Windpower and Green Energy stocks investing news

October 2009 Alternative Energy Investments News

President Barack Obama states green energy development is engine of US prosperity

Research into electric batteries for cars, electric automobiles

Michigan House votes to invest in windpower and green energy

Home Green Power Basics: Sources of Alternative Energy

Valuations of publicly-traded global electric car battery manufacturers

October 2009 Revisions to Ontario Feed-in Solar Energy Tariff

Largest Publicly-traded geothermal energy stocks

USA Coast Guard tidal energy project in Maine

10 Large Capitalization Green Energy Stocks

Green Power Mutual Funds Website

Ontario wind energy industry surging forward

Samsung, GE and other major international wind turbine manufacturers have found Ontario Canada to be fertile ground for windpower development, so much so that the provincial government has had to temporarily halt applications so it has time to review the flood of existing apps.

After being inundated with over 100 applications representing over 500 projects, Ontario's Ministry of Natural resources has temporarily frozen applications, at least until March 2010:

Ontario halts Great lakes wind energy proposals until March 2010

Central to the Toronto GTA, the Toronto Hydro wind energy development proposal beginning along the Scarboro waterfront will begin with a wind research platform 1.2 kilometres offshore, with construction beginning next week. Toronto Hydro hopes to build 60 wind turbines along a 25 km stretch of Toronto's waterfront, allowing the utility to add emission-free power and the city to make strides towards its global climate change commitments.

Some residents oppose windpower development on Lake Ontario near Toronto

9 Smart Grid Stock Investments

Here are 9 ways to play the fast-growing smart electricity grid sector:


Cisco (CSCO) - Cisco is known for it's internet router and network business, and it is estimated by CSCO that smart grid technology and systems may be worth up to $20 billion a year for 5 years for the industry.

ComVerge (COMV) - Comverge, Inc. is a clean energy company providing electricity demand management solutions in the form of peaking and base load capacity to electric utilities, grid operators and related electricity markets.

Echelon Corporation (ELON) - Echelon Corporation develops, markets, and sells system and network infrastructure products that enable various devices, such as air conditioners, appliances, electricity meters, light switches, thermostats, and valves to be made smart and inter-connected.

EnerNOC (ENOC) - EnerNOC designs and implements response solutions for electricity grid operators and electric utilities.

Itron Inc (ITRI) - provides a portfolio of products and services to utilities for the energy and water markets throughout the world. The Company is a provider of metering, data collection and software, which alerts people to their energy consumption changes.

RuggedCom (RUGGF.PK) - RuggedCom designs communication applications for rugged and remote environments such as electric utility substations. This communication equipment embedded at various points of the grid is also critical in building a smart transmission and distribution system.


Utilities

Consolidated Edison (ConEd), has put in for $172 million in stimulus funds under the government's Smart Grid Investment Grant Program. ConEd (NYSE:ED) is expected to ask for another $33 million by September, and it has a pilot program ready to go in Queens.

Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) has a billion-buck smart grid plan for Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. In August, Duke applied for $200 million from Washington to nudge its new meter installations forward in those states. In Ohio, the company wants to convert 600,000 homes to smart metering by 2012. Duke's going even bigger in Indiana, where 800,000 is the target.

National Grid (NYSE:NGG) is headquartered in the United Kingdom, but their focus is Washington and the USA. National Grid has applied for $200 million in federal stimulus to expand its knowledge systems in both electricity conservation systems and natural gas metering.

Wind Energy Stocks in the News; Vestas, Suzlon, GE Wind

Here are some recent news articles, press releases and blog posts regarding wind energy stocks and investing in wind power:

Reuters: Suzlon to book another 450 megawatts before end of 2009

China GreenTech Initiative sees $1 Trillion Market

Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS.KO) to open up new markets in Latin America and the Middle East

USA; fastest-growing wind power market

University of North Carolina feasibility study, best location for utility-scale wind farm

Norway proposes expansion of offshore wind power

South Dakota wind farm uses smart grid technology, GE Wind turbines

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Ontario's New Wind Energy Regulations onerous and overdone

Contravening their own recent Green Energy legislation, new requirements stipulating that wind towers be 550 metres from residences and 120 metres from roads and railways are threatening many projects ready to go and causing others to be re-evaluated. I am in full agreement that some regulation is required, but my preference is that new wind farms and wind lines be built close to civilization, to roads, railways and existing transmission lines. As a longtime proponent of the "wind line" concept (rectangular land is not required, just a windy right-of-way"), the idea that all of our turbines need to be at this distance is absurd.

Let's get closer to reality:

Under 1 megawatt - 75 metres

50 meters is the standard minimum distance housing is from major highways; machines at this output are already quiet. An additional requirement be the wind towers be a minimum of their height plus 15 metres from property lines. For example, a 65 metre tower would have to be 80 metres rather than 75 metres away.

Under 2 megawatts - 150 metres

Allows for graduation of wind farm away from populated areas.

Up to 3.5 megawatts - 300 metres

Technology is improving and these machines get quieter and quieter.

Over 3.5 megawatts per turbine - 400 metres

Who knows what the future brings? Still, the experimenting with larger turbines must take place at least 1/4 mile from existing housing.

A graduated set of rules like this would be more complex but would be fairer and more realistic. Humans will be using the energy so we shouldn't be afriad of looking at (and, I know, listening to...) this beautiful, elegant and timeless way of harnessing clean power.

Regarding roads and railways, a more precise way of ensuring safety would consider the height of the tower. rather than setting an arbitrary rule of 120 metres, again a graduated approach may make more sense. All wind turbine towers must be a minimum of 60 metres from roads and railways, or a total distance equalling the height of the tower plus 20 metres. this way, a 35 metre tower could be 60 metres (proposed minimum) from a road or railway, but a 65 metre tower would have to be 85 metres from transportation hazards.

These are just ideas and I truly hope informed minds can shed some light on how Ontario can use experiences from nations with more windpower projects, and that a consensus will emerge. The confrontational approach has its moments, but wind energy development in Ontario is on the verge of becoming a multi-billion dollar industry, and revised, more progressive provincial legislation will still leave room for additional interpretation at the municipal and regional level.

Here is an excerpt from The Toronto Star article on Ontario's new wind regulations:

Dozens of projects, billions in investment at risk, energy group says

New Turbine Regulations Threaten Onatrio Wind Power Projects

TYLER HAMILTON
ENERGY REPORTER

A majority of "construction ready" wind projects in Ontario won't go forward if the province passes regulations that keep wind turbines a minimum distance from residences, roads and railway lines, warns Canada's wind energy association.

Association president Robert Hornung, in a lengthy letter to Environment Minister John Gerretsen, said more than three-quarters of 103 advanced-stage wind projects will likely be affected if the new rules are enacted.

"The net effect is that 79 construction-ready projects representing 2,591 megawatts would either be rendered immediately non-viable or would require a complete `back to the drawing board' redesign," wrote Hornung.

The Canadian Wind Energy Association is concerned specifically about two proposed rules, one that would require turbines to be a minimum of 550 metres away from residences, and the other requiring turbines to be 120 metres or more away from roads, railway lines, and property lot lines.

Both rules were designed to satisfy health and safety concerns while creating a provincial standard that replaces a patchwork of municipal bylaws. Wind turbines emit noise, and some rural residents have complained that the massive machines are disrupting sleep and making people sick.

After surveying 25 wind developers in the province to assess the impact of the proposed rules, the wind association found that hundreds of wind turbines sited under current plans would automatically be in breach of the new regulations, putting dozens of projects and billions of dollars of investment at risk.

Full online story about Ontario's new wind energy turbine regulations

Information on Green Power Stocks Investing:

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Top Wind Power and Alternative Energy Blogs

If you are interested in learning more about choices available in green mutual funds, alternative energy ETFs, clean technology mutual funds, green power stocks and energy conservation and utility efficiency companies, here are some links to blogs with online articles and news stories about all major global clean energy companies, green stocks investing and eco-friendly investments:





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Wind Intell - Wind Energy Stocks Investing

Fossil Fuels 17 times more fatal to birds than wind energy; New study

This post from Scitizen.com appeared on HuffingtonPost.com and provides some breakthrough parameters for comparing avian deaths from windpower farms to fatalities caused by the structures and pollution from other energy sources.

Save Birds by Promoting Wind Power Development

by Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool 

One could be tempted to think, after reading the more than 600 studies about wind farms and the deaths of birds and bats read by this author the past year, that the evidence linking wind turbines with avian mortality is indisputable.  

Birds, for instance, can directly crash into a turbine blade when they are fixated on perching or hunting and pass through its rotor plane; they can strike its support structure; they can hit part of its tower; or they can collide with its associated transmission and distribution lines.  

We are told that these risks are exacerbated when turbines are placed on ridges and upwind slopes, built close to migration routes, or operated during periods of poor visibility such as fog, rain, and at night. Some species, such as bats, face additional risks from the rapid reduction in air pressure near turbine blades, which can cause internal hemorrhaging through a process known as barotraumas. Indirectly, wind farms can positively and negatively physically alter natural habitats, the quantity and quality of prey, and the availability of nesting sites. 

Yet the deluge of studies making such claims, while useful and important, nonetheless suffers from three common problems. Studies rarely compare their results with studies of other wind farms to contextualize their estimates, instead relying on a narrow sample size. Most do not compare the possible avian deaths from wind electricity with other sources, and when they do, studies typically do not compare them to other energy sources. None have so far attempted to calculate the number of avian deaths per kWh from energy sources so that more meaningful comparisons might be made between different forms of electricity supply. 

In an attempt to address some of these shortcomings, one new albeit preliminary study conducted by this author has compared the avian deaths per GWh from three electricity systems: wind farms, fossil-fueled power plants (coal, natural gas, and oil generators), and nuclear power plants. 

Avian wildlife can perish not only by striking wind turbines in the ways described above, but by smashing into nuclear power plant cooling structures, transmission and distribution lines, and smokestacks at fossil-fuel fired power stations. Birds can starve to death in forests ravaged by acid rain, ingest hazardous and fatal doses of mercury, drink contaminated water at uranium mines and mills, or die in large numbers as climate change wreaks havoc on migration routes and degrades habitats. 

For wind turbines, the risk appears to be greatest to birds striking towers or turbine blades and for bats suffering barotrauma. For fossil-fueled power stations, the most significant fatalities come from climate change, which is altering weather patterns and destroying habitats that birds depend on. For nuclear power plants, the risk is almost equally spread across hazardous pollution at uranium mine sites and collisions with draft cooling structures.  When these avian deaths are correlated with the units of electricity those power plants produce, some may find the results surprising. Based on real world operating experience of 339 wind turbines comprising six wind farms constituting 274 MW of installed capacity in the U.S., average avian mortality for wind appears to be about 0.269 fatalities per GWh. 

Based on real world operating experience for two coal facilities as well as the indirect damages from mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia, acid rain pollution on wood thrushes, mercury pollution, and anticipated impacts of climate change, average avian mortality for fossil fueled power stations appears to be about 5.18 fatalities per GWh. Based on real world operating experience at four nuclear power plants and two uranium mines and mills, average avian mortality for nuclear systems is about 0.416 GWh. 

In terms of birds killed per electricity produced, nuclear power is slightly worse but comparable to wind energy, but fossil-fueled facilities are about 17 times more dangerous to birds on a per kWh basis. In absolute terms, since wind turbines produced a relatively small amount of national electricity in the United States in 2006, they may have killed about 7,000 but fossil fueled stations killed 14.5 million and nuclear power plants 327,000.

Clearly, wind energy is not as bad for birds as many environmentalists make it out to be, and conventional resources are much more damaging to birds than is commonly believed.

Full online article about wind farm bird deaths compared with other energy sources

May 2009 Wind Energy Industry News; Windpower Stocks Investing

The answer my friend, is blowin' in some of the publicly-listed wind power companies profiled in the renewable energy news articles and blog posts linked below:



Bill Black's Renewable Energy Districts Bill 3646 to decentralize Illinois power production





GDF Suez Looks to South Africa for wind farming potential




Green Energy Tech launches WindCube®, a 60kW rooftop wind turbine for urban clean power




Siemens Energy building $50 mil wind turbine plant in Hutchinson Kansas, 400 new jobs

Utilities' Plans for Wind turbines generate Michigan job hopes




Wind Energy Transmission lines require consultation with residents


Windpower 2009 calls for federal renewable energy standards


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Windpower stocks will play catch-up in global stock market post-Bush rally

Photovoltaic stocks have been decimated as much as any sector, yet the exciting thing about their beta has been their real ability to outperform the market in upswings.

In contrast, the wind sector has continued to make new lows and the stock values represent a vision of a global clean energy slowdown that is not realistic at all. Offshore potential alone justifies the market cap of major windpower names like Vestas (VWDRY ADR 14.35) and Suzlon (BOM:532667 36.20) so watch for this sector to show market leadership over the next 3 to 5 months.

Joe T

Check also:

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List of publicly-traded wind energy stocks