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The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)'s annual WINDPOWER® conference is the place to be if you're in the United States wind industry. In fact, AWEA's website includes a handy kit for wind energy professionals called "Make the Case to Attend," even including a draft letter to your supervisor.
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Parris Island, South Carolina is where recruits go to become Marines. It's one of two such facilities in the United States, the other being in San Diego. About 17,000 recruits pass through its gates each year.
"Wind forecasting is on the cusp" of a major advance, said Justin Sharp of Sharply Focused, LLC, at a recent gathering of scientists from the wind industry and the U.S. government.
Wind projects, like all projects, have a natural life cycle. Sites are prospected; projects are designed, financed, and built; wind generation facilities are operated, maintained, optimized; and finally repowered.
This week, I joined a meeting hosted by Massachusetts’ senior US Senator John Kerry between Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a group of Massachusetts executives in the clean energy sector. Richard Kauffman, a senior adviser at the department of energy, brought his expertise in private sector investment in clean energy.
‘Big Data’ describes data sets that are too large and growing too quickly to be handled with normal computing tools. All this data poses challenges for a wide variety of business sectors -- not least of all, the wind energy industry.
China's rapidly developing wind industry faces enormous challenges over the coming decade. The industry is targeted for expansion by the Chinese government as a Strategic Prioritized Industry and benefits from a number of government initiatives encouraging growth. Chinese businesses have responded energetically to these initatives, and the Chinese installed wind capacity has grown at a "breakneck pace," according to GWEC -- from 2 GW in 2005 to almost 45 GW in 2010.
Remote sensing systems such as sodar and lidar are the new secret weapon of the greenfield prospecting stage, saving wind developers time and money before the wind resource assessment campaign even begins. Keeping the costs of the development process as low as possible can make the difference between profit and loss in wind energy development.
Prospecting involves an initial look at likely sites in a given region to see if they meet the five criteria outlined above. Mesoscale wind maps and site-specific historical wind data, such as data from met stations at nearby airports, are typically the first thing the developer consults.
