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 chief executive officer of Suzlon Energy Ltd., the world's fifth-largest wind-turbine producer by sales, has resigned amid growing questions about the Indian company's fast-paced growth. Andre Horbach, a former senior executive for General Electric Co. in Europe, stepped down on Friday, 16 months after taking the job. ...Suzlon has benefited from a global shortfall of turbines from more-established producers like GE and Denmark's Vestas AS, the world's largest producer in terms of sales. ...But Suzlon is also facing headwinds. Blades on turbines that it has sold to power producers in the U.S. have begun cracking. The company says only 45 blades have been affected, but it plans to spend $30 million on repairs and to strengthen almost all the blades it has sold in the U.S. Suzlon's efforts to upgrade its technology have also run into problems.

The US$2 million wind farm on the island stopped operating in early 2006 after technicians from Spain, who had overseen the project, returned to their country. The island's source of renewable energy worked during a three month testing and over one year's guarantee period under the control of the Spanish experts. ...The wind electricity farm was established as a "base" for the island's economic and social development.

In the country that hosted the Kyoto Protocol, wind power has ground to a stunning halt. ...As alternatives to coal, the country has looked mainly to nuclear power and, to a lesser extent, solar. The case of wind in Japan is instructive, as it shows how renewable energy can stumble without proper government intervention. ...But utilities don't view wind as the perfect power. After all, the electricity that wind-power projects supply fluctuates depending on the wind's strength, setting up a risk for power surges and outages. To neutralize this problem, utility companies have asked developers to store the energy created from wind power in batteries that can be tapped when needed, rather than to channel the energy directly to the grid.

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.

The strong winds that buffeted the Tokai and Kanto regions Tuesday apparently snapped the massive blades of two wind turbines ...Each windmill is 103.5 meters tall, and can generate 1,500 kilowatts. Turbines No. 4 and No. 5 each lost one of their three 37-meter-long blades.

Wind-power companies are complaining that tougher quake-resistance requirements for buildings have made it difficult or even impossible to construct facilities for the clean energy. They also say that if wind turbines remain covered under the revised Building Standards Law, it would hurt the government's target for wind-power generation capacity. The law now requires windmills that are more than 60 meters tall to clear the same quake-resistance screening as those for high-rise buildings.

The wind energy capacity addition in the State during the current financial year, which will end on Monday, is likely to be less than what it was in the previous years. ...Another reason is that most of the high potential and commercially remunerative areas have been exhausted. T. Kanagasabai, former additional chief engineer of the Board who dealt with non-conventional energy sources for 15 years, says Muppandal and the Aranvoimozhi Pass have reached saturation. The replacement of old windmills with new ones will lead to higher production ...However, the idea of replacing the old mills may be workable only in clusters of windmills put up by a company or a group of companies. Those who have established one or two windmills may not find it profitable to go in for the new ones.

Stopping between the cornfields and the primary-school playground, the workers dumped buckets of bubbling white liquid onto the ground. Then they drove right back through the gates of their compound without a word. ...here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It's a green-energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar-energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production - silicon tetrachloride - is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards. "The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or

In what implies a Rs.1 billion ($25 million) hit on its balance sheet for the current quarter, leading wind power equipment-maker Suzlon Energy will refit wind turbine blades for a project in the US, the company said Monday. “The company will do a retrofit programme to resolve blade-cracking issues discovered during the operations of some of its S88 turbines in the US,” the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange Monday.

A wind turbine set up in March 2006 was touted as the answer to energy problems in Iga, Mie Prefecture. The clean energy would supplement the power supply for radio relay facilities of a land ministry office that records water levels of the upper reaches of the Kizugawa river. But there was one problem. The wind turbine fell apart in less than two years. Malfunctions and accidents involving wind turbines have occurred repeatedly across the country, leading to suspended services and even the scrapping of one facility. Amid rising oil prices, wind power generation is gaining attention as a means to use limitless natural energy. However, slipshod surveys of wind, flawed designs or sheer incompetence have dealt a blow to the reputation of wind turbines, which are easier and cheaper to construct than other electric power generation facilities.

China promised today to develop renewable energy for its fast-growing economy but warned that coal consumption will grow dramatically and avoided embracing binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions. In a report on its energy plans, the government announced no new initiatives but said it wants to curb reliance on oil and gas to drive an economy that is the world's second-biggest energy consumer after the United States. ...Beijing has rejected such limits, arguing that developing countries such as China are not to blame for current pollution levels and need to increase energy production to fight poverty. The report said China will expand measures to exploit its abundant coal reserves - a step that will help to reduce reliance on imported fuel but could sharply raise greenhouse gas outputs.

Investors are also moving cautiously as more than one-third of wind mills, some 800MW of installed capacity, in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu were not utilized in the peak season because the state electricity board did not have infrastructure to "wheel" in the power produced, or infrastructure to match generating points to users, IWPA claimed. Around 2,400MW is concentrated in southern districts of Tamil Nadu. Wind speeds this year have declined by 10%, resulting in shortage in power generation in Tamil Nadu, which has 3,684MW of installed wind energy capacity. "Locations which have lower wind energy generation have become unviable, as there has been a considerable reduction in IRR (internal rate of return) compared with last year," said S.D. Singh, president of Vestas RRB India Ltd, which manufactures wind energy equipment.

Wind turbine makers face a ``major challenge'' getting equipment due to surging demand and probably won't be able to cut delivery times for three years, said Suzlon Energy Ltd., India's biggest wind farm construction company. Lead times to supply wind turbines, which have reached at least 15 months, will take time to reduce as suppliers clear order backlogs and add an ``unprecedented'' amount of new capacity, Andre Horbach, Amsterdam-based chief executive officer at Suzlon, said today in Melbourne. Suzlon has a $3.5 billion order backlog, he said.

Once the habitat of wolves and hyenas, now replaced by wind mills at Gajendragad. Endangered hyenas and wolves rapidly disappearing from Gajendragad ...Three years ago, Gajendragad was recognised as a safe haven for highly endangered species like the Indian grey wolf and striped hyenas, but then came wind farming and wind mills with huge noisy fans and human traffic to maintain these machines. It drove away these species from their habitat.

Kutch used to have 10 to 15 nests of the white backed vultures till a couple of years ago. This year, just a lone nest has been found. Where once there were more than 70 birds, now only 10 to 15 remain. When birdwatchers got together to look for a possible reason for the sudden drop in number of these birds, they attributed it to the wind farms that have come up in the area in the last one year.

Solar batteries, wind farms and tidal power plants can be effective only in small part of Russian territories, besides, energy storage and servicing of such devices are quite costly. Professionals predict share of alternative energy sources in Russia won't exceed 1.5-2% during next 30-50 years.

A strong bias toward local producers and rigid price controls hinder European investors from making significant inroads into China's vast energy sector ... "Energy is sometimes also a national battlefield in Europe. But China is even more so." This nationalism, Wuttke said, was reinforced by an antitrust law passed last week that set rules to protect big state power firms from foreign acquisitions and to require potential international investors to meet strict national security criteria. Beijing also requires investors to use 70 percent Chinese equipment in foreign-invested wind farms, and a similar local content requirement was recently slapped on the booming petrochemical sector, which Wuttke said went against China's commitments in 2001 when it joined the World Trade Organisation.

The new India has urgent energy needs to sustain its economic boom, and great potential for wind energy. Today it accounts for less than 5 per cent of total generation. To meet its electricity generation target of 400,000MW by 2030 it will rely not on renewable energy but on large-scale coal-fired power plants, which are the cheapest to operate. Today Today 62 per cent of India's electricity is powered by coal. Wind energy makes little sense for private investors without the big tax breaks offered by the Government. According to Ameen Ahmed, a wildlife campaigner in Karnataka, they are "not worth the environmental damage" that they cause. The turbines "have devastated large tracts of forest and many villagers complain about the noise pollution". There have also been reports of the whirring driving bears from their natural habitat.

Yet when the National Planning Committee (NPC) approved plans for building a wind turbine farm directly on the path of the migration flyway, SPNI came out in strong opposition..."Of the 90,000 birds migrating over, the flight path of roughly 10,000 passed directly through the air space where the wind turbines are planned. Obviously these birds would have been in great danger of collision with the blades," says Alon. Weekly surveys were conducted during the winter, and daily migration surveys resumed on March 1st, 2005. "During the spring of 2005, bird observers counted another 200,000 plus birds, mostly White Storks of which a minimum of 15,000 crossed over the proposed turbine farm within the range of the blades.