply harnessing the wind in relatively shallow waters -- the most accessible and technically feasible sites for offshore turbines -- could produce at least 20% of the power demand for most coastal states, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, unveiling a report by the Minerals Management Service that details the potential for oil, gas and renewable development on the outer continental shelf.

The biggest wind potential lies off the nation's Atlantic coast, which the Interior report estimates could produce 1,000 gigawatts of electricity -- enough to meet a quarter of the national demand.

To read the full article: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-energy3-2009apr03,0,7532220.story

Offshore wind power could alter ocean currents

Offshore wind power could alter ocean currents
Change is small but was enough to cause upwelling, according to study
By Michael Reilly
Discovery Channel
updated 2:07 p.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 12, 2008

Generating wind power at sea may disturb ocean currents and marine ecosystems, according to a new study.

Offshore wind farms are common in Europe; Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom all have several active installations. Wind power in the United States is currently confined to dry land, but three installations are planned off the coast of New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware, totaling about 1,500 megawatts of generating capacity.

Extracting energy from wind changes regional air currents, which can in turn affect how the nearby ocean circulates, according to Goran Brostrom of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo.

In a paper published this month in Journal of Marine Systems, Brostrom shows in a model that winds swirling at 11 to 22 miles per hour downwind of large farms are uneven. As they blow over the ocean they can roil the waters, causing upwelling.

The change in currents seems small — a nudge of just 3.3 feet per day — and the wind farms have to be around 1.9 square miles. But Brostrom said the effect is enough to bring nutrient-rich waters up from the depths, which marine life can thrive on.

"I think you will see a large effect over time," he said. "You will get more plankton blooming, and you will see more vibrant life overall at that place."

Plankton blooms are infamous for causing toxic red tides and for sucking oxygen out of the water. But they can also be food sources for larger animals.

"Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of debate," Brostrom said. Though he stressed that the goal for any man-made object should be to minimize environmental impact, he added: "I'm an optimist; I think this could be beneficial to local fisheries."

Such dreams of wind farms enriching ocean wildlife — or impacting it in any way — may be a bit premature, said Michael Dvorak of Stanford University. For one thing, all current farms are situated in water far shallower than the 98-foot depth assumed in Brostrom's paper. Some deeper farms have been proposed, but maintenance costs skyrocket the further from shore windmills are.

And Brostrom's study is a very general model — ocean currents and marine life could be affected in very different ways depending on the location of the farm.

"If you want to understand how ocean currents are really going to be affected, you'll want to include the bathymetry at the site," Dvorak said, referring to analysis of underwater depth, as well as do a detailed, specific study of the area's ecosystem.

Still, Dvorak pointed out Brostrom's study raises a point no one in the wind power industry had yet considered.

"People have looked at the climate effects of wind farms on land, but this is the first to bring up the question of ocean currents," he said. "This is something we should be looking at."
© 2008 Discovery Channel

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27681666/