More than 9,600 megawatts of wind power capacity was installed in European Union member states in 2011, accounting for about 21 percent of all new power capacity installations, according to an industry report.

New offshore wind farms in the UK and land-based projects in Sweden and Germany pushed EU (more…)

What developers and financiers of wind farm projects need to know.

I attended the AWEA Fall Symposium in Carlsbad in November 2011. While it was a good industry gathering, I was intrigued by a panel discussion in which a representative from a major US developer and O&M (operations & maintenance) service provider to wind farms indicated that his (more…)

A recent auction held by the Brazilian National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL), resulted in 42 new electricity generation projects with a total installed capacity of 1,211.5 megawatts (MW), to meet the projected demand of distribution companies in 2016. Of this total, 39 projects were wind farms, totaling 976.5 MW, or 81 percent of the total power traded in the (more…)

KiteGen thinks that current wind technology only scratches the surface of what’s possible with wind energy. That’s because wind turbines cannot reach higher and touch altitude wind. Rarely wind farms are sited at more than 100m above the ground; the higher they go, the heavier, more unstable and expensive the apparatus becomes. (more…)

The advancement in offshore wind power technology has led to larger turbines and larger wind farms being deployed throughout Europe. Where previously wind farms had been thought of as single distributed power generators, they must now be considered as integral components of the overall energy supply (more…)

When I meet people and tell them what I do at Xcel Energy (environmental communications manager), they often get excited and volunteer that they have seen the wind farm off state Highway 93, outside of Golden, Colo. And being a know-it-all, I’m quick to correct them that it’s not really a wind farm, but the (more…)

My husband, a proud Colorado native, has shared with me that one day he will pack his bags, grab his buddies and a cowboy hat and saddle up for a true “City Slicker” adventure on a working Colorado cattle ranch.

While living out his cowboy dream is something that (more…)

Offshore wind power as an industry is set to undergo intense growth over the next 10-20 years. The EWEA (European Wind Energy Association) has established targets of 40GW of offshore wind power production by the year 2020, and 150GW by 2030. This move towards a European grid represents a (more…)

The offshore wind energy industry is set for a boom over the next ten to twenty years. The UK’s round 3 of offshore development saw the crown estate award licenses to various wind power firms to develop wind farms at several sites around the UK; with the ambitious target of achieving 32GW of power (roughly a quarter of UK (more…)

A new analysis by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) finds that the power output of wind farms can be increased tenfold — and with fewer environmental impacts — through better positioning of vertical-axis turbines.

Because the large turbines used in most modern (more…)