A cable that brings power ashore from an offshore windfarm has failed and needs to be replaced in the spring. E.on, the firm that owns Scroby Sands windfarm two kilometres off the Norfolk coast at Caister, said one of its three high-voltage cables had failed. This means that if the wind turbines are working at full capacity only 66% of the power can be brought ashore. E.on's other off-shore windfarm at Blyth, Northumberland, is also awaiting repair after a sub-sea cable broke. ..."As we move forward we learn how the equipment interacts with the environment. That's part of the learning process. A statement to the BBC released on behalf of energy minister Malcolm Wicks, said that off-shore windfarms were an emerging technology and that subsidising and investing in more was not a waste of money.

Puget Sound Energy has blanketed a rock quarry atop central Washington's Whisky Dick Mountain with solar modules in an unprecedented effort to test the compatibility of sun and wind energy. More than 2,000 panels stretch squat and angular alongside the tall, sweeping turbine blades of the utility's Wild Horse wind farm near Ellensburg. ...Wind power has become the country's fastest-growing source of renewable energy, pushed by fossil-fuel concerns and government subsidies. But its up-and-down nature is a significant drawback. To ensure that customers get uninterrupted power, wind power must be blended with electricity from more reliable energy producers, such as hydroelectric dams and coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. The integration can get complicated, and it can increase costs. Puget Sound Energy's decision to commingle solar and wind represents a groundbreaking effort to blend two clean but unpredictable sources of energy into a renewable hybrid with more reliable generating credentials.

Hull officials are moving ahead with plans to build four offshore wind turbines capable of producing enough electricity to power the town. An application filed last month with the state calls for erecting four power-generating windmills on a shoal known as Harding’s Ledge, roughly 1.5 miles east of Nantasket Beach. ‘‘This would be the first offshore series of wind turbines in the country,’’ Hull Town Manager Philip Lemnios said. ‘‘We had such a favorable response to our two land-based turbines, the townspeople are pursuing the offshore options.’’

The Big Country is home to the world's largest wind farm. Now it can boast tallest wind turbines in the United States. Enel North America Inc. announced Thursday the completion of the Snyder Wind project with the tallest utility-scale wind turbines in the United States. The Snyder Wind project in Scurry County, about 80 miles northwest of Abilene, has 21 3.0 megawatt wind turbines mounted on towers measuring 345 feet. Other wind farms in the area have towers that are about 200 feet tall.

The largest wind turbine manufactured in the United States is running into some technical difficulty. Clipper Windpower Inc.'s 2.5-MW Liberty wind turbines at the 20-MW Steel Winds facility in Lackawanna, N.Y., are malfunctioning due to faulty gear sets. "At first, we were receiving great performance from the turbines," said Michael Alvarez, executive vice president and COO of UPC Wind Partners LLC, which co-owns the facility with BQ Energy LLC. "Over the summer, a gear-timing issue in the drive train's secondary stage was detected in some of Clipper Windpower's Liberty wind turbines at the Steel Winds site. The cause was found to be a supplier quality deficiency in the drive train attributable to the suppliers' manufacturing process. As part of Clipper's warranty, upgraded drive trains will be installed into all eight turbines at the Steel Winds site. Currently, two turbines are in operation."

Home wind turbines are significantly underperforming and in the worst cases generating less than the electricity needed to power a single lightbulb, according to the biggest study of its kind carried out in Britain. An interim report revealed that homeowners could be being misled by the official figures for wind speeds because they are consistently overestimating how much wind there is - sometimes finding that real speeds are only one third of those forecast. In the worst case scenario, the figures indicate that it would take more than 15 years to generate enough 'clean' energy to compensate for the manufacture of the turbine in the first place.

Plans to build the country's biggest wind turbine off the Northumberland coast are set to be approved by councillors. If approved the project will see seven new turbines on the north site of the River Blyth to replace the existing Blyth Harbour wind farm. Six of the turbines will tower 125m from base to blade tip while the seventh, planned for the Battleship Wharf site at Cambois, would measure a total of 163m in height - the country's biggest to date. ...Blyth Valley Borough Council has already said it will not object to the project. The turbines will be more than three times bigger than the current structures and much more powerful.

The debate over Mag-Wind is raging on green energy Internet forums, too. Critics argue with supporters about whether the unproven technology will produce power as advertised. A few would-be customers in the U.S. also complained about an unauthorized dealer in the Midwest, now under investigation by the FBI, who allegedly took deposits for non-existent Mag-Wind turbines. The gale-force controversy has surprised Mag-Wind founder Rowan. The delays and problems are real, he admitted - but so is the technology. Back in 2005, when Rowan and co-inventor Thomas Priest-Brown unveiled their prototype in Thorold, they hoped to be producing and delivering commercial units by the end of 2006. ...Well-known wind advocate Paul Gipe has called the company's power claims for the turbine "outlandish" on his website, www.wind--works.org. ...Gipe's best advice: make sure you understand what you're buying. "If you're going to spend $10,000, or $50,000 or $100,000 on a wind turbine, do your homework," he said.

Jiminy Peak and its 1.5-megawatt wind turbine were shut down yesterday morning by weather-related issues, delaying the ski resort's opening by two hours. But the mountain also reported 8 inches of fresh snow to close out a busy holiday season. ...National Grid reported lost power that affected the ski resort and about 84 customers in North Adams. The outage caused the $3.9 million wind turbine - known as Zephyr - to lose its juice. ...The 236-ton, 386-foot-tall turbine was installed in August and is expected to provide about 60 percent of Jiminy Peak's power and to pay for itself in seven years. But it can't run by itself. "If there's no power on the grid, there's no power to the turbine. It can't spin," said Katie Fogel, a spokeswoman for Jiminy Peak.

Wind energy is booming in Iowa, and backers say it's only the beginning. ...But the jobs could blow away, economists warn, just as other manufacturing jobs have disappeared because of competition and technological change. Other states want to attract manufacturers, too. Wind power depends on subsidies, and changes in government policies could dampen the enthusiasm for wind. ...John Solow, a University of Iowa economics professor, is cautiously optimistic about the future for wind generation and turbine manufacturing. Future policy decisions and technological innovations could change that, he said. A breakthrough in clean-burning coal, for example, could reduce interest in wind energy and biofuels, he said.

Gordon expects the federal report to closely parallel the state's positive environmental impact report issued by Bowles. But even if the federal report is favorable toward Cape Wind, it does not mean an end to the fight, something Gordon readily admits. "I don't want to be naive about legal challenges," he said in a telephone interview yesterday while on a family vacation in Vermont. But with public opinion polls indicating majority support for the project statewide, he imagines a day when even his detractors will come around. "I'm hoping that even the opponents, diehard opponents, will hopefully have a shift in their attitude and hopefully stop trying to delay and obstruct a project that is needed and enjoys growing support," he said.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, such gasification plants emit about 65% less mercury and 75% less sulfur dioxide than conventional plants, while nearly eliminating particulate matter, the fine particles linked to heart and lung disease. But perhaps more important, coal-power experts say, the Edwardsport plant's gasification design would enable Duke to capture the plant's carbon-dioxide emissions, then inject them underground where they cannot affect the atmosphere, a process known as carbon capture and sequestration. Coal-fired power plants account for a third of U.S. CO2 emissions, the primary gas blamed for global warming, about as much as every plane, train and automobile in the country combined. Yet, most energy experts say the nation can't meet its energy demand for decades, at least, without a lot of coal. Deploying coal gasification technology at power plants such as Edwardsport could be a crucial first step toward solving that conflict ...

Researchers are using a wind tunnel to help develop computerized models they hope will make wind energy projects more efficient. While many are studying the aerodynamics of the blades used on the giant turbines, few are looking at the interaction with local wind conditions, said Charles Meneveau, who is leading the research at Johns Hopkins University's Whiting School of Engineering. ...While touted as a clean energy alternative, critics have complained about the impact wind energy farms have on birds, which can be killed if they fly into the blades, and the aesthetics of dozens of turbines stretching across the landscape. Wind turbines, with blades up to 330 feet across, are the largest rotating machines ever built, said Mr. Meneveau, a turbulence specialist. ...Mr. Cal said the researchers hope to be able to better understand those factors "rather than just go out there and build these massive structures, implementing them and not knowing what's going to happen."

Lacombe County doesn’t exactly stand out as a windy destination. However one wind power group sees it as a place of potential. Greengate Power Corp. is looking at establishing wind power turbines on two sites near Lacombe - one to the north bordering Ponoka County – and one five kilometres east of town, dubbed the Chigwell Project. “Traditionally wind hasn’t been looked at here in this area as a source of power,” said Dan Balaban, Greengate founder, president and chief executive.

Stanford research team has concluded that the ocean not far off the Northern California coastline is the most promising spot for an offshore wind farm to generate power. Specifically, the researchers concluded that the sea off Cape Mendocino, roughly 150 miles northwest of San Francisco, was their top pick. Wind turbines there could supply 5 percent of California's electrical power needs, they projected. ...Most of the Southern California coast isn't windy in the summer, so it, too, was scratched from the list. That left the sea off Cape Mendocino, north of San Francisco. ...No doubt that wouldn't sit well with some folks who appreciate their pristine Pacific views today, the researchers acknowledged in a statement.

Volume house builder Barratt Developments has published preliminary findings from its experimental ‘eco village’ project in Chorley, Lancashire – a 15 month long test of how effectively ‘green’ technologies can be incorporated into new homes. ...wind turbines were judged ‘disappointing’. Both the 1.7m and 1m turbine performed below the theoretical available output based on the recorded wind speed throughout the trial period. Simple payback period analysis has not been carried out.

report into the handling of a planning application to build Lincolnshire's biggest wind farm has been released. Planners at East Lindsey District Council made a catalogue of errors in dealing with the 20-turbine wind farm at Conisholme. It was first refused and then later approved by East Lindsey District planners in 2005.

The top executive of a Warren-based wind-turbine blade maker said the decision to build a new manufacturing facility in Iowa, rather than in Rhode Island, was based on that state's proximity to the market in which the blades will be used. The blades made by TPI Composites are typically 35 meters to 40 meters long, and can weigh 10,000 to 20,000 pounds each, said Steven C. Lockard, chief executive officer of the company. Transportation costs for these blades, which are typically shipped by truck, can run into the "tens of thousands" of dollars, he said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "In this case, there really wasn't an option for this particular factory to be located in Rhode Island," he said.

Consumers Energy plans to develop as many as eight windmill farms in Michigan, officials say. The move is part of the utility's Balanced Energy Initiative, which aims in part to double the amount of renewable energy the company generates from 5 percent to 10 percent by 2015. ...''We need to add 3 million megawatt hours per year ... to go to 10 percent by 2015,'' Rasher said. For the wind farms, Consumers is looking at installing large turbines that generate up to 2.5 megawatts each. Each wind development will generate up to 100 megawatts. But Rasher said the wind farms can only be expected to generate power about 25 percent of the time. That's why Consumers also is planning to build an 800-megawatt coal-fired plant at its Karn-Weadock complex in Bay County's Hampton Township. ''We need some other resource that's dispatchable,'' Rasher said. ''You can't put all your eggs in one basket.''

Rising high above the water, the two gleaming white structures look like an outsize art installation. But they have a more practical purpose: Each is a giant wind turbine, part of a British project that could prove a breakthrough for wind power around the globe. Among the dwindling oil and gas fields of the North Sea, Britain has built the world's biggest wind turbines -- each has blades longer than a football field -- in the Moray Firth, a large inlet off the rugged east coast of Scotland. What's unusual about the effort is its dimensions: While existing offshore wind projects tend to be in shallow waters close to the coast, the Moray Firth venture is expected to culminate in the first offshore wind farm in deep water (150 feet) far from land (15 miles). ...So far, even in Scotland, offshore wind is in its infancy. There are only 1,200 megawatts of offshore wind-power capacity installed globally, with Denmark, the world leader, accounting for about a third of that. Britain, with 400 megawatts, is in second place, but has big ambitions.