This is news from December, but I thought the blog could use a little pick-me-up.
tl;dr Warren Buffet’s subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy, has ordered $1 billion worth of wind turbines from Siemens AG to be used in projects in Iowa.
It’s nice to see a bit of progress here and there, especially after having to listen to Donald Trump fighting the off shore wind project in Scotland for the past two years because he feels it will negatively impact the view from his planned golf course and hotel.
Notable quotes:
“If Congress were to remove all the subsidies from every energy source, the wind industry can compete on its own.” –Tom Kiernan, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association
“MidAmerican expects to close some coal-powered plants in 2015 as the price of wind power continues to slide.” — Adam Wright, vice president of wind generation and development for MidAmerican
“Power from wind is now cheaper than power from newly built natural gas plants.” –Amy Grace, a wind analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance
One of the key challenges for wind energy is getting the electricity to the end users. During the conference I attended last week, I chatted with a German geotechnical engineer who does a lot of foundation design and construction for the wind industry. He said that the volume of work for new wind turbine installations is down; however, the volume of work for transmission line towers is on the rise. Since German wind power infrastructure is further along than in the US, we should expect increasing pressure to overhaul our outdated power grid in the near future. While the costs to overhaul our electricity grid and incorporate “Smart Grid” technology are estimated in the hundred of billions of dollars; the savings due to increases in efficiency and capability are expected to outweigh the costs (http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/05/25/25climatewire-smart-grid-costs-are-massive-but-benefits-wi-48403.html?pagewanted=all). In the short term, a 2010 report (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy11osti/50057.pdf) published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (part of the Dept. of Energy) suggests that the existing electrical grid in the Western US can handle wind and solar comprising up to 30% of the total electricity production.
That’s really interesting, thanks for the links!