Offshore wind farms cost twice as much to produce energy in the as coal-fired powered stations a UK report has warned.
Costs of building sites at sea have doubled in the past 5 years due to rising steel prices and the weak pound according to a report form the UK Energy Research Centre.
With the opening of the Thanet Wind Farm off the coast of England the UK is now the world’s largest producer of wind energy.
The Thanet Wind Farm started sending power to the UK electric grid last week. It sits, at its closest, about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) off the shore of Foreness Point, which is located at the most eastern part of Kent, England.
The $1.2 billion farm has 100 V90 wind turbines that have a total capacity of 300 MW. It creates enough power for 200,000 homes.
The UK’s
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A sycamore seed design may be set to revolutionize the wind power industry.
British engineers have designed a giant wind turbine called the Aerogenerator that would rotate on its axis mimicking the way sycamore seeds fly.
The Aerogenerator has two arms coming out of its base to form a V-shape, with rigid "sails" mounted along their length. The arms act like aerofoils as the wind passes over, helping to generate lift.
It would measure nearly 900 feet from tip to tip and could generate
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Wind power is now generating 2% of global electricity demand, according to the World Wind Energy Association.
The countries with the highest shares of wind energy generated electricity: Denmark 20%, Portugal 15%, Spain 14%, Germany 9%. Wind power employed 550,000 people in 2009 and is expected to employ 1,000,000 by 2012.
Globally 38,025 MW of capacity were added in 2009, bringing the total to 159,213 MW, a 31% increase. The graph shows the top 10 producers (with the exceptions of Denmark and
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Australia:
Small wind-energy companies fear privatisations of power stations and retailers in New South Wales and Queensland could weaken competition in the electricity market, hindering their capacity to contribute to the federal government's 20 per cent renewable energy target.
Under the renewable energy target, retailers are required to buy or create enough renewable energy certificates (RECs), each representing one megawatt-hour of emissions-free electricity, to meet an annual target.
But
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One of the largest offshore windfarms in the world, is to be built off the coast of Wales in the UK.
The £2bn Gwynt y Mor windfarm will have 160 wind turbines around 10 miles off the north Wales coast near Colwyn Bay and Llandudno.
Gwynt y Mor will be Wales' largest wind farm, capable of powering around 400,000 homes, and preventing the release of 1.7m tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
The RWE Innogy-led project is expected to be completed in 2014.
It is claimed some 1,000 jobs could
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In less than seven years, solar and wind power will be able to meet over a third of the electricity demand of a large Western area of the USA
According to a report by NREL, in 2017 solar and wind energy could meet in 2017, 35% of electricity demand in five states Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada
Moreover this can be achieved without any further investment in new infrastructure.
Specifically, wind turbines could satisfy 30% and solar power 5% of the demand, according
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China is rushing forward with its wind energy plans with the pace surpassing even the most optimistic projections.
After setting an original goal of 30 gigawatts of installed wind power by 2020, the government recently said that could be raised to 100 gigawatts as installed capacity has doubled each of the last four years.
From almost nothing a few years ago, China had 12.2 gigawatts of installed wind power by the end of 2008 as power companies have rushed to meet government mandates to raise
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A New York paediatrician has warned that living too close to wind turbines can cause heart disease, tinnitus, vertigo, panic attacks, migraines and sleep deprivation in groundbreaking research due to be published later this year.
Following studies of people living near wind turbines in the US, UK, Italy, Ireland and Canada for the past five years, Dr Nina Pierpoint has identified a new health risk called wind turbine syndrome (WTS).
She says the disruption of the inner ear’s vestibular
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UK: The CBI has called on the UK government to scale back on “overambitious” wind power and boost the role of atomic energy and coal.
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