Some more links:

I believe that Vestas makes most of the worlds large wind turbines and if I recall correctly Vestas is owned by GE.

http://www.vestas.com/en

The National Renewable Energy Lab:

http://www.nrel.gov/

Rocky Mountain Institute, which does leading edge research and promotion of new energy solutions:

http://www.rmi.org/

I highly recommend the article called "The Smart Garage":

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid520.php


Developing the ability to timeshift electricity from when it is generated to when it is needed is a key problem and Rocky Mountain Institute addresses it.

Vestas Americas is not owned by GE. They are owned by Vestas Wind Systems based in Denmark.

Its important to note that they are not owned by another power company that has interests in non-wind energy sources.

Thanks for the clarification, I thought that GE bought the Vestas parent company in Denmark.

Your real name would be welcome here, unless you have something to hide.

You're right GE Wind Energy is a competitor to Vestas. I still have not found the name of the company that GE bought.

"GE Energy is known the world over for their many installations of land-based 1.5 MW wind turbines, inherited from Enron Wind through a 2002 acquisition of the company."

http://www...y?id=32133

Yes, GE bought Enron's wind business. That's how they got into it. Enron Wind became GE Wind.

The windmill photo on this page is of an old design of support structure, the new towers look a lot better in my opinion.

Also, in my opinion windmills are the Haute Couture Fashion of the renewable energy systems and ought to be marketed as such. Just look at those tall slim beauties and imagine them walking down the high fashion runways of Milan, NYC, or Paris. I suggest that if you can get the followers of Haute Couture to embrace and support windmills, the rest will follow enthusiastically.

I think that proper marketing campaigns will establish windmills as icons just like the wonderful old Dutch windmills, they will become beloved in the minds of most everyone.

One of the main advantages I see of windmill farms is that they are widely distributed and so make any threat of an attack taking down a large part of the electrical system essentially moot, unlike coal, natural gas, or nuclear plants.

"Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council"

Just for feedforward, that is not a working clickable html.

Thanks for the heads-up. The link has been fixed.

On our eastern horizen our once open space rangeland view has now been forever changed by the recent completion of the Elkhorn Valley Wind Farm, near North Powder, Oregon. In the day these sanitary white pillars stand out in horrific contrast to the surronding grassland, and at night we are enlightened by the multiple blinking red lights. It used to be a beautiful moon rise to see, but no more. It seems somewhat curious that all of of these energy production facilities are in our rural landscape, and none near urban areas where the aesthetic value would be compromised, but the highest electrical usage occurs.

If it were not that this "Green Energy" is so politically correct and the huge tax incentives to the parent companies, there would be no logical or economical merit to the 1.3+ million dollar per tower cost. There is no way that this form of energy
will ever cost effective, and I am sure that our future electricity rates will bear this truth. If any other segment of the economy would have attempted this kind of footprint, Hell would have frozen before it would have been allowed. Bio-fuels generation, using the aftermath of much needed thinning in our surronding forests before we loose our watersheds to catostrophic fire, would be productive power generation and an economic stimulus for our rural communities by creating family wage employment.

Our ranch goes back seven generations, and we are stewards of our resources. We believe that one of these resources we protect is the "Open Space" that all humanity can enjoy. If these production facilities continue to expand, we all will loose forever the landscpe we cherish.

Curtis W. Martin, V P Ranch

to the producers: FYI, 3 national ornithological societies are holding concurrent scientific meetings at Portland Hilton this week, and Friday afternoon the program includes a symposium on "The impact of wind energy development on birds." I thought you might want to interview one of the speakers. I guess you could call the HIlton and ask how to get in touch with the meeting organizers.

Presently, A prime reason all the turbines are being placed East of The Dalles and out to Morrow County and Klickitat Cty in Washington is because of the transmission lines and and power grid already in place from the dams; making it easy to deliver the power to market/consumers. The hydro system provides back-up power generation when the wind doesn't blow. But it seems that capacity has reached a point of overload, as reported by the Oregonian in a couple of articles earlier this summer. Transmission lines are another expense ultimately paid by the ratepayer.
For all the 'greenness' of wind turbines, the developers are well covered with tax credits/incentives wheather or not they actually produce any electricity. Conservation and energy efficiency are cleaner and easier to develop for the enduser, rather than continued reliance on big multi-national power corporations. Unfortunately, small locally owned wind turbine developers are closed out of the market due to economies of scale.
If you want to pay twice to three times the going rate for electricity then wind power is okay, as long as the wind blows all the time, but it doesn't.......

There are several misconceptions in this post. There is no tax credit for projects that don't produce electricity-- the credit is on an energy production basis. The credit, while important, is not a large fraction (around 15%) of the cost of the wind projects.

Wind is not "backed up" with hydro. Power planners ensure there is sufficient generating capability to meet loads without wind, as they know that the wind does not always blow. When the wind does blow, other power plants reduce their generation to compensate.

I completely agree that conservation and enrgy efficiency are important. And if you want to do something locally with renewable energy, put a solar hot water system in-- very cost effective and saves fossil fuels. Contact the Energy Trust for more information-- anyone with an unshaded roof can make use of this. I've had one on my rooftop in rainy Portland for about ten years. See www.energytrust.org

Actually, wind developers can also take advantage of 5-year double-declining balance on their federal taxes. That's a very generous break that doesn't depend on actual production.

While there are proposals for Wind farms in the Columbia River Gorge, the large-scale winds farms you are talking about are East of the Gorge in what is called the Columbia Basin. The Columbia River Gorge is the gorge that cuts through the Cascade Mtns. and runs from Troutdale to The Dalles. The issues of siting turbines where they would be visible from the Columbia River National Scenic Area are different than those involved in siting turbines on the wheat lands of the Columbia Basin. OPB and the Portland media could improve their reporting by better understanding the geography of the state.

If we are to achieve a full transition from fossil energy to renewable energy, wind power will have to play a significant role, especially in Oregon and the Northwest. All sources of energy, whether it is coal, hydro, wind or solar, require investment in infrastructure, including transmission lines. In Oregon, we will have to build some amount of new transmission to meet electrical demand. Currently wind power is one of the most economical and environmentally friendly options we have, especially in Oregon.

Regarding the proposed Shepherd's Flat Wind Farm, it is important to keep in mind that large, continuous developments of wind power are already in existence in Oregon. 500 MW of wind turbines are currently producing renewable energy near the town of Wasco, with more on the way over the next couple of years. It is not thought of a single wind farm because it has been built by multiple parties over several stages, but it will look like a single wind farm just as much as the Shepherd's Flat Wind Farm. There is a wind power development in Texas owned by several different companies that is 2500 MW and growing, so Shepherd's Flat would be the largest wind farm in the world in name only. It is also important to recognize that the wind turbines within these large wind farm developments are separated by large distances. The rows of wind turbines near Wasco, for example, are located in excess of a mile apart in most cases. Today's wind farms do not look like the old California wind farms that cloud our picture of wind energy.

I do think it is legitimate to ask "how much wind power do we want in Oregon and how much land will it require?" But we have to answer these questions in the context of all sources of power and our future energy needs.

Clint Johnson

When Gorge winds surged in July, flooding the grid, utilities scrambled to manage the supply. It was a weekend and the wind farm managers were AWOL, leaving the rest of the supply sources to scramble to manage the load. With increasing capacity, this situation will only be repeated. My question is what regulations are in place to require 24 hour management participation by the private wind farms, and what are the costs for their failure to participate in managing the grid supply? Is it in their best interest to keep the turbines running and let others deal with the load consequences?

Yeah, too much energy from free wind is a real problem that needs to be addressed.

But contrast that with fossil fuel causing global warming, dams killing fish, and the storage problems of nuclear plants, and I think wind-power is the right kind of problem to have.

These systems shouldn't be managed by humans at all, they should be managed by computers. I'm surprised thats not how they run already.

There was a wind event on June 30 in which the wind energy on the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) went from near zero around 2 pm to near full output (more than the one remaining nuclear plant produces) about 5 hours later. Most of the power on BPA's system is actually "scheduled" through BPA to other off-takers of the power. However, the wind increase was not fully anticipated by the schedulers, and BPA found itself with more power than it was prepared to deal with for a few hours. There was a communication glitch when BPA operators tried to contact wind generators to limit their output and this was reported in various places, including the Oregonian. The glitch has been addressed. Wind projects are staffed 24 hours a day and do participate in grid management.

It is true however, that institutional changes would have improved the situation. For example, BPA technically could have increased the exports to the off-takers, or turned down other fossil units on the system, but these contractual arrangements do not yet exist. Much work is going on behind the scenes to remedy this, and make greater use of the wind at lower overall cost.

This wind energy that is currently threatening to overwhelm existing transmission lines is, with appropriate changes to existing contracts, almost perfect for transition. As wind (and solar) energy exceed the limits of the transmission lines, the state should be planning for the reduction of dam-sourced energy, little by little, until the dams can come down without having to run around for new energy, or pay higher prices to fill the gaps.

What about noise? Don't those great big ginormous things make noise as they turn in the wind? I've heard that turbines make a huge "fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh" noise as they turn that can be heard for miles. Are newer designs quieter?

I have heard the same thing-- maybe those were older wind turbine designs. I've been to three operating wind turbine sites and they weren't loud at all. The wind in my ears was louder than the blades for the most part. All I can say is go visit a site and see for yourself. They are an impressive sight-- whether you like them or not, they are quite striking and worth a visit.

Newer designs are not quieter. As the machines become larger, with larger blades, the technological impovements in areodynamic flow has not kept pace. The mechanical gears to rotate the blades and the nacelle make noise as well. As the machines age, expect even more noise than the newest models currently put out. The sound of a new car is much more pleasing than the sound of an oder model, but for how long?. Most of the noise problems are not in the flatlands such as eastern Oregon or Washington, but in the more mountainous regions. When you live in the wind shadow of a ridge and have little or no wind sound interferance in the background, the noise reportedly is much more significant. Simple sound amplification models indicate that amplification of sound can occur downwind of the turbines. When you couple that with complex topography that can funnel and bounce the sound around a serious noise pollution problem can occur. The noise can also be 24/7. The quietest time of the day, nighttime, can become the most problematic for people living nearby, and even not so nearby. Current research, that the wind industry trys to brush aside, indicates that the turbines should be placed a minimum of 1.25 miles from homes, and this is particularly true in mountainous regions. Please note that none of the investors of these projects actually live among the turbines..........day and night, day after day. If they did, they just might abandon their homes as some people have had to do. Just visiting and standing under for a few moments will not give a representative feel of what is happening in some communities. I love the story of bus tours where they drive people up in a bus, unload them under a turbines, pass around the wine and say, "See, they not noisy." None of us go to concert, stand hundreds of feet under a speaker or stage directed downwind and expect to hear much. Of course, that same speaker in a huge ampitheater would create a lot of noise, even when placed high overhead.

I've been all around turbines, up close, hundreds of feet away, inside of them, on top of them-- just haven't heard what you report.

That comment reminds me of a time I lived next to a bunch of hoodlums who kept us up every night with their partying. I'd go over and ask them to be quiet, and they'd ask, incredulously, "Don't you like Zeppelin?"

Despite Ken Dragoon's self-serving inability to hear the nuisance, reports keep appearing of people forced to leave their homes or suffering from the stress and physical effects of the noise. See http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com