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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Installing solar panels or a wind turbine can be a very good investment in the UK thanks to the feed in tariffs which pay householders a tax-free, index linked income for the energy they produce, providing over a 10% annual return.
The tariffs pay up to 41.3p for every 1kWh of electricity produced using solar panels and an extra 3p per unit on top for any surplus electricity sold back to the grid.
The average cost of home solar panel installation is £14,000.
From this outlay, Ownenergy,
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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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Wind is the number one source of new electricity-generation installations in both Europe and the U.S. and has been for the last year or two, according to green energy analysts.
"Wind is the one renewable energy source that, currently, is competing directly with coal and natural gas for electricity from new power installations." says GreenTech Opportunies analyst Peter Cox.
Wind and natural gas combined accounted for about 80% of new capacity added to the U.S. electrical grid.
"Wind energy
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