March 22, 2004

Wind Harvest Company Wind News
A compilation of story leads from around the world.
By:  Kevin Wolf

Note:  These story titles and lead paragraphs predominantly come from Energy Central's daily posting of the world's energy stories. Others are sent to me by subscribers of Wind News.  Energy Central requires paid membership to read full stories.  You can often paste the headline into the Google search engine and find the original source of the story.   When I have them, I will include the URL.  Please send me stories that you find, and I will add them into the next edition of Wind News.  Thank you. Kevin
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BIG BOOST FOR WIND ENERGY

  A new report has estimated the maximum wind capacity in the
  Australian electricity market at around 8,000 megawatts.
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TURKMEN SOLAR, WIND ENERGY POTENTIAL ESTIMATED

  The preservation of clean air is a priority area of Turkmenistan's
  environment protection policy.
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WIND TURBINES CONCERN STATE, AUDUBON

  Fearing that 400-foot-tall wind power turbines could pose a danger
  to migrating birds, the Department of Inland Fisheries and
  Wildlife and Maine Audubon have raised concerns about a wind farm
  proposed for Mars Hill Mountain in Aroostook County.
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GREENWIND POWER CORP/OPTIMAL VENTURES INCORPORATED ANNOUNCES JOINT
VENTURE TO DEVELOP WIND FARM IN CHINA

  GREENWIND POWER CORP/OPTIMAL VENTURES INCORPORATED, OPVN
  (Pinksheets), is pleased to announce that they have entered into a
  Joint Venture with China Link Industries Group Inc of Shanghai,
  China to develop and operate an initial 50MW wind farm on Daishan
  Island in the Zhejiang Province of China.
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NO CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
Wind Power Industry Idles, Waiting for Energy Bill

After a three-year growth spurt that created more wind-energy capacity in the U.S. than came online in the two prior decades, the wind industry finds itself in an unwelcome state of suspension.  Some $2 billion in economic development is on hold and thousands of jobs are being lost, says the American Wind Energy Association.  Why the pregnant pause?  The wind industry is immature and still relies heavily on a federal tax credit, and that credit has been lumped in with the energy bill that was stymied in Congress in December and may or may not be taken up again later this month.  The credit was originally passed in 1992; it has lapsed and been renewed several times since then, each time causing the industry headaches.  Even investments that would be profitable absent the credit are on hold, since the prospect of higher profits is constantly on the horizon. Industry groups and some members of Congress are calling for a 10-year extension that would enable long-term planning.

straight to the source:  The Miami Herald, Sudeep Reddy, 16 Mar 2004
<http://www.gristmagazine.com/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=2165>
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Excerpt from
The Economist

BUILDING THE ENERGY INTERNET
Mar 11th 2004

BACK TO THE FUTURE
In the long run, however, the solution surely does not lie in building
ever fatter pipes to supply ever more power from central power plants
to distant consumers. Amory Lovins, head of the Rocky Mountain
Institute, an environmental think-tank, explains why: "the more and
bigger bulk power lines you build, the more and bigger blackouts are
likely." A better answer is "micropower"--a large number of small power
sources located near to end-users, rather than a small number of large
sources located far away.

This sentiment is echoed by experts at America's Carnegie Mellon and
Columbia universities, who have modelled the vulnerabilities (to trees
or terrorists) of today's brittle power grid. Even the gurus at EPRI,
which relies on funding from utilities that run big power plants, agree
that moving to a distributed model, in conjunction with a smarter grid,
will reduce blackouts. Look at Denmark, which gets around 20% of its
power from scattered wind farms, for example. Sceptics argued that its
reliance on micropower would cause more blackouts. It did not.