OTTAWA, ONTARIO, Jan 10, 2006 Magenn Power Inc. today announced a distribution agreement with Krystal Planet Corporation to market the Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS), an airborne tethered wind generator. This innovative new product will deliver up to 4 kW (kilowatts) of power at a cost per kWh (kilowatt-hour) potentially much lower than conventional wind turbines mounted on towers.

Wind varies tremendously, Louton said. The study shows that wind could swing from 100 MW of capacity output to 6,000 MW from day to day and that existing variations ranged from 30 MW to 1,800 MW. When energy is needed most, wind drops off, but during off-peak hours the wind can exceed demand and needs to be regulated or the output compensated by backing off other generators. On July 27, 2006, during an extended heat wave, wind power output dropped back to 7% of capacity, or about 60 MW, Louton said. ...The study estimates that 12,600 MW of other types of callable generation resources will have to be online to accommodate the 20% portfolio.

Geothermal, or earth energy, is perhaps the most underutilized renewable source of energy. Whether using the earth's naturally stable temperature to provide heating and cooling, or harnessing extreme heat from deep below the earth's surface to generate electricity, the potential of geothermal energy has until now been largely untapped. But the geothermal marketplace is growing fast. Understanding the current technologies involved and the economics behind them can help building designers, business executives, and homeowners to take advantage of this renewable, clean and efficient energy source. There are two types of energy under the geothermal category, each markedly different from the other.

"I think we have other Solyndras out there," said Representative Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican and chairman of the oversight and investigations committee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which held the hearing on Solyndra. "The government should not be picking winners and losers - that's what they're doing with Nissan, Tesla and Fisker," he said in an interview.

BOSTON - Massachusetts will be one of two states building a state-of-the-art facility to test turbines used in wind power. The facility will place the state at the forefront of wind power and alternative energy, said U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who outlined the facility with Gov. Deval L. Patrick at a press conference yesterday. "This will make Massachusetts a global center for clean energy technology," Patrick said. "This is a big step for us."

One way to advance wind energy is to try and destroy materials that potentially would make up a blade in a turbine. In a lab at Montana State University, three machines with two steel fists, roughly the size and shape of coffee cans, attempt to break materials. Held between these fists was a wafer of fiberglass and resin. Some of the machines pulled on a wafer, others pushed. “These machines keep grinding away around the clock,” said Montana State University’s John Mandell.

Manawatu’s Te Apiti windfarm is having equipment problems two years after commissioning, but Meridian Energy says it is a normal shakedown of new kit. Chief executive Keith Turner said a range of problems had occurred, including gearbox problems, where the bolts had not been tightened properly by the maker.

The largest landfill in Jackson County is transforming itself into an alternative energy farm that will burn waste methane to produce a steady 3.2 megawatts of power for the next century. The Dry Creek landfill takes in 900 tons of municipal garbage a day. But construction has just started on a powerhouse, which will go online next spring with two large, 20-cylinder Caterpillar engines, to use that decomposing garbage from Jackson and Josephine counties to convert into energy. A third engine may be added later. It's the first green landfill in Southern Oregon. Burning 1,040 cubic feet of methane per minute, its output would continually power about 3,000 homes, said Dry Creek General Manager Lee Fortier, a civil engineer who designed the landfill. Similar green energy farms are in Eugene and Corvallis. Energy will be sold to Pacific Power and fed into the grid.

But state officials do not have a clear picture on how readily the state's electricity transmission infrastructure could accommodate the added load - a proposed 2,500 megawatts in the Lower Peninsula and 520 in the UP - from new wind-generating sources. A 2006 report from MPSC found that barring "significant enhancements," existing electric generation and transmission capacity would be insufficient to meet reliability standards in the Lower Peninsula by 2009. The MPSC is working on a study with transmission-owning companies to determine the cost of updating Michigan's transmission system. "If we do this smart, and that's a big leap of faith right there, where we see the wind being developed is where they need to build transmission anyway," said Joseph Welch, president and CEO of Novi-based ITC Holdings Corp.

Energy giant BP revealed yesterday that it had brought a new partner into the project for a world-first carbon-capture and storage scheme at Peterhead. International mining group Rio Tinto of the UK has formed a new company with BP to develop decarbonised energy projects around the world. The hydrogen-fuelled power projects planned for the north-east and California will become part of the new jointly-owned firm called Hydrogen Energy.

After the September 2011 battery fire in Japan, NGK halted production of the batteries and advised customers, including Xcel and 19 other customers in North America, to stop using them. NGK later determined that a faulty cell had leaked molten material, triggering a short circuit and fire.

An MIT researcher has a vision: Four hundred huge offshore wind turbines are providing onshore customers with enough electricity to power several hundred thousand homes, and nobody standing onshore can see them. The trick? The wind turbines are floating on platforms a hundred miles out to sea, where the winds are strong and steady.

Start-ups working with solar, battery, hydrogen, wind, and fuel cell technologies raised $445.1 million in venture funds nationally in the first six months of this year, 56.1 percent more than the $285.2 million raised by such companies in all of 2005, according to figures newly compiled by the National Venture Capital Association trade group.

This in particular lay in the requirement that the developer, Epuron, either buy 14 affected properties or remove 19 turbines from the project. However, Mr. Price-Jones told Council that if the landholder refused to sell, the developer could just "rub his hands and say goodie, goodie," and go ahead with the turbines involved.

Not everyone believes the project is using the best possible offshore engineering principles. In particular, there are lingering concerns over the use of grout-based joints to connect turbine monopiles with transition pieces.

Efforts should be focused on stopping output of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas which helps heat the planet, rather than moving to a source that can be regenerated, said Craig Mundie, the man who replaced Bill Gates as the world's largest software maker's futurist. Conservation and radical technologies, including new nuclear, could be key, he said.

As electricity created by wind generation increases, there has to be a way for that electricity to be connected to the provincial system and transmitted to users. The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) provides that role and explained what it is currently doing to the council of the Municipal District of Willow Creek at its meeting on Jan. 9. Ata Rehman and Matt Gray of the AESO appeared as a delegation and described the current situation. The AESO plans the transmission system, arranges access for load and generation, and directs the day-to-day operation of the system. Transmission planning is a two-step process. First, the AESO identifies the need for transmission development and submits a need identification document to the Alberta Utilities Commission which will include a recommendation for transmission reinforcement in the area.

Suddenly wind farms are beginning to pop up across North Dakota, and two new projects have been announced this week in northwestern North Dakota.

WASHINGTON - Thanks to the high prices of oil and natural gas, the electricity industry is turning back to coal, America's oldest and most abundant fossil fuel, to drive a new generation of power plants. The upshot is that even as politicians take the threat of global warming more seriously, the problem may get much worse. Utilities are proposing to build 154 coal-fired power plants in the next 25 years, according to "Coal's Resurgence in Electric Power Generation," a recent Department of Energy report. Most of those new plants would use conventional coal-burning technology, which would increase carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. coal plants by more than 50 percent by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the analytic division of the Energy Department. A traditional coal plant produces three to four times more CO2 -- a potent "greenhouse gas" that traps the sun's heat and helps raise the Earth's temperature -- than comes from a modern plant that uses natural gas as its fuel.

Bozeman - In a little lab on the campus of Montana State University, John Mandell, Dan Samborsky, and scores of students, have been breaking things to advance the field of wind energy.