Siemens Gamesa has launched 14 MW offshore Direct Drive wind turbine with 222-meter rotor catering to the world’s need for clean, renewable energy. 

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“Despite strong technical progress, the road to commercialization is longer and riskier than hoped, so from today Makani’s time at Alphabet is coming to an end,” Fort Felker, Makani’s chief executive, wrote in a blog post. Astro Teller, the head of X, said the lab will be “redirecting resources to more promising areas.”

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But the commercialization of floating wind turbines has been hampered because the cost of the technology remains high.  At the same time, governments say costs need to fall before they'll allocate capacity to floating wind projects.

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Technologies exist that can be built into the turbine. Although they are used in Canada, Denmark and Sweden, Hu said the U.S. wind industry has found them to be cost-prohibitive.... blades can incorporate a material that conducts electricity that can prevent icing by warming the blade. He said the cost for the power amounts to roughly 5% of the energy a turbine might typically produce.

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Technologies exist that can be built into the turbine. Although they are used in Canada, Denmark and Sweden, Hu said the U.S. wind industry has found them to be cost-prohibitive.... blades can incorporate a material that conducts electricity that can prevent icing by warming the blade. He said the cost for the power amounts to roughly 5% of the energy a turbine might typically produce.

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“Over the past four decades, wind turbine scaling has been critical to wind power cost reduction. Looking ahead, scaling continues to offer potential cost savings, but new innovations are needed to enable scaling while effectively managing capital expenditures and the logistics of moving equipment to the plant site.”

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The California projects are among a growing number of efforts ...fueling growing optimism that these giant batteries will allow wind and solar power to displace a growing share of fossil-fuel plants. But there’s a problem with this rosy scenario. These batteries are far too expensive and don’t last nearly long enough, limiting the role they can play on the grid, experts say. If we plan to rely on them for massive amounts of storage as more renewables come online—rather than turning to a broader mix of low-carbon sources like nuclear and natural gas with carbon capture technology—we could be headed down a dangerously unaffordable path.

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In a nugget of very good news for the renewable energy sector, a survey of 163 wind energy experts has found that in the coming decades, the cost of electricity generated by wind should plunge, by between 24 and 30 percent by the year 2030, and even further by the middle of the century.

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The Department of Energy reports a 1,000-mile truck trip can run more than $20,000. Considering the average wind turbine now runs $3.3 million, that's a relatively small piece of the overall cost. But multiply the trucking bill by the three blades per turbine and the 100 turbines that might make up a wind farm, and the pricetag rises quickly.

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The Department of Energy reports a 1,000-mile truck trip can run more than $20,000. Considering the average wind turbine now runs $3.3 million, that's a relatively small piece of the overall cost. But multiply the trucking bill by the three blades per turbine and the 100 turbines that might make up a wind farm, and the pricetag rises quickly.

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Wind turbines provide clean, abundant energy and bolster America's power grid. But across the world people are banding together to fight wind farms, blaming noise for interrupted sleep and a host of health problems. Scientists lack sufficient understanding of wind turbines' noise and best ways to mitigate the effects. 

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It was the largest curtailment of green energy last year, according to grid operators, and it highlights a hurdle for Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to increase the state's reliance on renewable energy. Peak demand for electricity rarely coincides with the brightest sunshine or the strongest winds, so finding a way to store clean power and deliver it when needed will be critical as California relies more on renewable energy.

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A proposal to export twice as much Wyoming wind power to Los Angeles as the amount of electricity generated by the Hoover Dam includes an engineering feat even more massive than that famous structure: Four chambers, each approaching the size of the Empire State Building, would be carved from an underground salt deposit to hold huge volumes of compressed air.

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A proposal to export twice as much Wyoming wind power to Los Angeles as the amount of electricity generated by the Hoover Dam includes an engineering feat even more massive than that famous structure: Four chambers, each approaching the size of the Empire State Building, would be carved from an underground salt deposit to hold huge volumes of compressed air.

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Offshore construction is really expensive, and even a costly tower might account for just a small fraction of installation costs. Onshore, however, the basic costs of construction are much lower, and taller towers eat up a much larger percentage of a construction budget, making taller turbines less competitive.

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Shah said that the turbine has had a problem "synchronizing with the grid" since the spike, with the turbine able to run and produce energy but unable to get the energy on the grid.

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NextEra Energy Resources is planning to shut two of its wind farms in Texas after both were significantly damaged by ice storms in November. ...Ice storms that hit the region in November caused significant damage to the turbines at both facilities as well as the transmission system.

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Already offshore wind production is three times the cost of onshore wind farms such as the Consumers Energy Lake Winds Energy Park now producing electricity in Mason County south of Ludington, according to MAREC Director Arn Boezaart. Factoring in the cost of engineering wind tower protection against the ice is just one more reason that Great Lakes wind farms are likely more than a decade away, if the political will for such installations ever materializes, he said.

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Already offshore wind production is three times the cost of onshore wind farms such as the Consumers Energy Lake Winds Energy Park now producing electricity in Mason County south of Ludington, according to MAREC Director Arn Boezaart. Factoring in the cost of engineering wind tower protection against the ice is just one more reason that Great Lakes wind farms are likely more than a decade away, if the political will for such installations ever materializes, he said.

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On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to vote on a groundbreaking proposal that would require PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to collectively buy more than 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage by 2020 -- roughly enough electricity to supply nearly 994,000 homes. The first-in-the-nation mandate is expected to spur innovation in emerging storage technologies.

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