Whatever it was happened at the weekend left the turbine without one of its 20m blades and another bent and gnarled. Ecotricity, the turbine's owners, cannot yet explain what happened. Dale Vince, founder of the renewable energy company, said on the BBC's Today programme that, whatever hit the blades it was "probably the size and weight of a cow".

A local council has refused a request to postpone a meeting to debate a controversial application for 19 wind turbines in Fenland but their decision will not be binding. ...Anti wind turbine group FLAT today urged opponents of the scheme to step up their opposition and hope that as many as possible will attend the meeting "to show their opposition to the scheme."

The Barrington Town Council made it official Monday night: The wind turbine project proposed for Legion Way is off the table. ...At the meeting on Monday night, council member Kate Weymouth motioned to accept a recommendation from the Committee for Renewable Energy for Barrington to not move forward with construction of a turbine at Legion Way, "at this time."

LM Glasfiber announces mass lay-offs in Denmark as a result of the on-going financial crisis. Wind turbine blade producer LM Glasfiber has announced that it is to fire one fifth of its Danish workforce in what is being called the biggest domestic firing-round of recent times. ...‘We believe 2009 will be a year with stagnant growth in the windmill market and LM Glasfiber has a clear case of over capacity,' said Rothausen.

A company working to install a wind-power project on Grandpa's Knob in Castleton is closing its Rutland office. ...In October, the Connecticut company laid off workers in New York and stopped work at two wind farms in that state in conection with the failure of Lehman Brothers, one of its chief backers.

A proposed billion-dollar wind farm has been earmarked for 52km of the Woakwine Range. The proposal, triple the size of the Lake Bonney Windfarm, involves up to 300 turbines producing 600 megawatts of energy.

Wind speeds have been studied and deemed insufficient at the water pollution plant off Black River Road "to feasibly and comfortably install a single wind turbine at current electricity prices," states a staff report, which heads to York's finance committee today. A 60-metre-tall Sutton tower was installed in September 2007 to monitor wind conditions, which found wind speeds needed to make the project viable were lacking.

Gamesa SA, the Spanish wind-electric equipment maker that's gotten $15 million in state funds from Gov. Rendell, is laying off 184 of around 700 workers at its Fairless Hills, Bucks County plant as it shifts production to larger turbines.

LM Glasfiber, a wind blade manufacturer, has announced that it will halt production at its facility on Scott Hamilton Drive in Little Rock, laying off about 150 workers. The company blames the nationwide credit crunch and delays in wind projects. A press release says the company is preparing for "weaker growth in the short term."

A report written by the council's principal planning officer detailed eight reasons for refusing planning permission for four 328ft high turbines on a four hectare site on Mynydd James mountain between Cwmtillery and Blaina. ...These included worries over the stability of the ground on which the turbines would be built, the visual impact on the area and the negative effect on tourism.

DMI Industries, a manufacturer of turbine towers for the wind-energy sector, has cut 25 per cent of its workforce as it struggles with the cancellation and delay of major wind projects across North America. About 40 "green-collar" employees at the company's Fort Erie facility have been let go.

Buying a small wind turbine to power a home can be costly - in the range of $12,000 to $70,000 (including installation fees), according to Ron Stimmel, the small wind expert at the American Wind Energy Association. A number of states offer help. ...But is small wind even a good idea?

Scientists Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland have told Discover News that they have conducted experiments on the affects the 300 foot turbines would have on the wind. Considering the conservation of energy, moving the turbines (to create electricity) would result in a drop of wind speed by about 5-7 mph. More importantly, the resulting winds would ripple through the atmosphere downstream and impact weather systems in a way not fully understood yet. Rather than get into the physics of what could happen in may different scenarios, wind sheer of any sort in the central plains is not a good thing. Think tornadoes!

Now Lucas is gearing up to fight the development of wind and solar alternative energy plants in the middle of the remaining sagebrush desert habitat that is the home of species ranging from sage grouse to antelope. He's not against the technology. And he is as concerned about reducing greenhouse gases that cause climate change as the next environmentalist. ..."I think there's a chance that these big solar farms and wind farms will be obsolete almost as soon as we develop them," Lucas said. "We need to somehow get people engaged directly in producing our own energy."

The developers of a proposed wind farm on Green Mountain will conduct their first public meeting of 2009 tonight at the Wind Lea Banquet and Conference Center. The public meeting of the US WindForce Pinnacle Wind Farm Advisory Panel is set to start at 6 p.m. The meeting, which continues the monthly updates held since last spring, will focus on setting the agenda for future advisory meetings through the coming year.

Lawyers for the $300 million Beech Ridge Energy project in Greenbrier County say they were blind-sided when anti-windfarm advocates recently filed documents with the state Public Service Commission suggesting a "proposed settlement agreement" was in the works to decrease the number of giant, electric-producing turbines by nearly 50 percent. ...Feinberg accused MCRE of "attempting to mislead the commission" that a settlement was near at hand.

Wind tower manufacturer DMI Industries says it is cutting about 20 percent of its work force due to declining demand from developers struggling to get financing for wind projects. About 60 people at the company's West Fargo plant will lose their jobs. Monday's announcement came six months after Fargo-based DMI announced a major expansion to add 350 jobs plants in West Fargo and Oklahoma. The cuts will be spread across DMI's three sites in West Fargo, Tulsa, Okla., and Fort Erie, Ontario.

Turbines at two new wind farms in Kenedy County have begun spinning, but it likely will be several more months before all 200 of them are operating, a spokeswoman for the two companies said. ...Officials with both companies have said they are not sure when all turbines will be operating. However, ERCOT says all of Gulf Winds' turbines are expected to be online by September 2010.

Computer giant Dell Inc. said this summer that it has become "carbon neutral," the latest step in its quest to be "the greenest technology company on the planet." What that means, and what it doesn't, may surprise Dell customers and other consumers who have been bombarded with bold environmental promises from major corporations. ...The amount of emissions Dell has committed to neutralize is known in the environmental industry as the company's "carbon footprint." But there is no universally accepted standard for what a footprint should include, and so every company calculates its differently.

The steady, strong winds over the Atlantic off New England have attracted another developer interested in harnessing them for power generation. A new wrinkle in the proposal by Grays Harbor Ocean Energy Company, of Washington state, is that the supports anchoring each wind turbine platform to the ocean floor would be designed in a way to turn wave action into electricity as well.