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DONG Energy, E.ON and Masdar have announced that they will invest EUR 2.2 billion (US $3 billion) in building the first 630-megawatt (MW) phase of the London Array offshore wind farm in England's Thames Estuary. The wind farm is set to be build the world's largest offshore wind farm. The consortium hopes the first phase of 630 MW will be completed and generating in 2012. The first phase will consist of 175 turbines. The announcement comes after the UK Government's recent proposal to increase its support for offshore wind power. The partners are satisfied that the project is now financially viable and are now keen to push ahead with construction and to produce the first renewable power in 2012. Onshore work is now due to start in the summer, with offshore work due to start in early 2011.

As gas prices climb and electricity prices follow, people looking for alternatives are turning to the wind. The popularity of wind energy is growing, but the turbines themselves are shrinking in size and cost, making affordable, personal wind power a reality.

The Guardian has an article on plans to expand micro-hydro generation in Britain - Canals and rivers to lead micro-hydropower revolution Britain's canals and rivers have already been heralded as a low-carbon way to tranport Tesco groceries, a test-bed for hydrogen boats and a opportunity to build more wind turbines. Now they're being billed as a chance for micro hydropower to flourish under new plans unveiled today by British Waterways, which maintains 2,200 miles of the country's canals and rivers. In partnership with The Small Hydro Company, British Waterways said it intended to build 25 small-scale hydro-electric schemes with a capacity of 40MW, enough to power 40,000 homes. While far smaller in capacity than offshore wind farms switched on in 2008, the hydro initiative hopes to raise £120m in private capital over the next three years, create 150 construction jobs and reduce CO2 emissions by 110,000 tonnes annually. Underwater turbines will be installed next to existing weirs and will not affect the navigation of canals and rivers. Larger waterways such as the Trent and Severn rivers will be used for the first hydro power projects, with many of the installations likely to be located in the East Midlands and Yorkshire. It is hoped the first of the 25 hydro installations will be generating renewable electricity by 2010.

Working in Haiti, Shawn Frayne, a 28-year-old inventor based in Mountain View, Calif., saw the need for small-scale wind power to juice LED lamps and radios in the homes of the poor. Conventional wind turbines don't scale down well-there's too much friction in the gearbox and other components. "With rotary power, there's nothing out there that generates under 50 watts," Frayne says. So he took a new tack, studying the way vibrations caused by the wind led to the collapse in 1940 of Washington's Tacoma Narrows Bridge (aka Galloping Gertie).

The trip from Salt Lake City to southern Utah's red-rock playground-thousands of us make the drive to Moab during a typical year-will never be the same. There, where U.S. Highway 6 starts its cut through Spanish Fork Canyon, stand nine breathtaking, milk-white giants-the busily whirring turbines of the Spanish Fork Wind Project. The windmills are 405 feet high, and their blades, which from ground level look deceptively slow moving, spin at 170 mph, says Spanish Fork Mayor Joe Thomas. He should know. Shortly before the official ribbon cutting at the wind farm in early October, Thomas got the chance to climb to the top of a turbine.

Most people who work in this field would do engineering and mechanical tasks from the prior installation of wind turbines, its proper operation including the safety measures and precautionary alternatives that every consumer must follow, the maintenance and repair of such installations.

WASHINGTON (AP) - An Energy Department report concludes that wind turbines can produce a fifth of the nation's annual electricity needs within about two decades. That is about the same share of electricity produced today by nuclear power. Wind energy today accounts for only about 1 percent of the nation's electricity. The government report to be released Monday said by 2030 wind energy could account for 300,000 megawatts of power, or about 20 percent of the total electricity generated.

A MAJOR criticism of wind farms is that they are intermittent. Wind does not blow consistently and, as a result they do not provide a continuous supply of power, but must be backed up by conventional fossil fuel plants. However, a renewables firm believes it has hit on a solution, and is hoping to use it in Scotland. A hydrogen plant would store energy from the wind farm, creating a reserve that could be dipped into on demand, so that even when the wind was not blowing, an electricity supply would be available.

President Obama's proposed $9.9 billion Energy Department budget contains up to $28 million for a Pantex wind farm that would be designed to meet the nuclear weapons plant's energy needs. The Pantex Renewable Energy Project would be built on land in the vicinity of the plant and could generate surplus electrical power that could be sold to utilities, according to budget documents. Preliminary plans call for the wind farm to be built by 2012. The project's overall scope would depend on future funding, but plans call for enough wind turbines to generate up to 75 megawatts of electrical generating capacity. Initial funding would only support construction of a 10- to 15-megawatt system.

Inhabitat is doing a "Energy 101" series to explain why smart grids are necessary - Energy 101: Where Does Our Power Come From ?. Today we're excited to announce the launch of our new Energy 101 series,. in which we'll be exploring the future-forward technologies that stand to upgrade our grids, reduce our energy footprint, and slow the speed of global warming. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past few years, you've probably heard terms like "energy conservation", "off-grid energy", and "smart grid" tossed around. But before getting into the nitty-gritty of transitioning to renewable energy, we should stop and examine where exactly our power comes from now. Unless you derive all your power from on-site renewable energy sources like solar panels or wind turbines, chances are that you're connected to the power grid, a vast network that delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers. Right now, most energy on the grid comes from generating plants. These plants still usually get power from traditional sources like coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric dams. But as concerns over carbon emissions, safety, and long term sustainability of these sources grow, electrical utilities have begun to switch over to renewable energy sources.

The article "Renewable energy potential" (Work&Money, Editor's Choice, June 7) provided interesting and useful information. Now it is time to begin to use more renewable energy in North Carolina. One of our electric utility companies should develop a pilot project in one of the high-wind areas off the North Carolina coast. This energy could be used to provide some power to Elizabeth City, Manteo or any other city located on the northern part of our coast. Our electric utility companies have many intelligent engineers who could use new technology to build wind turbines that can withstand strong storms. If other states in the Northeast can build wind farms off their coasts, then North Carolina can surely do the same.

The US could replace all its cars and trucks with electric cars powered by wind turbines taking up less than 3 square kilometres - in theory, at least. That's the conclusion of a detailed study ranking 11 types of non-fossil fuels according to their total ecological footprint and their benefit to human health. The study, carried out by Mark Jacobson of the atmosphere and energy programme at Stanford University, found wind power to be by far the most desirable source of energy. Biofuels from corn and plant waste came right at the bottom of the list, along with nuclear power and "clean" coal.

LONDON: The government opened a major new phase on Wednesday in its drive for renewable energy, calling for bids to build up to 25 gigawatts of offshore wind turbines, triple the amount in the pipeline. The announcement by the government agency, the Crown Estate, which owns the seabed surrounding the country was welcomed by British Wind Energy Association chairman Adam Bruce as "impressively bold."

ON A ridge near Toledo in Castile-La Mancha stands a row of white windmills. Literary buffs, even if they have never been to Spain, will recognise them as the ferocious giants attacked by Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes's fictional 17th-century hero. These days, however, they are dwarfed by legions of modern wind turbines that grind out not flour but power, helping to make Spain one of the leading producers of wind-based electricity in Europe.

WIND power works, and will work better in the future. But wind is only an interim stop on the way to a world where electricity no longer relies on fossil fuels. The ultimate goal is to harvest the sun's energy directly by intercepting sunlight, rather than by waiting for that sunlight to stir up the atmosphere and sticking turbines in the resulting airstreams.

Ethiopia on Thursday signed a 220-million-euro (300 million dollar) deal with a French company for the construction of Africa's largest wind farm. The contract was inked by representatives of the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPC) and French wind turbine manufacturer Vergnet.

Duke Energy announced that it will expand its renewable power business with the development of a second wind energy project in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The company also announced that it has signed a power purchase agreement for the project and has secured turbines.

A New Jersey company said on Tuesday it will invest $20 million over three years to develop an underground compressed-air storage system for wind turbines and other power sources, a sign of growing confidence in the technology. Energy Storage and Power is a joint ventured formed by energy developer PSEG Global and Michael Nakhamkin, who designed the only compressed air-storage facility in the U.S.

The rolling plains of Castilla-La Mancha are dominated by the windmills that provoked the fevered imagination of Don Quixote. But Spain's relentless investment in wind power and other renewable energy sources has proved wrong those who thought it was tilting at windmills. The sleek white wind turbines and hydroelectric plants that have sprung up across the country in recent years generated 30 per cent of Spain's energy this year for the first time.