American Electric Power has received more than a dozen bids from companies offering to construct wind farms under long-term power purchase agreements, spokeswoman Jeri Matheney said. "We're very pleased with the response that we got, and the variety," Matheney said. "We got quite a few bids - more than a dozen - from several states. "It will take at least a few weeks to pore through and analyze all of them," she said. "Then we'll go from there in making our decision."

American Electric Power announced it wants to enter long-term purchase agreements for 1,000 megawatts of wind energy, including up to 360 megawatts for its eastern United States service territory - where coal has traditionally been king. The utility giant said it wants to add the wind energy by 2011 as part of its strategy to address greenhouse gas emissions. On Tuesday the company issued a request for proposals seeking up to 260 megawatts of wind energy for its Appalachian Power unit. Appalachian serves more than 900,000 customers in southern West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. The company also issued a request for proposals seeking up to 100 megawatts of wind energy for its Indiana Michigan Power unit. The deadline for bids is April 30, with delivery to begin by the end of 2008.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year. “As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson. In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

Sandy Bivens and other birders took turns over the fall inspecting the ground around a hilltop television tower near White Bridge Road. Each morning, one of them would pick up the birds that died flying into the WSMV-Channel 4 tower or its guy wires.

I was disappointed by your editorial of Sept. 9 titled "Wind power deserves the investment." I expected to find the kind of real cost information on wind power I've been looking for. In the end, I was irritated by its total failure to support the contention implicit in its title.

On Thursday, the Johnson City Commission approved a license agreement with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Integration Technology to allow the installation of a wind-monitoring device to be installed on the tower at Buffalo Mountain. Johnson City Manager Pete Peterson said city officials were approached by SACE, and the device would be used to measure and observe things such as wind speed and frequency.

Tygard is sponsoring a bill that would put restrictions on wind towers that produce energy. He said he wants the public to remember when cell phone towers started popping up and how it caused residential complaints. The councilman said the city needs to make sure that doesn't happen with the wind machines. "What are the height, aesthetic, noise regulations?

Ratepayers would save money if TVA paid the penalty - estimated at $410 million a year by 2020 - rather than meet a goal of finding 15 percent new energy sources, said U.S. Sen Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. ...The agency's alternative green energy program - of which a wind farm on Buffalo Mountain in East Tennessee is a large part - provides less than one half of 1 percent, and customers have to pay extra to support it.

Garland is the latest North Texas city considering a zoning ordinance aimed at regulating wind energy devices that generate power for residential use. The measure is on Tuesday's council agenda. Other cities, including Grand Prairie, Waxahachie and Oak Point, already have such ordinances. Residential wind energy devices are rare in urban areas and may be too expensive or impractical for many homeowners. But city officials say they want to make sure rules are in place for the day when wind energy devices become more commonplace.

The Tennessee Valley Authority proposes to construct and operate a wind farm in Tennessee. TVA also proposes to construct and operate a Regenesys™ Energy Storage facility near the selected wind farm site. The wind farm would demonstrate a technology for generating electric power with minimal environmental pollution to be marketed through TVA’s Green Power Switch® program and would consist of 13 to 16 wind turbines. The Regenesys facility would demonstrate an effective technology for storing the energy generated by the wind farm and releasing it at times of high energy demand.

This final environmental assessment examines the potential effects of building on Buffalo Mountain in Anderson County (Alternative 1), building on Stone Mountain in Johnson County (Alternative 2), or not building a 20 MW wind farm and associated energy storage facility (Alternative 3).

Appendix F: The Impact of Views on Property Values

"Widely varying opinions have been expressed about the potential impact of windfarms on the value of nearby property. For example, the proposed (now cancelled) Addison Wind Farm in Wisconsin became controversial, in part, over allegations about property values. Opponents argued that property values would depreciate significantly if the wind farm were built (Don Behm, 2001). On the other hand, RENEWWisconsin quoted several persons representing the real estate industry in other places in Wisconsin and Iowa where wind projects had been built, saying that such projects had no impact on property values (RENEWWisconsin, 2000)....

JONESBOROUGH, TENN. — On Saturday, a group of wind energy advocates invited the media out to see a new 30-meter tall anemometer at the Jonesborough Waste Water Treatment facility. The Tennessee Wind Working Group was erecting the anemometer to test the wind potential for the city of Jonesborough, Tenn.

Gov. Phil Bredesen phoned home from the National Governors Association (NGA) winter conference this week and reported that - no surprise here - the governors couldn't agree on energy policy. The governors of green states wanted to focus on alternative and renewable energy sources while governors from coal states couldn't warm to the idea of restricting the industry that provides power and jobs to their constituents. ...Bredesen acknowledged that, though development of solar and wind resources is important, neither is yet viable. ...While hearing speakers like Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, and Thomas Friedman, author and columnist for The New York Times, Bredesen said the governors came to a common conclusion - coal is going to be the dominant method for producing electrical power for the foreseeable future.

The post-construction bird/bat mortality survey at the expanded Buffalo Mountain windfarm found an adjusted bat mortality rate of 63.9 bats/turbine/year. This figure is similar in magnitude to the bat mortality recorded in West Virginia (47.5 bats/turbine/year). Fewer bird strikes were recorded in this same survey.

States with renewable portfolio standards have generated growth in the renewable energy sector, but many of the Appalachian states don't have one. Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New York all have some fairly progressive goals, but West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee don't have a state RPS and wind projects often ignite battles.

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) told a forum on renewable electricity choices last week that solar panels, underwater river turbines, and wood chips "are promising for TVA, but Tennessee mountaintops are absolutely the wrong place for wind turbines three times as tall as Neyland Stadium skyboxes, not to mention the transmission lines that come with them."

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - An industry-sponsored poll suggests most Tennesseans support renewable wind energy, but don't count U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander among them. "I am all for renewable fuels. I am all for clean air and carbon-free electricity," the Tennessee Republican said Tuesday in a conference call from Washington, where the Senate is getting ready to debate an energy bill that could come with renewable energy mandates. But Alexander has no love for windmills. Wind power, he said, "is expensive and disfigures the landscape. It produces a puny amount of power, and it doesn't fit Tennessee."