As wind turbines boom, nature doesn't cooperate

Date: April 22, 2016

A wind farm in West Texas, outside of Roby. (Photo courtesy Rational Middle Media)

Last year might have been a banner year for wind turbine construction, but not for the wind itself.

According to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the amount of electricity generated from wind turbines grew by less than 10 million megawatt hours last year, the smallest increase since 2007.

In a report Thursday government analysts attributed the slow down to decreased wind speeds across the western half of the United States during the first six months of 2015.

“The same weather patterns resulted in stronger winds in the central part of the country, where wind generation growth in 2015 was most pronounced,” the report read.

The fall off came even as wind energy capacity grew by its highest level in three years, as more than 8,000 megawatts worth of new turbines were installed on the grid, according to EIA.

That followed a long period of uncertainty around the future of a federal tax credit for wind energy. In December Congress approved an extension of the credit through the end of 2019, with payments steadily scaling down in the years ahead.

As wind turbines boom, nature doesn"t cooperate

ReNewable Now: Sun shines on New York solar energy boom by Staff Writers New York (AFP) Feb ...

The good news continues to pour in on the solar side.  Kudos to NY for opening the doors to some very large sites:

“On a rooftop in the Bronx far from the skyscrapers of Manhattan, 4,760 panels soak up the winter rays. Welcome to the solar power boom in New York state.

Robert Kline, director of commercial sales for the Ross Solar Group that installed the panels, is delighted.

“It is the largest (solar) installation in the history of New York City,” he tells AFP.

The 1.6-megawatt installation on the Jetro Cash and Carry has been proudly singled out by New York governor Andrew Cuomo as a prime example of a drive to haul the state into a new dawn.

New York has long lagged behind California and even neighboring states, let alone Europe, when it comes to generating solar energy, but that is slowly changing.

In 2012, Cuomo set up the public-private NY-Sun Initiative with $800 million, and 300 megawatts of solar capacity have since been installed in the state, more than during the previous 10 years.

Cuomo now wants to extend the program until 2023 with an additional nearly $1 billion to generate another 3,000 megawatts.

Experts say that would create 13,000 jobs and bring down greenhouse emissions by 2.3 million tonnes a year.

California and Arizona are home to more than 80 percent of solar installations in the United States, but Cory Honeyman — a solar analyst at GTM Research — says New York is coming into its own.

“New York definitively is one of the hotter markets to watch, as we expect a really significant ramp up in build out of projects for both residential and non-residential markets,” he said.

- Public awareness on the rise -

This is a godsend for more than 400 specialized companies competing for their share of the ballooning market.

In the Bronx, one of them, OnForce Solar, saw its revenue triple last year and hopes to double it again this year, chief executive officer Charles Feit told AFP.

He says he has doubled, even tripled staff every year since he started and that it was the economic argument that was driving business home.

“Politically, the winds are with us… public awareness has definitely risen,” said Feit at his large premises where several new offices are in the process of being built.

“In New York City, there is so much opportunity,” agreed David Sandbank, OnForce president and vice president of the New York Solar Energy Industries Association.

While Manhattan is a problem due to strict regulations, other boroughs are full of huge rooftops and business owners looking to save on some of the highest electricity costs in the country.

Sandbank said the NY-Sun Initiative was intended to pave the way for a stable solar industry and said some specialist firms from California have now expanded to New York.

“With longevity and transparency, we’re creating an industry,” he told AFP, adding 3,300 new jobs had already been created.

Jetro Cash and Carry hopes to save 40 percent of their $250,000 electricity bill a year, says Kline.

Contracts are pouring in and Cuomo recently promised grants to schools that build solar panels.

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg also announced last year that a solar energy farm would be built in 2015 at Freshkills, a former landfill on Staten Island.

It is to be the largest solar farm in New York, capable of producing 10 megawatts of electricity.

But it’s a long road ahead.

Solar energy represents one percent of renewable energy production in the United States, itself 12 percent of total electricity production, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The US solar energy market grew nearly 30 percent from 2012 to 2013 and Honeyman says it could overtake world leader Germany in terms of new builds in 2014 for the first time in 15 years.”

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ReNewable Now: Sun shines on New York solar energy boom by Staff Writers New York (AFP) Feb ...

Wind energy boom blows into Northwest Iowa county

PRIMGHAR, Iowa | During the summer, O’Brien County farmer Daryl Haack routinely sprays his ditches for weeds. It’s often a challenge to find days calm enough to keep the herbicide from drifting into neighboring fields.

“It seems like the wind always blows around here,” Haack said.

Lately, the vast wind resource has turned the rural Northwest Iowa county into a hotbed of economic activity. A bevy of companies are moving ahead with large-scale projects that would harness and export the renewable energy to more populated regions.

The undertakings are projected to spur hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and create thousands of temporary construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs, as well as fill local tax coffers and grow communities that have seen an exodus in population in recent decades.

“It’s an economic boom for the county the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” said Rodd Holtkamp, a Primghar banker and member of the county economic development board. “It should eventually put more people in our grocery stores, more people in our churches, more people in our schools.”

500 MEGAWATTS OF WIND POWER

There currently are no commercial wind turbines in O’Brien County, but that’s about to change in a big way.

MidAmerican Energy Co. broke ground in November on a 500 megawatt wind farm, the largest single site in Iowa history. It calls for 218 wind turbines spread out over 70,000 acres near the O’Brien County seat of Primghar.

Dubbed the Highland Wind Energy project, it’s part of a $1.9 billion expansion of Iowa’s wind generating capacity that the Des Moines utility announced last year.

The foundation work for the Highland turbines started last fall and should be done by the end of the year, with the turbines and the more than 650 blades set to go up by the end of 2015, MidAmerican spokeswoman Tina Potthoff said.

MidAmerican, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, also is scheduled to begin work late this year on a high-voltage overhead transmission line that will start in northern O’Brien County, near Sanborn, and head east along the Highway 18 corridor into neighboring Clay County. The line is among several so-called “multi-value projects,” or MVPs, designed to alleviate congestion on the region’s electric grid and provide a better route for sending Iowa and Minnesota wind power to the east.

Potthoff said the MVP 3 line will serve as a secondary line for the O’Brien County wind farm, which initially will connect to an existing line running diagonally through the county. Construction of a substation for the MVP line is scheduled to begin this year.

Another major high-voltage transmission line, called the Rock Island Clean Line, also is slated to start in O’Brien, just southeast of Sanborn. The 500-mile line will export 3,500 megawatts of wind-generated electricity — three times more energy than the Hoover Dam — from Northwest Iowa and bordering states to power-hungry customers in metro Chicago and other large cities to the east.

The developer, Houston-based Clean Line Energy, is awaiting approval from regulators in Iowa and Illinois before going ahead with the direct current line. The company estimates the line to be in service in 2017 following about two years of construction that would begin as early as next year in O’Brien.

Clean Line projects the $2 billion project will create 2,000 construction jobs and 500 permanent jobs, as well as spur development of 1,000 to 2,000 wind turbines within a 100-mile radius of the county.

At least three other companies are looking to develop wind-related projects in O’Brien but are not as far along in the process as Clean Line and MidAmerican, County Economic Development Director Kiana Johnson said.

California-based Eurus Energy has secured easements from landowners between Highways 60 and 59 for a wind farm called Hawkeye Point. The development is still in the planning stages, said Rich Crawford, a consultant working on the project.

Chicago-based Invenergy LLC, which developed the Highland Wind project and then sold it to MidAmerican last year, is working on a second project at a yet-to-be announced site in O’Brien County, Johnson said.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy, the nation’s largest electric power utility, in a joint venture with American Transmission Co., is developing transmission lines to move wind-generated power more easily. One route is slated to run through far eastern O’Brien, with construction starting as early as 2016, Johnson said.

THOUSANDS OF WORKERS MAY BE NEEDED

More than a decade ago, wind energy developers started scouting potential sites in O’Brien, which lies on the southern tip of the Buffalo Ridge, an ancient glacial formation stretching into southwest Minnesota that’s known for its consistent strong winds. But the early initiatives stalled because of the bottleneck in the region’s electric grid, Johnson said.

“That was the holdup all these years. There was nowhere to go if they did build it,” she said.

Under the current schedules, construction on the Rock Island Clean Line and the MidAmerican line and wind farm would overlap beginning in 2015. At the peak, hundreds, if not thousands, of construction workers could be on site.

Skilled laborers from around the country are expected to flock to the rural county of around 14,000 to fill the temporary jobs.

“We are trying to prepare, but we really don’t know what all to expect,” Johnson said. “Housing will definitely be an issue for everybody. It will greatly impact all of Northwest Iowa, not just O’Brien County.”

With the Highland project underway, the few hotels in the county already are starting to fill up. Some local residents are renting rooms in their homes to out-of-town workers. Others laborers are commuting daily to O’Brien County from larger cities such as Sioux City and Sioux Falls.

The workers are expected to spend money on everything from lodging and meals to fuel and clothing, giving local merchants a healthy boost in sales.

“The trickle-down of those dollars going through the community time and time again is just going to be amazing,” said Holtkamp, executive vice president at Primghar Savings Bank.

The economic benefits would extend well beyond O’Brien. Clean Lean, for example, recently agreed to buy $200 million worth of utility poles from Sabre Industries, contributing to job growth at Sabre’s factory in Sioux City.

When up and running, the wind farms and transmission lines are projected to create hundreds of permanent jobs in the region, mostly in sectors that would support and service the new wind farms, such as makers of towers, blades and other turbine components.

Clean Line anticipates hiring a handful of full-time workers to maintain a  station that would convert the wind power from AC to DC before sending it on the transmission line. The convertor station would be built at a cost of $250 million to $300 million, said Beth Conley, manager of the Rock Island Clean Line.

SOME OPPOSE PLANS

The slew of wind-related infrastructure also would generate millions of dollars in additional property taxes for local governments, as well as produce a new cash crop for local farmers like Haack, who has granted MidAmerican easements for two wind turbines on one of his farms.

Haack said he would collect annual payments of around $9,000 for each turbine and a service road.

The Rock Island Clean Line is offering to compensate owners for the value of their land, plus an additional structure payment, based on the number and type of poles or towers. Owners have a choice of a one-time payment or an annual upfront payment. For two poles and a half-mile-long, 145-foot-wide right of way, an owner would collect a one-time payment of about $100,000, Conley said. 

Farmers retain ownership and the right to till the land under both the lines and turbines.

Haack heads a newly formed landowners association that backs all the wind projects and offers legal assistance to guide dues-paying members through the negotiations with developers looking to build in the county.

A smaller vocal group of landowners is opposed to the Rock Island Clean Line. Critics fear Iowa’s eminent domain law for utilities would allow Clean Line to force a sale and easement even if the landowners aren’t willing to sell.

But fifth-generation O’Brien County farmer Jay Hofland said he strongly supports the transmission line, which would pass less than a half-mile from his rural home. Hofland said the lofty job prospects helped convince him to option farmland for the Clean Line convertor station near Sanborn.

“We do not do a very good job of keeping our young people around here, Hofland said. “I’m hoping that through this economic development my sons or some other young people in the community can stick around and gain from these jobs.”

Hofland said the county has the potential to generate far more wind power than its own residents would ever use.

“As a farmer, I sell hogs, cattle and corn and soybeans,” he said. “We export all of those things. I’m strongly behind exporting some wind energy out of this area. It’s another energy stream and it’s a good opportunity.”

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Wind energy boom blows into Northwest Iowa county