In 2004 the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit against the wind producers operating in the Altamont Pass in California. During the ensuing time period, a study was completed showing that 45 of the 7,000 turbines were responsible for the vast majority of the deaths and a compromised was reached with the producers that during the migration time 50% of the turbines would sit inactive. Last October, a judge tossed the lawsuit saying the Center for Biological Diversity had no legal standing in the case.

This is a classic case of cross purposes. I don’t think anyone wants to see raptors (Golden Eagles, Hawks, etc.) killed unnecessarily, that’s just silly. The producers took many steps to study and attempt to remedy the problem. But the problem was also blown out of proportion as mobile phone towers and buildings kill more raptors each year by far than these turbines, yet we see no action against mobile phone providers. Regardless, the hypothesis is that the lattice towers were good perches for the birds and that’s what contributed to the higher mortality rate than experienced at other wind farms.

The solution seems pretty straight forward to me, shut down and demolish the 45 problematic turbines and allow the producers to “repower” using larger turbines with tubular towers which would serve to reduce the number of turbines, likely increase the output of the farm, and lower the avian mortality rate. What’s lost in a suit like this is that for each MWh of coal generation displaced by technologies like wind, around 1,000kg of carbon and around 13kg of NOX and SO2 is kept from entering the atmosphere. After all, climate change is likely to kill far more species than all the wind farms on the globe combined.

Given the outcome of the court case, I’d expect the producers to be back in business and hopefully taking steps to further reduce the avian mortality rate at the site.


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Technorati Tags: Wind Power | Avian Death | Case Dismissed

This entry from A Thrilling Wonder website has it all, wind farm construction, turbine failure, storms, etc. on a HUGE scale. If you want to see a big wind farm, read this. It’s a very informative and interesting read punctuated with nice photos. Highly recommended.




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Technorati Tags: Wind Farm | Ocean | Construction

Cargill subsidiary Emerald Renewable Energy announced recently it plans to build 4 new ethanol plants in the US each with 100 million gallon per year throughput.

Each plant will use nearly 40 million bushels of corn annually and produce 100 million gallons of ethanol and over 300,000 tons of dry distillers grains for animal feed each year. The plant sites being considered include greenfield locations as well as co-locations with Cargill grain elevators and other utility infrastructure providers. The plants are expected to create about 40 jobs per location.

I think that Cargill and other ethanol producers ought to be focused on the distribution problem. This is the time (new Congress and all) to get something interesting to happen; like mandating E85 replaces the useless middle grade at US gas stations. We’ll see how it goes.


Technorati Tags: Ethanol | Transportation | Biomass

Chevy’s Volt


Forget the current breed of hybrid, the Chevy Volt is a new approach. It’s got a 3 cylinder 1.0 liter turbocharged gas (E85) engine attached to a 53 KW generator, batteries that store 16KWh, and a 120KW (160hp) electric motor. The gas powered motor is not attached to the drivetrain, only to the generator. The range on pure electric is 40 miles, when the generator kicks it, it extends to 640 miles. It plugs into standard 110v power for recharge. If only they’d stop trying to make things look futuristic and just make a sensible car design with this power train, I would think they’re on to something…


Technorati Tags: Electric | Car | Hybrid

A colleague sent this to me yesterday. I’m warmed (pun intended) to see Walmart take a bold move toward energy efficiency. Using the roof space on it’s massive buildings to host solar arrays may make some sense. Certainly Google thinks so and Federal Express (Oakland, CA sorting facility) has had solar cells on the roof for some time now.

Independent of this specific proposal, it’s great to see some large corporations make concentrated efforts to lead in this area.

Note to Mr. LaMonica (author of the CNet piece) – the largest proposed single instance of solar generation is in China at 100MW and Germany has a 12MW plant in production now. While Walmart could aggregate into 100MW size, it’s not quite the same thing. Still beneficial, no doubt.


Technorati Tags: Renewable | Energy | Solar