Wind industry grows at record pace in 2009

Source: Marketwatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. wind industry blew away all previous records in 2009, as more wind energy was added to the power supply than ever before, keeping the United States as the global wind leader.

The industry installed more than 10,000 megawatts of new generating capacity in 2009, enough to power 2.4 million homes, according to the annual report released Thursday by the American Wind Energy Association.

Last year, 5,700 individual turbines were installed, "not bad for a year with some economic slowdown," said Liz Salerno, AWEA director of industry data and analysis, at a New York City press conference .

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Green energy and natural gas together accounted for more than 90% of all new generating capacity in 2009, according to the report.


Read more: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wind-industry-grows-at-record-pace-in-2009-2010-04-08

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Al Gore may not have been the father of the internet, but President Obama has certainly given a huge boost to green energy.

K & R! Down with oil! and on edit down with coal!

And we can stop tilting at windmills for the sake of war, ignorance, bankruptcy and ultimately, a cooked planet.

Every damn dollar spent on fossil fuels has enormous future costs. Costs that will leave us broke and sick and stupid and lonely. Because we didn't get the oil monkey off our backs in time?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGuaRqv8No

Wind turbines are decimating bird populations--thousands killed at one facility including eagles, hawks and songbirds, also bats. There are also numerous wind turbine fires. I know several people in California who have personally witnessed them, making them major hazards in fire-prone or dry areas. Imagine giant burning blades falling to earth or igniting oil inside. They also hook into transmission lines, requiring more high voltage lines to be strung across many areas - here they are trying to run them through our most scenic state parks and national forests. Off-grid local solar is a better way to go where feasible.

These things are 500 feet tall with wingspans the size of a jumbo jet, but they haven't been tested for seismic safety: http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/node/3095

In Campo, California, every single turbine was knocked out of commission for several months during high winds - and owners have yet to explain a mysterious blue flash just before everything went dark:
http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/node/2734

My degree is in environmental studies and I'm not a shill for the oil industry or nukes. But we are making a mistake to march off a cliff touting wind energy, which has many dangers. There are better and greener options. These monsters are the industrialization of rural America, and having interviewed numerous people living near them I no longer support these whole-hog.

Buildings kill more birds than wind turbines, but people are still making and using them!

*sigh*

I'll watch the video, but I'm guessing it's NIMBY FUD.

There are many times more buildings than birds. And many birds SURVIVE smacking into a building. I know; I've rescued a few of them that got stunned after hitting windows in my former home.

But blades slice birds in half. They have no chance. Worse, wind farms are located in the same wind corridors used by entire flocks of migratory birds. We have a lot fewer songbirds around here since all the wind farms went in.

I urge you not to have blinders on where these things are concerned. Don't you care about wildlife? If these go up in all of our windiest places, it will be a death knoll for some species.

And don't you care about people? Our area has had the worst wildfires in California history - half a million people evacuated in 2007 and most of our county burned. One of the worst fires started in 100 mph Santa Ana winds, spreading hundreds of miles in a very short time. It started in the same area where they want to put new wind farms. All it takes is one faulty blade that catches fire and spins off, and our entire county could burn again. If you think wind turbine fires are rare, think again. They have occurred here so often that one passerby who called 911 to report a fire was told by the operator, "let me guess, another wind turbine fire?"

Anyone who minimizes this danger must be in the pocket of the wind industry. It is real and deadly.

Is that grounds for banning cars in California because they aren't "green" enough? It's the same argument as you seem to be making.

(Oh, and you mean death knell, I think, unless that was an intentional black-humor pun on hillside winds).

As far as being educated about turbine failures, I should mention that my future marriage partner works for one of the largest turbine repair companies on the globe. As such, I'm party to statistics that few have access to, and have a really great set of resources and data to learn from.

Failures *do* happen, the technology *isn't* totally failsafe, and it *is* incredibly cost-intensive to set up a wind farm....

...Just like nuclear, solar, tidal, coal, geothermal, and hydro, there are risks and rewards. There is no "green" energy that doesn't have costs, risks, and rewards. Not one.

That's because energy, by itself, is so powerful (which is kind of the point of gathering energy).

So, while it's good for people to make educated decisions, but they shouldn't be so mislead as to think that wind turbines are worse than sky-scrapers, or that di-hydrogen monoxide should be banned.

I would be interested to know from your source if there have been any seismic studies done on large wind turbines. Thus far I haven't found any, though they are testing a smaller 80-foot one on a new shake table at a university here.

Wind farms may make sense in some areas, but in San Diego's East County I don't think they make sense. This is the most seismically active area in California, we regularly get Santa Ana winds that spread fires swiftly, and we have twice in five years had the worst wildfires in our state, probably in the entire U.S.

SDG&E says rooftop solar isn't enough but their studies only looked at residential, intentionally ignoring the potential to meet local power needs with solar on shopping malls, large commercial buildings, schools and government facilities. We have the sunniest climate in America. Even desert solar farms, while environmentally destructive in some ways, would be better than wind in that they are safer from the fire standpoint; the issue is more aesthetics and scraping bare the desert floor (harming tortoises potentially, and certain other desert species). But at least once its built it doesn't actively kill the creatures that wander into the area, and as far as I know, they don't cause fires. The prospect of a whole farmful of 500-foot-high towers should a big quake hit is rather alarming, especially in a fire-prone area, should one or more of them topple. I should also note that they want to site one of these farms in a valley surrounded by mountains covered in very big boulders that have rolled off the mountains in prior quakes here historically.

California kills people. It's harsh.

I think, perhaps, the problem is not the technology, but people who don't realize that they're living in a danger zone.

in our region, and we have thousands of them here. Theoretically it's possible. But anecdotally they don't seem common. Like any technology, it needs to be properly installed and utilized.

It says, "Dimensional analysis indicates that wind-driven loads grow faster than seismic-driven loads as
machines get larger, as shown in Figure 14."
In other words, earthquakes are less of a problem than strong winds.
Now, why is the NNSA studying what happens to windmills under circumstances of severe groundshaking?

oil into their breeding and nesting grounds. Yeah, that's a great idea... :eyes:

And while we're doing that, the money we pay for the oil goes to fund terrorist organizations, so double bonus there...

How exactly do you propose we meet them?

Those callous uncaring bastards know nothing about avian mortality and could obviously care less.

You are spreading bullshit and FUD.

backward right wingers heads exploding

"Oh no, not clean energy! Our Investments in non-renewables will plummet!!!!"