Bargain Prices for Wind Energy

More Bargain Prices for Wind Energy: This Time in Oklahoma

SustainableBusiness.com News

Public Service Company of Oklahoma is buying three times the wind energy it originally planned because of "extraordinary pricing opportunities," it says.

Buying 600 megawatts of wind energy will save the utility an estimated $53 million in the first year alone and even more after that, it says, while providing electricity for 200,000 homes.

Prices for wind energy are 50% lower than last year in Oklahoma - less than coal or natural gas.
  
"With these long-term power purchase agreements, we're adding a significant amount of Oklahoma wind energy, bringing more diversity to our fuel mix, and doing so at a price that will provide substantial savings for our customers," says Stuart Solomon, President.

The utility signed power purchase agreements for 200 MW of energy from three Oklahoma wind farms under development: Balko Wind Project (300 MW total); Seiling Wind Project and Goodwell Wind Project - deliveries begin by 2016.

Oklahoma's Renewable Portfolio Standard targets 15% renewable energy by 2015 and the state ranks #8 for wind generation. The University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University get all their electricity from wind.

Onshore wind energy prices are projected to drop another 12% by 2016, thanks to advancing technologies and lower equipment costs, says Bloomberg New Energy Finance.



CREDIT: Sue Ogrocki, Associated Press

Meanwhile, wind energy hit a record last Thursday in Oklahoma and eight other states that make up the Southwest Power Pool. It supplied 6.45 GW of energy for several hours in the afternoon and evening - about 23% of all fuel sources.

Other recent low-priced wind energy buys include:

• Austin Energy's purchase of 570 MW brings it to 35% renewables. It's paying 2.3 cents to 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) - less than natural gas.
• Houston's 140 MW purchase, making it the biggest municipal buyer in the US;
• Excel increased its wind portfolio by a third in the Upper Midwest, buying 600 MW.  "Wind power is simply the cheapest resource available right now, and we are taking the opportunity ... to further shape our systems for the future," says Ben Fowke, CEO of Excel.
• Ohio State University bought 50 MW from the biggest wind farm in the state. 
• Massachusetts' utilities are joining to buy 565 MW from projects in Maine and New Hampshire.

GHG Fighter

Wind A Cost Cutter, GHG Fighter, Grid Study Says

by Pete Danko

There’s more evidence that integrating increasing amounts of wind power onto the nation’s power grids could not only go more smoothly than some have feared, it could also be a money saver.

The latest report comes from PJM (PDF available here), the grid operator for 13 states in the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes region. The goal of the study that PJM organized was to look at “the operational, planning, and market effects of large-scale integration of wind power”

image via Shutterstock

The PJM project team found that “(e)ven at 30% penetration, results indicate that the PJM system can handle the additional renewable integration with sufficient reserves and transmission build out.”

And if you think “sufficient reserves and transmission build out” is code for expensive back up and transmission infrastructure, that’s apparently not the case. The study found that transmission costs would be a small fraction of the value of the energy produced from renewables.

Indeed, the report said “the principal impacts of higher penetration of renewable energy into the grid include … lower systemwide production costs” and “lower wholesale customer energy costs.” All that, and “lower emissions of criteria pollutants and greenhouse gasses,” too.

As you might expect, the wind industry loved the study, with the American Wind Energy Association saying PJM’s work “confirms that wind energy is drastically decreasing both the price of electricity and emissions of harmful pollutants.”

The industry has had plenty of good news to point to recently. A recent update of the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study, by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, showed that ramping fossil-fuel generation up and down to accommodate more renewables reduced the carbon cutting benefits of wind (and solar) by only 0.2 percent, even at high renewable-energy penetration rates.

And researchers in Spain also reported that cycling doesn’t much hinder wind power’s ability to trim greenhouse gas emissions.

Wind Power Cuts CO2 Emissions

Wind Power Cuts CO2 Emissions Considerably, Even At High Penetration Levels

New empirical research out of Spain shows that wind power is very effective at cutting CO2 emissions, even at quite high penetration levels.

This is, of course, what many of us would expect, but some people have had the odd idea (or have at least claimed) that wind power plants require such a large amount of backup power that they are useless in making such cuts. Absurd… as this new research shows. Unfortunately, the myth proposed by the confused or biased commenters that most likely stimulated this research has been spread pretty far and wide. Media agencies with a weird bias against wind power, or simply looking to stir up controversy and counterintuitive claims, have been keen to present the myth noted above. Will this research put an end to that? One can only hope so.

The specific findings of the researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid were as follows:

• “Every wind MWh introduced in the network allows us to avoid all the CO2 of each displaced thermal MWh at a low penetration.”

• “When penetration levels are as high as 50%, the wind effect is accumulative and reductions would reach just 80%. However, this reduction is still significant and there are no negative cases…”

The researchers also note that the usefulness of wind turbines can be further improved by developing wind turbine technology and modeling, management of the electricity system, and use of energy storage technologies — all of this is already well known and there is a great deal of research and development going on in these arenas. In other words, wind power’s tremendous CO2-cutting effect is only going to increase in the coming years.

With wind power being the cheapest option for new electricity in many if not most regions of the world, this is of course great news, even if it is (unfortunately) intuitive and will not be covered by much of the media for that reason, including the same media outlets that have repeatedly covered the counterintuitive myth.

Just be sure to bookmark this article for the next time you see a story or comment that betrays the purported intelligence of the human species.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/21/wind-power-cuts-co2-emissions-considerably-even-high-penetration-levels/#e32pfYiolEOvtwuf.99

Northern Germany spearheads energy transition

Schleswig-Holstein has pioneered the generation of wind power in Germany. Largely rural, the northern state has capitalized on the renewable energy boom and hopes to be exporting electricity soon.



On the North Sea coast in Friesland, Germany's ambitious energy transition targets are already tangible; hundreds of wind turbines are in use, and most farms have solar panels on their roofs. Some grow corn for use in biogas plants.

 In the last 25 years, the people and farmers of Schleswig-Holstein have worked to decentralize energy production, investing several billion euros, the kind of money that only large corporations can normally muster.

"Nine out of 10 windmills are owned by local residents," according to Nicole Knudsen from the Association of Wind Energy, which is based in Scleswig-Holstein.

Hinrichsen has a share in a wind farm "In some villages,
three-fourths of residents are already involved, a
substantial number that truly represents the people."

Ernst Hinrichsen is one of those citizens; the former judge took out a loan from his bank to pay for a share in a local wind farm. The banks here know the business and that it works. Selling the electricity pays for the loan. Hinrichsen, who is an advisor for the Galmsbüll wind farm, says a seven to eight-percent return on investment is the norm.

Steep learning curve
In the past, wind power was a bone of contention in many villages. Farmers were compensated as the windmills were erected on their land, but nobody else profited.

"People were green with envy and neighbors quarreled," Hinrichsen recalls.
Now, the wind farms are designed to benefit all - costs are kept low and profits are being shared out. "We pay rent for the land we use, and the amount is the same for everybody," says Jess Jessen, a farmer and executive director at the Galmsbüll wind farm. In addition, farmers receive compensation for the land used by the wind farms, because they cannot be used for farming.

Introducing rental fees has also had another advantage: "We've had two major technological innovations in the last five years," Jessen says, adding that the system allows wind farm operators to be flexible and erect bigger and more efficient plants.
Today, the mood in Galmsbüll is much better than in those early years. Out of 500 residents, 430 are involved in a new wind farm. "We needed 4 million euros, and in the end we collected 10 million from residents. It shows that the idea of citizen funding has taken root here," Hinrichsen says.

New jobs, more income

Jessen says wind power in the region benefits all. People are generally positive about wind power in Schleswig-Holstein these days, with 70 percent in favor of new facilities being built. By 2020, Germany's northernmost state plans to boost wind power from the current 3,700 megawatts to 9,000 megawatts.

For local councils, residents and farmers, renewable energy - especially wind power - has become a major source of income. Local authorities make 50 million euros annually from the trade tax paid by the industry. Farmers and residents can boost their income and benefit from an improved job market. Around 7,000 people work in the industry.

Trailblazer Schleswig-Holstein
Over half of the state's power supply comes from renewable energies, 70 percent of which come from wind power, 20 percent from biomass and a further 10 percent from photovoltaics.

The local governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens wants to expand the state's role model status in Germany's nuclear phase-out and energy transition.
Schleswig-Holstein is the first German state to have a ministry for the energy transition,which also deals with agriculture, environmental issues and rural development.

By 2015, the state's energy demands are to be covered entirely by renewable energy sources, by 2020, twice or possibly even three times that amount is earmarked for export to neighboring regions, especially to nearby Hamburg.

"Conditions here are generally very windy, and this is why we can provide cheap electricity," Ingrid Nestle, deputy minister for energy and agriculture told DW.
The regional government has already doubled the amount of land available for wind farms to allow for more investment. It also engages with residents at an early stage to keep them informed about the necessary grid upgrades and possible building sites.

Many residents boost their income via wind power projects

Power from renewables also needs to be stored, which is why an underwater pipeline is planned from northern Germany to Norway. "There we have huge water reservoirs that can serve as storage space, and so far it's not being used," Nestle says.

She believes the energy transition will be a big boon for rural regions like Schleswig-Holstein. It is up to the local and regional governments to create the necessary frameworks and get residents involved:

"That's how residents become active participants. And that makes them amenable to the cause, so that money can be mobilized and ideas become reality."

A rebuttal to 'The true cost of wind power'

Opinion: A rebuttal to 'The true cost of wind power'

By Michael Goggin

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

 

The opinion piece in the Ct Mirror by Marc Brown, formerly with the Koch brothers-funded Freedom Works and now the head of an anti-clean energy group that refuses to disclose its funding sources, relies heavily on debunked fossil fuel industry propaganda in its attacks on wind energy.

First, Mr. Brown selectively refers to a small section of a 2009 report by the New England grid operator, without revealing that the report also found that deploying large amounts of wind energy would significantly reduce New England’s electricity prices. That finding was confirmed by a 2010 report for the New England grid operator that found obtaining 20 percent of the region’s electricity from wind would drive wholesale electricity prices down by more than 10 percent.

This occurs because wind energy displaces the most expensive power plant that is currently operating, which is almost always the least efficient fossil-fired power plant. As a result, even small additions of wind energy significantly reduce electricity prices and pollution. Because it has no fuel costs, wind energy also protects consumers from volatility in fossil fuel prices, which is critically important in regions like New England that rely heavily on natural gas.

Mr. Brown compounds that error by only reporting the large range of potential transmission costs that were identified in the 2009 report, without disclosing that the actual costs for the relatively minor grid upgrades currently being implemented fall at the very low end of that range.

Transmission costs typically account for less than 10 percent of a typical electric bill, and by providing access to lower cost energy sources transmission investments actually decrease the energy costs that make up the majority of a typical bill. Transmission upgrades are needed anyway to improve electric reliability, provide access to lower cost resources and make electricity markets more competitive, in addition to benefits like integrating wind energy resources.

The remainder of Mr. Brown’s column relies on a debunked propaganda piece from the fossil fuel industry-funded American Tradition Institute. Among the largest errors in that report was a failure to understand that wind energy is reliably integrated using the same reserves that grid operators have always used to accommodate fluctuations in electricity demand and abrupt failures at conventional power plants. In fact, changes in wind output occur gradually and predictably, making them far less expensive to accommodate than the instantaneous failures of conventional power plants. Regardless, real-world data confirms that even at very high levels of wind energy, additional changes in the output of conventional plants do not reduce their efficiency.

In addition, the fossil industry report drastically overstated transmission losses for wind, as nearly all electricity losses occur on the low-voltage power lines that run through neighborhoods, and therefore apply to all energy sources evenly. Mr. Brown also drastically understates the share of the time that Maine wind projects are producing power. Finally, Mr. Brown ignores that the main incentive for wind energy is a very small share of total federal support given to other energy sources, many of which have been included in the permanent tax code for nearly a century.

Correcting for those errors leads back to the widely-reported finding that these wind energy purchases are a good deal for consumers.
 

Michael Goggin is a senior electric industry analyst with the American Wind Energy Association in Washington, D.C.

 

Price of Electricity in...?

What’s The Average Price Of Electricity In…

 

By Lindsay Wilson

Australia and Germany each just had an election.  In both cases electricity prices were an election issue.  That seems fair enough given that in both countries they are paying significant more $/kWh than most countries

But now Nova Scotia is heading to the polls and electricity prices are a key issue because they have ‘rocketed’ to 0.15 $/kWh (Canadian).  That is indeed high by Canadian standards, but it is a bargain globally.

Out of curiosity I thought I’d crunch the numbers to see who really is paying a lot for their power.

Electricity prices around the world in $/kWh

It doesn’t matter where you go in the world, people love to moan about the cost of electricity.

This begs the question, where is electricity actually expensive and where is it cheap. Or better yet, is my electricity cheap or expensive?

To try and answer this question I’ve collected average electricity prices from 17 countries around the world, and converted them to $/kWh (US).  All the data is based on average prices and exchange rates for 2011, and I’ve graphed them in US cents/kWh to keep it tidy.

Let’s start with the obvious.  Denmark, Germany and Spain have expensive electricity.  In fact in straight dollar terms Denmark is trumped only by small island countries dependent on imported diesel for power.

Canadian electricity is cheap at 10 US cents per kilowatt-hour, which is reflected in their high average electricity usage. US electricity prices at 0.12 $/kWh are also quite cheap internationally.  In India and China they are very cheap.

I find this comparison pretty useful.  And the reasons behind the differences are quite diverse.  But there are two issues with this.  One, electricity prices are on the move in many places, South Africa, Australia and Nigeria come to mind.  And secondly, basic exchange rate conversions aren’t always the best measure of how expensive something really is.

The first is just something to be aware of.  And despite my best efforts I couldn’t gather consistent data for 2012.  The second however can be accounted for by considering purchasing power parities.

The relative price of electricity

Our initial comparison of electricity prices didn’t account for the fact that price levels vary a lot between countries.  For example a US dollar will go a lot further buying goods and services in relatively cheap India than it will in relatively expensive Australia.

If we look at the same average electricity prices for 2011 but this time adjust them to US dollars using purchasing power parity the picture look slightly different.


Once you adjust for the different price levels between countries Canadians have the cheapest electricity and Germans the most expensive.

Places like Nigeria and India have jumped up the list due to their lower price levels, while countries including Denmark, Australia and Japan have fallen because they are relatively expensive places to live.  In general accounting for purchasing power lessened the difference between countries, but significant differences remain.

Which brings me back to Nova Scotia.  Paying 12 US cents/kWh is expensive in Canada.

Just don’t moan about it abroad!

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/09/30/average-electricity-prices-around-world/#4jv6U0zM6GxMvsmi.99

Breathing Creates Infrasound

Wind Turbines: Quieter Than a Heartbeat

SustainableBusiness.com News

Accepting giant wind turbines near peoples' home is a difficult adjustment for many and it's understandable that not everyone wants them nearby.

Research shows however, that the presence of wind turbines doesn't lower property values or cause health problems, two of peoples' biggest concerns.

By Ryan Koronowski

One complaint voiced by wind turbine opponents is that the turbines create too much noise - even noise below the range of human hearing, known as infrasound. These concerns fuel claims about "Wind Turbine Syndrome," which advocates say is a medical condition that involves mental health problems, heart disease, and vertigo.
A study by an acoustic engineering group in Australia found that infrasound generated by wind turbines is less loud than the infrasound created by a listener's own heartbeat.

It found that wind turbine infrasound does increase as wind speed increases, but this is often masked by the natural noise of wind moving through the area.

The Association of Australian Acoustical Consultants says "those investigations conclude that infrasound levels adjacent to wind farms are below the threshold of perception and below currently accepted limits set for infrasound."

Those limits are levels of infrasound that people encounter already, created by natural sources like breathing, wind, and waves, as well as mechanical sources like aircraft, traffic, and fossil fuel industry. The study notes that wind turbine noise is all relative:

"Our environment has lots of infrasound already in it, the levels generated by wind farms from our point of view are quite low in comparison and they're no higher than what is already out there in the natural environment. ... People themselves generate infrasound through things like their own heartbeat, through breathing and these levels of infrasound can be substantially higher than an external noise source."

It's one thing to have conflicts about the placement of new infrastructure near homes, which can be mitigated by proper communication between residents and developers. But that is different than faux medical ailments involving infrasound.

A study by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection found that there was no evidence for "Wind Turbine Syndrome." It also found no concrete evidence for the "flicker" of the shadows of rotating wind blades causing seizures or other symptoms.

So what is going on here?

An experimental study in the journal Health Psychology found that people would report the experience of wind turbine syndrome caused by infrasound if they merely had the suggestion.

Participants either experienced real infrasound or a fake alternative, and what determined if they experienced symptoms wasn't the type of sound - it was whether they were told beforehand about the supposed dangers of infrasound.

The well-known placebo has a lesser-known opposite called a "nocebo." This is the expectancy of the harm of something that most people have likely never heard of before experiencing it. The study by the acoustical experts removed another plank from "communicated disease."
 
Right after President Obama was re-elected, Stephen Colbert spoke about the dangers of Wind Turbine Syndrome and concluded that "we should all just keep burning fossil fuels. That way the problem won't be all in your head, it'll be spread evenly throughout your lungs."

Emission Reductions

Emissions and Costs of Power Plant Cycling Necessary for Increased Wind and Solar Calculated

Sep. 24, 2013 — New research from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) quantifies the potential impacts of increasing wind and solar power generation on the operators of fossil-fueled power plants in the West. To accommodate higher amounts of wind and solar power on the electric grid, utilities must ramp down and ramp up or stop and start conventional generators more frequently to provide reliable power for their customers -- a practice called cycling.

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The study finds that the carbon emissions induced by more frequent cycling are negligible (<0.2%) compared with the carbon reductions achieved through the wind and solar power generation evaluated in the study. Sulfur dioxide emissions reductions from wind and solar are 5% less than expected because of cycling of fossil-fueled generators. Emissions of nitrogen oxides are reduced 2% more than expected. The study also finds that high levels of wind and solar power would reduce fossil fuel costs by approximately $7 billion per year across the West, while incurring cycling costs of $35 million to $157 million per year. For the average fossil-fueled plant, this results in an increase in operations and maintenance costs of $0.47 to $1.28 per megawatt-hour (MWh) of generation.
 

"Grid operators have always cycled power plants to accommodate fluctuations in electricity demand as well as abrupt outages at conventional power plants, and grid operators use the same tool to accommodate high levels of wind and solar generation," said Debra Lew, NREL project manager for the study. "Increased cycling to accommodate high levels of wind and solar generation increases operating costs by 2% to 5% for the average fossil-fueled plant. However, our simulations show that from a system perspective, avoided fuel costs are far greater than the increased cycling costs for fossil-fueled plants."

Phase 2 of the Western Wind and Solar Integration Study (WWSIS-2) is a follow up to the WWSIS released in May 2010, which examined the viability, benefits, and challenges of integrating high levels of wind and solar power into the western electricity grid. WWSIS found it to be technically feasible if certain operational changes could be made, but the first study raised questions about the impact of cycling on wear-and-tear costs and emissions.

To calculate wear-and-tear costs and emissions impacts for the new study, NREL designed five hypothetical scenarios to examine generating up to 33% wind and solar energy on the U.S. portion of the Western Interconnection power system for the year 2020. This is equivalent to a quarter of the power in the Western Interconnection (including Canada and Mexico) coming from wind and solar energy on an annual basis. The study models cycling impacts representing a range of wind and solar energy levels between none and 33%, and is not an endorsement of any particular level.

The study assumes a future average natural gas price of $4.60/MMBtu, significant cooperation between balancing authorities, and optimal usage of transmission capacity (i.e., not reserving transmission for contractual obligations). NREL modeled operations of the entire Western Interconnection for that year in five-minute intervals to understand potential impacts within every hour. With these assumptions, the study finds that the high wind and solar scenarios reduce CO₂ emissions by 29%-34% across the Western Interconnection, with cycling having a negligible impact.

Cycling lessens the SO₂ benefit by 2%-5%, so that SO₂ emissions are reduced by 14%-24% in the high scenarios. These impacts are modeled on an overall Western Interconnection level, and changes on a regional basis could vary. Further, the study does not examine cycling impacts on mercury and air toxic control equipment now being retrofitted on coal units to comply with recent EPA regulations. Cycling actually improves the NOx benefit by 1%-2%, so that NOx emissions are reduced by 16%-22% in the high scenarios. This is because the average coal plant in the West has a lower NOx emissions rate at partial output than at full output.

"Adding wind and solar to the grid greatly reduces the amount of fossil fuel -- and associated emissions -- that would have been burned to provide power," Lew said.

"Our high wind and solar scenarios, in which one-fourth of the energy in the entire western grid would come from these sources, reduced the carbon footprint of the western grid by about one-third. Cycling induces some inefficiencies, but the carbon emission reduction is impacted by much less than 1%."

WWSIS-2 does not consider other factors such as capital costs of construction for wind, solar, fossil-fueled power plants, or transmission. These costs are significant, but outside the scope of this study, which focuses on operations.

"From a system perspective, high proportions of wind and solar result in lower emissions and fuel costs for utility operators," Lew said. "The potential cycling impacts offset a small percentage of these reductions."

According to the study, on average, 4 MWh of renewables displace 1 MWh of coal generation and 3 MWh of natural gas. The biggest potential cycling impact is the significant increase in ramping of coal units. Other findings include:

• Because of sunset and sunrise, solar power creates the biggest ramping needs on the grid in this study. However, because we know the path of the sun through the sky every day of the year, system operators can predict these large ramping needs and plan accordingly. Solar variability due to fast-moving clouds is much less predictable, but it creates relatively smaller ramping needs.

• Errors in day-ahead wind forecasts can make it challenging for operators to decide which power plants need to be online the next day. However, because forecast accuracy increases four hours ahead compared with 24 hours ahead, a four-hour-ahead decision on whether to start up those power plants that can be ramped up relatively quickly can help to mitigate these forecast errors.

• Despite the differences between wind and solar in terms of grid operations, the study finds their impacts on system-wide operational costs are remarkably similar.

Australian Refugees?

Where are Australia’s wind farm refugees?

By Simon Chapman on 3 October 2013

One of the most enduring claims made by anti wind farm groups is that families have to “abandon their homes” near Australian wind farms because of the insufferable effects on their health. Details are rarely provided but a powerful image remains of lives so desperate that people walk away from their homes.
 

Sarah Laurie, a (not currently registered) doctor who heads the anti-wind farm Waubra Foundation, chaired by mining and fossil fuel investment millionaire Peter Mitchell, said in September 2011 that there were “well over 20 rural families in Australia who have been forced to leave their homes because of serious health problems they have developed since the turbines commenced operating”. A year later this had leapt to “more than 40“.
 

I wrote to Laurie nearly a year ago, asking her to send a list of the addresses of these abandoned homes. I wanted to start enquiries in each location to corroborate her claims. She replied that she had sent the information in a confidential submission to Senator Doug Cameron, who was chairing a 2012 Senate enquiry into wind farms.

Cameron’s office confirmed that a submission had been received, that its contents were confidential but that the submission contained no names or identifying details of anyone claimed to have abandoned their house.
 

Laurie shut down the conversation by writing “As the information was provided to me in confidence,  I  will not be providing it to you, so please do not ask me again.” Her claims are thus not open to any scrutiny and a good candidate for factoid status: “facts” with little veracity which if repeated often enough come to be taken as real.
 

If people really had abandoned their homes, and lost financially in the process, it would be reasonable to expect that many would not seek anonymity, but just the opposite. Publicity to the injustice of having to walk away from a home without selling it, or being penalized for breaking a lease could focus news attention and perhaps trigger compensation. Such stories would be made for television. So where are they?
 

The small town of Waterloo in South Australia is said by wind farm opponents to be a hot-bed of abandoned homes. It is. But not for the reasons claimed. Waterloo is a small settlement that is looking very tired. Climate change denying journalist James Delingpole described it thus: “Waterloo felt like a ghost town: shuttered houses and a dust-blown aura of sinister unease, as in a horror movie when something dreadful has happened to a previously ordinary, happy settlement”.
 

Many economically non-viable towns like Waterloo are like this, with real estate agent windows full of yellowing for sale signs in forlorn hope of buyers. There are few shops or services, little employment and most children on leaving school move away. In such environments, when a cashed-up wind energy company establishes a wind farm and stories spread of the “drought proofing” rentals being paid to turbine hosts, it is understandable that some may see complaining as a potential one-way ticket out of town.
 

I am setting out to investigate Laurie’s “40 families” claim.  So here is a very public challenge to Laurie or anyone else promoting the abandoned homes claim: provide me with the addresses of these homes. I will then investigate questions like these. When was the house “abandoned”? Was any attempt made to sell the house? What is the opinion of local real estate agents about the salability of the house? Have property prices in the area gone up or down since the wind farm commenced operation? Did the family who “abandoned” the house have any employment or did they leave to seek employment elsewhere? Were there “pull” factors known to neighbours about this family, such as a marriage break-up or children needing to be nearer a school on another town?
 

So far, I have two publicly known wind farm “refugees”, both from Waubra, with one’s status as a genuine refugee under a cloud because the family has quietly moved back. Thirty eight to go.  Failure to supply addresses will be taken as evidence that this is a nothing but factoid.
 

Simon Chapman AO is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney – simon.chapman@sydney.edu.au

Renewable energy reaches new heights in the UK

UK beats renewable energy record for a second time

 

The United Kingdom has been making strong progress on the renewable energy front recently. This year, the country broke its own renewable energy generation record, a feat that was achieved through the government’s strong support of clean power and sustainability. Now, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has announced that the United Kingdom has, again, broken a new record when it comes to renewable energy production. In the second quarter of this year, 15.5% of the country’s energy was derived from renewable sources.

Wind energy proves popular

The majority of the country’s renewable energy comes from wind farms, both onshore and offshore. Wind energy has established a strong foothold in the United Kingdom, which is home to some of the largest and most ambitious wind projects in the world. Scotland, in particular, has been a strong advocate when it comes to wind energy. Over the past year, the country’s offshore wind energy capacity has grown by 51%, making the United Kingdom one of the most attractive wind markets in the world.

Variety of renewable energy sources helps UK break record

The United Kingdom is not solely focused on wind energy, of course. The country has a variety of renewable energy projects currently supplying it with electrical power. Some of these projects harness the power of the sun while others are based on the tidal activity surrounding the island nation. Hydrogen fuel cells have also become somewhat popular in the United Kingdom within the transportation sector.

Country making strong progress toward energy goals

The UK has broken its renewable energy generation record twice in the past few months. This shows that the country is well on its way to accomplish its ambitious goals concerning sustainability and clean power. The United Kingdom intends to become a world leader on the energy front with a strong focus on clean power. Thus far, the country has managed to show that this ambitious is more than just a hopeful dream.