Salazar said Interior is setting aside 24 parcels of federal land for a special study of environmental effects. Those areas, a total of 670,000 acres, were chosen based on the routes of transmission lines and early indications that they are less environmentally sensitive than other areas in the state. Once an area wins preapproval, applications for solar plants could race through the process, officials say.

Fresh concerns have emerged over the future of BP's alternative energy business after a fire broke out at one of the company's largest solar power installations in Germany. The incident on June 21 destroyed nearly 200 sq m of one of the world's largest roof-mounted solar panel arrays on a warehouse complex in Bürstadt, near Mannheim.

Seven wind turbines in Cape Breton are at a standstill after equipment was damaged by lightning. Bill Wasson, president of Confederation Power Inc., said the turbines in Lingan were damaged Tuesday when the lightning hit a substation near where the turbines are located.

Seven wind turbines in Cape Breton are at a standstill after being damaged by an electrical storm. Brian Robin, chief operating officer for Confederation Power, said the turbines in Lingan were damaged by a lightning strike shortly after 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Faulty wind turbines in a Northumberland beauty spot could be taken down after they stopped working. The three giant structures at Kirkheaton, North of Hexham, were put up almost 10 years ago by EDF Energy. But technical issues have meant that two of the turbines have had to have their blades removed, and haven't been operational since last autumn.

Crum said they first learned three years ago about problems associated with wind turbine clutter from people seeing significantly different radar images. "We knew about it, but we didn't realize how big of a problem it could be, because most of the wind farms that had been out there in the past were smaller and not these wind farms that we're seeing now with turbines of 400 to 500 feet tall," Crum said.

The National Weather Service says a wind farm in Wyoming County is interfering with its doppler radar at the Buffalo Airport. ...Unfortunately, the Wyoming county wind farms and their turbines are within the radar line of sight (RLOS) of the NWS doppler radar in Cheektowaga. ...At this height, the rotating turbine blades of the wind farm impact the KBUF Doppler Radar beam.

Breaches of health and safety regulations cost Vestas Blades nearly £500,000, a court was told. The Newport turbine blademaker, which is set to close, was fined a maximum £10,000 by Island magistrates and told to pay £25,000 of the Health and Safety Executive's costs.

A semitrailer was damaged Monday morning when it struck a 170-foot wind turbine blade being hauled on Illinois Route 130 on the north side of Charleston. No injuries were reported as a result of the collision that occurred shortly after 11 a.m. at the intersection of Route 130/Olive Avenue and Seventh Street adjacent to the Kirchner Building Center.

One of the large wind turbine blades being hauled from Searsport to the Canadian Maritimes hit and broke a traffic light and pulled down wires at Hogan Road and Mount Hope Avenue shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday, according to Bangor police.

The May 14 fire at the skyscraper-size Turbine 12 at the Locust Ridge I commercial wind farm in Mahanoy Township occurred during routine maintenance, according to a company official. Jan Johnson, corporate communications director for Iberdrola Renewables in Portland, Ore., which owns the wind farm, said Thursday that Turbine 12 is still shut down. When asked how the fire started, she said, "We're still investigating."

With construction ramping up again unexpectedly in Cohocton, town officials are looking at their legal options in keeping the work by developer First Wind in line with agreements signed between the parties - even if it means a court date. Town Supervisor Jack Zigenfus announced at Monday night's town board meeting major work is being performed on the 50-turbine wind-powered electricity generation project on Pine, Lent and Dutch hills.

Firefighters responded to a report of a wind turbine fire at the first commercial-size wind farm in Schuylkill County, Locust Ridge I in Mahanoy Township, Thursday afternoon, according to reports from the Schuylkill County Communications Center.

Firefighters responded to a report of a turbine fire at the first commercial-size wind farm in Schuylkill County, Locust Ridge I in Mahanoy Township, Thursday afternoon, according to reports from Schuylkill County Communications. ...In service since March 2007, this G87 turbine is one of the original 13 turbines which was part of the Locust Ridge I.

The windturbine that started spinning wildly on May 3 disintegrated two or three days later, according to the California Highway Patrol. All that is left now is a turbine-less twisted tower. The CHP closed Highway 58 for hours after it was notified that the turbine was spinning out of control on Sunday. The closure snarled traffic in the area.

Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph public health directors are asking the recently launched Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion to investigate the effects of wind turbines. "We have written our letter specifically recommending that they consider large population-based health studies," medical officer of health Dr. Nicola Mercer said yesterday. ...Increasingly, municipalities want higher levels of government to set standards and probe health concerns like noise and electromagnetic disturbances.

Officials at ReDriven Power Inc. are confident of their young company's continued success, but concede they've recently issued a recall on the blades of 10 turbines installed in the U.S. ..."We did have a blade problem," said president and CEO Joseph Ianni, when The AgriNews paid a visit to the firm's headquarters inside a former textile mill recently.

"We're two-thirds complete. It's gone very well and we'll get this done in the next couple of months. We're on schedule," said Duncan Koerbel, chief reliability officer of the Mumbai, India-based company, the third-largest wind turbine supplier in the United States. The company has taken a $35 million charge for the program to replace all 1,200 blades in its previous generation of blades, some of which developed cracking near the base. One blade broke off a turbine in Illinois.

A faulty windmill near Tehachapi shuts down all lanes of Highway 58 between highways 202 and 14; and CHP Officers say it could be days before the roadway re-opens. Mojave CHP got the call about the out-of-control windmill located in the Tehachapi Wind Farm a little after 1:20 Sunday afternoon.

A runaway windmill in Tehachapi closed Highway 58 -- a major east-west freeway connecting California's southern Central Valley to Las Vegas, Nevada and Arizona -- for most of the day Sunday. As of 6:45 p.m., the highway remained closed between Tehachapi and Mojave. Officials had no estimate as to when it might reopen