The next stage of the Tuki wind farm will be unknown until the end of the year. Wind Power met with Hepburn Shire Council last week, after mounting community concern about the proposal. There has been community speculation over whether the proposal will go ahead at Tuki and how many turbines it would involve.

US engineering giant General Electric (GE) yesterday warned that rising steel prices and turmoil on the financial markets will have a negative impact on its fast expanding wind turbine business. Speaking at an event in Germany to publicise its latest turbine, GE Energy's global sales leader for wind energy, Mete Maltepe, said that the rising cost of steel would drive up the price of turbines.

More production problems and one-off charges hammered wind turbine group Clipper Windpower's first half, but the group expects full year revenue to be over $800m and to be close to break-even in the second half. Losses in the six months to June soared to $211m from $78m on revenues of $156m, up from $20m. Increased costs to repair faulty turbines, provisions for inventory obsolescence and higher operating costs caused the higher losses.

An Upper Moreland company is seeking a $1 million state grant to develop a combination solar and wind turbine that it is touting as "the world's first hybrid renewable energy technology." Precision Assembly Inc., on the 2300 block of Computer Avenue, is partnering with Bluenergy Solarwind Inc., to develop the turbines, which would harness both wind and solar energy and would be sold to owners of commercial or residential buildings to provide clean energy, according to Paul Stepanoff, the company's chief executive officer.

N.C. State University was selected by the National Science Foundation to lead a $28.5 million research initiative to transform the nation's century-old power transmission system into a "smart grid" network that will be able to store energy from solar power, wind farms and other alternative resources.

A New Jersey company said last week that it has joined with Michael Nakhamkin, one of the top thinkers in energy storage, to develop ways to trap wind-generated power in underground reservoirs. Nakhamkin has helped develop technology to pull excess energy off the power grid - usually at night when usage has waned - to run compressors that pump air into sealed, underground caverns that once held oil, salt or natural gas. During periods of higher demand, the air is released and heated to run air expansion turbines. ..."We really think this is a game-changer for the renewables industry," said Roy Daniel, chief executive of Energy Storage and Power LLC, a joint venture between PSEG Energy Holdings and Nakhamkin.

If wind energy converters are located anywhere near a residential area, they must never become too noisy even in high winds. Most such power units try to go easy on their neighbors' ears, but even the most careful design cannot prevent noise from arising at times: One source is the motion of the rotor blades, another is the cogwheels that produce vibrations in the gearbox. These are relayed to the tower of the wind turbine, where they are emitted across a wide area - and what the residents hear is a humming noise. ...In a joint project with colleagues from Schirmer GmbH, ESM Energie- and Schwingungstechnik Mitsch GmbH and the Dr. Ziegler engineering office, IWU researchers have developed an active damping system for wind turbines. The project is being funded by the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt.

FPL Group Inc., the largest U.S. producer of wind power, said second-quarter profits fell 48 percent on a drop in the valuation of energy contracts. Its net income declined to $209 million, or 52 cents a share, from $405 million, or $1.01, a year earlier. Revenue fell 8.8 percent to $3.59 billion. FPL Energy, the alternative energy arm of the company, reported a decrease in net income of 98.5 percent to $3 million in the second quarter from $203 million last year. The net income of Florida Power & Light Co., which provides electricity for 4.5 million customers in Florida, increased by 2.8 percent to $217 million from $211 million.

Attorneys on different sides of a windmill dispute in Fayette County can agree on at least one aspect of the 262-foot-tall turbines: the hulking structures can't be camouflaged. "A wind turbine can be seen. You can't hide it," said Dan Rullo, attorney for Iberdrola Resources, formerly PPM Energy. ...The project has been on hold since March 11, when the zoning hearing board denied the company's request for a special exception and variances for 24 of the turbines. The matter went before a judge Thursday after Iberdrola filed a civil suit appealing the board's denial.

The world's two most powerful wind turbines, with blades up to 500ft in diameter, are to be built on the Northumberland coast in clear view of northeast England's most renowned shorelines. ...The two machines are planned to be up to 650ft high, including their blades. At that height they would be more than 200ft taller than the current tallest turbines in Britain. ...Each could generate up to 7.5 mega-watts of power.

The grand U.S. ambitions of Indian wind-turbine manufacturer Suzlon Energy Ltd. are facing mounting problems. The Indian company -- the world's fifth-largest wind-turbine maker by sales -- earlier this year acknowledged that 65 giant blades on turbines it had sold in the U.S. Midwest were cracking because of the extreme gusts in the region. The company is reinforcing 1,251 blades, almost the total it has sold in the U.S. Now, other problems are emerging, in part because the company quickly ramped up U.S. sales to meet burgeoning demand for alternative energy. ...

The Prattsburgh town board has ruled in favor of eminent domain. The decision means First Wind, the company that wants to build a 36 turbine wind farm in Prattsburgh can now take portions of land from property owners who oppose the project. Eminent domain was proposed after seven property owners said they would not sell their land to the company. First Wind wants the property along the town highways to lay underground cables.

Wind power is unreliable. No one can turn up the wind every time electricity demand peaks. So some utilities are looking at ways to bottle up the wind's energy and store it underground for later use. "The wind blows a lot at 2 in the morning, so it makes sense to save it and use it at 5 in the afternoon when everyone comes home from work," said Georgianne Peek of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) uses off-peak electricity from wind farms or other sources to pump air underground. The high pressure air acts like a huge battery that can be released on demand to turn a gas turbine and make electricity. However, a good portion of the input energy is lost in this process, making CAES one of the least efficient storage technologies available.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has created a collaboration with the six leading wind turbine makers to promote advanced research and development. ...The agreement builds on the recently released DOE report '20 Percent Wind Energy in 2030' that examines the technical feasibility of harnessing wind power to provide up to 20% of the nation's total electricity needs by 2030.

They're too noisy, too big and too clunky. And they kill bats and birds. Those are key criticisms about harnessing the wind and converting Mother Nature's fury into energy via a wind turbine, which might be better known as a windmill. Karl Douglass, an engineer with a degree from Drexel University, went about trying to remedy those complaints and he believes he's done that. Sometime this summer, his Omniwind Energy Systems of Dublin in Central Bucks will begin production on a wind turbine that he says is quiet, relatively compact and environmentally friendly. ..."You wouldn't even have seen windmills in Pennsylvania not long ago, but still it's a small amount in the overall scheme," Wood added. "Solar, wind, biomass are nice, but they're a niche, they only fulfill a small percentage of our needs."

Six wind tower sections left DMI Industries, located at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, on Tuesday en route to a wind farm site in northern Texas. ...Less than a year ago, DMI Industries, an Otter Tail company, bought a plant built for Griffin Wheel -- a railcar manufacturer that never moved in -- to extend its geographic reach and meet the growing demand for wind towers in the southwestern states.

Research which could transform worldwide production of large-scale wind turbines is being carried out at the University of Nottingham. Peter Schubel is leading a £1.4m project called Airpower which could make it eight per cent cheaper and 11% faster to manufacture the blades. ...Dr Schubel said large-scale blades were extremely labour intensive to produce under current methods - with up to 35 people at any one time working on a single blade. This also means there can be high levels of waste because of human error.

Windflow chairman Barrie Leay strongly criticised Meridian Energy and other state-owned electricity generators on Tuesday for ignoring his company's turbines and spending more than $1 billion importing European turbines. However, Meridian Energy spokesman Alan Seay said the company's engineers had looked closely at Windflow's turbines, but they unanimously agreed they were not suitable. ...Windflow's 0.5 megawatt machines were not big enough, and Meridian's engineers had concerns about the noise generated by the two-bladed design, Seay said.

While scientists are developing many creative schemes to store wind energy, most are either far-fetched or still years from completion. Some researchers hope to create hillside pumps, or compress air in enormous underground caverns, while others envision enormous flywheels spinning with the buzz of wind-generated energy until it is ready to be spat back out and used. Two not-so-far-fetched technologies have emerged as more real and immediate possibilities -- storing wind energy in batteries, and using it to produce and store hydrogen. ...Denmark, an age-old poster child for tapping into wind energy, is already well over the golden 20 percent threshold. And they do offer one solid piece of wind-savvy advice, as relayed by Rune Birk Nielsen of the Danish Wind Industry Association in an e-mail. "We have simply put up a lot of windmills," Nielsen said.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February, Edison Mission Energy, a unit of Edison International, said the 144-foot-long windmill blades it recently bought from Suzlon have begun to split at three wind-power sites it operates in the Midwest. Suzlon has recalled 1,251 blades from its top-of-the-line turbines, which represent the majority of blades the company has sold to date in the U.S.. Its troubles don't end there. A year ago, the company bought a controlling stake in a large German turbine manufacturer, REpower Systems AG, in one of India's biggest overseas acquisitions. ...Now, Suzlon can't get its hands on the blueprints. Hamstrung by a German corporate law, Suzlon must offer to buy out minority shareholders before it can demand REpower's designs. It's unlikely that the company could make a tender offer until 2009, say people with knowledge of the companies. ...Mr. Kher blamed the cracks on the Midwest's unexpectedly violent changes in wind direction. Though Mr. Tanti says that only 45 blades have cracked, Suzlon says it will add an extra lamination layer to almost all of the blades it has shipped to the U.S. To repair cracked blades and reinforce the rest, the company expects to spend $30 million.