Lack of turbines could put drag on wind energy

[jpak]

http://www.wctrib.com/ap/index.cfm?page=view&id=D8G2RRE89

Demand for turbines used to turn wind into electricity is blowing by supply, which is hampering efforts to cultivate the alternative energy source in the state.

The shortage of the giant turbines is making them more expensive. Turbine manufacturer General Electric said it is booked for the next two years as are European manufacturers.

Ken Valley, president of Midwest Energy Finance, said the shortage is making the task tougher for developers of smaller community-based wind projects.

"One Midwestern wind developer is planning a project with seven turbines, but he can't get them," Valley said. "Midwest would have had more than $100 million worth of projects this year, but the shortage of turbines is getting in the way."

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edit: looks like the same problem PV encountered last year...

[rodeodance]

1. now here is where some Dem could step in and make a difference

[CabalPowered]

2. "Booked for the next two years"

How is it that one of the largest companies in the world is not willing or able to expand production when confirmed orders exceeds two years of capacity? The only variable determining whether to ramp production in this case is long term growth potential of turbines. GE knows full well that if it was to increase production, even marginally, that the growth potential is there for a healthy ROI. So that leaves me wondering .. how ecoimaginative is GE?

edit.. spelling.. oops.

[skids]

3. Meanwhile in America -- factory layoffs n/t

[JohnWxy]

4. Over the past several years the program to incentivize installation

of wind farms was only approved for one year at a time. Sometimes it wasn't reapproved in time and allowed to lapse . When it was approved for a year at a time this was a program which was very compromised because in order to get the tax credit you had to have your wind farm installation begun and completed within the year the program was in effect to get the tax credit. Now getting a wind farm started, ordering the turbines, taking delivery of turbines and getting it all up and running in just 1 year is quite a trick. There were those who did it, but plenty figured they wouldn't risk it. If you didnt' get the Wind Farm completed in that one year - you were sunk! - no tax credit!

In the last energy bill there was a huge victory for Wind Power. The Tax Credit support was approved for THREE years. Wind Power advocates had been lobbying for a multiple year program for years and had not been able to get it.

“Thanks to the Congress’s extending the wind energy production credit before it expired for the first time in the credit’s history, the wind industry is looking forward to several recordbreaking years in a row,” said AWEA’s Executive Director Randall Swisher. Previous years had seen a constant up and down of the market, depending on whether the PTC had been renewed in time to create investor confidence.

The one silver lining in this cloudy climate of Government support of wind technology is that now wind energy even without the tax credit is competitive and sometimes cheaper than any other source of power. So even with the current two year window and the back-logs at GE and other manufacturers it may not slow down Wind Farm projects at all.

We can only hope. (or you might go to www.congress.org and email your representatives and tell them we should be supporting wind power even more than we are - with changes to regulations governing how wind farms hook into the power grid (their are pricing issues with utilities which are acting as disincentives to Wind power). Right now the problem is the lack of capacity at the manufacturers. Something that would not be as bad if wind power had been more consistently supported over the past several years.

In terms of new installed capacity in 2005, the US was clearly leading with 2,431 MW, followed by Germany (1,808 MW), Spain (1,764 MW), India (1,430 MW), Portugal (500 MW) and China (498 MW). This development shows that new players such as Portugal and China are gaining ground.

Europe is still leading the market with over 40,500 MW of installed capacity at the end of 2005, representing 69% of the global total. In 2005, the European wind capacity grew by 18%, providing nearly 3% of the EU’s electricity consumption in an average wind year.

“The European market has already reached the 2010 target set by the European Commission of 40,000 MW five years ahead of time,” said Christian Kjaer, the European Wind Energy Association’s (EWEA) Policy Director. Moreover, growth is now happening in a greater number of countries, including new markets such as Portugal and France. By 2010, wind energy alone will save enough greenhouse gas emissions to meet one third of the European Union's Kyoto obligation.”


Despite the continuing growth in Europe, the general trend shows that the sector is gradually becoming less reliant on a few key markets, and other regions are starting to catch up with Europe. The growth in the European market in 2005 only accounted for about half of the total new capacity, down from nearly three quarters in 2004.

Nearly a quarter of new capacity was installed in North America, where the total capacity increased by 37% in 2005, gaining momentum in both the US and Canada. The US wind energy industry broke earlier annual records of installed capacity with installing nearly 2,500 MW, which makes it the country with the most new wind power.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), this is largely due to the current threeyear window of stability in the federal incentive for wind energy, the production tax credit (PCT). “Thanks to the Congress’s extending the wind energy production credit before it expired for the first time in the credit’s history, the wind industry is looking forward to several recordbreaking years in a row,” said AWEA’s Executive Director Randall Swisher. Previous years had seen a constant up and down of the market, depending on whether the PTC had been renewed in time to create investor confidence.

The Canadian wind capacity increased by a staggering 53%. “Canada’s wind energy industry is growing by leaps and bounds – and that’s great news for Canadians who research shows are strongly in favour of wind energy,” said Robert Hornung, President of the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA). “2005 will be remembered as the year Canada first started to seriously exploit its massive wind energy potential.”