Free Republic

Lincoln Electric is giving $4.5 million to help start Wind turbine manufacturing in Cleveland. EUCLID, Ohio -- The sprawling blades on Ohio's largest wind turbine started turning 278 feet above the headquarters of Lincoln Electric this weekend in Euclid. Euclid Mayor Bill Cervenik said Sunday that he anticipates this as only the beginning of his city's place in becoming a symbol of clean alternative energy. "We have a lot more planned," Cervenik said of the massive wind turbines. "We're hoping this is the start of putting Euclid among the leaders in the nation." Toward the end of the summer,...

Amid the maelstrom of controversy over the nation’s first offshore wind farm, one truth is as plain as the proposed 440-foot turbines in Nantucket Sound are tall: Its energy will be very expensive. That’s not just compared with power from coal and natural gas, but with renewable power from other sources. Once the 130 turbines begin rotating, the energy produced will cost up to 50 percent more than energy today from some land-based wind farms and twice as much as some hydroelectric dams. The cost will increase customers’ monthly electric bills about 2 percent, and for many that is too...

VINALHAVEN, Me. — Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on.“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.” Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility here, say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil...

Sestak screws up. OK, that's one of those phrases that you could copy to a clipboard from which to paste into a story for convenience sake but yesterday Pennsylvania's 7th District Congressman and Democrat nominee for U.S senate has admitted to doing so, which makes it a bit more newsworthy than normal. Joe Sestak has announced that he erred in seeking to send $350,000 in taxpayer money to the Thomas Paine Foundation, which is an organization owned by Drew Devitt aimed at promoting the cause of atheism, to design a new kind of windmill which would be built by New...

James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore have written a powerful book exposing the efforts of the fossil industries to confuse the public and policy makers about the science of climate change. After all, if there is scientific doubt about climate change – either the causes, or the effects – then we don’t really have to do anything, do we? “This is a story of betrayal, a story of selfishness, greed, and irresponsibility on an epic scale.” The book exposes the public relations techniques used, the players, and the funding. It is a warning to all about media manipulation, and it is...

Jerry Graf is a concerned citizen who happens to have a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. He recently read an item in his local paper about a school district that contemplated investing over a quarter million dollars in roof-top wind turbines. “There was a quote from someone in charge of school facilities that indicated they had no idea how much electricity the turbines would actually generate. As I got further into the details myself, I realized the turbines would actually produce next to nothing,” he says. Wind boosters open themselves up to skepticism about their industry’s viability when they don’t...

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A fast spinning windmill appeared "out of control," and threatened traffic on the highway between Los Angeles County's high desert and the San Joaquin Valley, a CHP dispatcher in Bakersfield said today. The CHP dispatcher said the windmill is spinning too fast and might fly apart, which is why Highway 58 in the Tehachapi Pass was closed down both directions between Mojave and about 45 miles north of Lancaster and Tehachapi. The malfunctioning electric generator is one of thousands of windmills installed along both sides of Highway 58 in Tehachapi Pass. Traffic was being detoured onto parallel county roads. Traffic...

Finding direction in wind. T. BOONE PICKENS KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT THE ENERGY business, and right now he's really, really into wind. His private firm, Mesa Power, is buying leases in the American heartland for a massive wind-power project whose first phase includes about 700 windmills on 400,000 acres near Pampa, Tex. By its completion in 2014, Pampa should be the world's largest wind farm, generating enough electricity to light 1.3 million homes. The legendary Texas oil man isn't alone. Some $9 billion of new wind projects boosted U.S. wind-power-generation capacity 46% last year. That, says a U.S. Department of Energy...

FOB HAMMER — To assess the water production of two windmill-powered ground water pumps in Narhwan, leaders from 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team (HBCT) and Multi-National Corps – Iraq (MNC-I) visited two villages, March 1. The first stop for Col. Ryan Kuhn, deputy commanding officer for 3rd HBCT, and Maj. Chris Hempel, agricultural officer from MNC-I Civil-Military Operations Cell, was the village of al Zatia, where they met with the head contractor for both windmill projects. Analyzing the windmill-powered pumps’ capability to produce clean water led him to consider using the pumps for irrigation, Hempel, from Elizabeth, N.J., said. After...

Windmill With A Twist Can Provide Fresh Water From Seawater DirectlyThe first prototype has been built and is already working at a location near the A13 motorway near Delft. This prototype is to be dismantled and transported to Curaçao the first week of March. There the concept will be tested on seawater. (Credit: Image courtesy of Delft University of Technology) ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2008) — A traditional windmill which drives a pump: that is the simple concept behind the combination of windmill/reverse osmosis developed by the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in The Netherlands. In this case, it involves...

A windmill in Hornslet near Aarhus (Denmark) broke its brakes and a storm made it break.

BALTIMORE — The O"Malley administration says it is considering leasing hundreds of forested acres atop two of Western Maryland"s highest ridges to wind-power developers to be cleared for giant turbines. The plan stirred fresh debate between those who favor wind power development and those who fear that the 40-story windmills will hurt the region"s ecology and tourist appeal. The proposal was initiated about two years ago by U.S. Wind Force, a private developer based near Pittsburgh that wants to lease about 400 acres in the Potomac and Savage River state forests so it can erect about 100 wind turbines. The...

The clean-energy business is turning into the next big investment boom, in which risks are lightly brushed aside UNTIL recently, recalls Charlie Gay, a 30-year veteran of the solar-power business, venture capitalists were far too busy catering to captains of the information-technology industry to waste time on “hippy-dippy tree-huggers” like himself. But now the tree-huggers are in the ascendant and the IT barons are busy investing in clean-energy technology. Among them is Vinod Khosla, a celebrated Silicon Valley financier. He is touting ethanol as the next big thing. Applied Materials, where Mr Gay works, has branched out from flat screens...

The same week Principal Bernadette Floyd axed a penguin Christmas play she deemed religious, 200 public high school students from three counties sang about Jesus in an honors choir in Fort Pierce — a dichotomy some say proves the St. Lucie County School District needs a countywide policy on religion in the schools. "How can one principal say penguins and Santa are religious, and another principal says it's OK to sing Christian music?" said Windmill Point Elementary parent Mary Anne Bender, whose 10-year-old daughter, Kayla Vance, lost her lead role as Mrs. Claus when the after-school play was canceled. "Our...

You'd expect Greenpeace to lampoon plenty of politicians as enemies of the environment. But Ted Kennedy? Sure enough, the activist group known for its flair for drama hammers the liberal Bay State senator - and Cape Wind opponent - in new ads being shown in states nationwide in the days leading up to a congressional vote that could doom the Nantucket Sound wind farm. In the 30-second spot, a cartoon Kennedy looms over the water like a Japanese movie monster, pounding wind turbines as they sprout from the water, and barks, ''I might see them from my mansion on the...

PALMDALE - Motorists usually speed past a once-controversial, 230-foot structure near Avenue S and Sierra Highway, and pedestrians seldom cross its path. A year after what some called an eyesore was constructed, no one seems to pay attention. Or at least the heated dialogue has cooled over the towering turbine that saves almost $100,000 a year for the Palmdale Water District. Either way, the city's Planning Commission has not received any more calls from agitated residents condemning the 950-kilowatt wind turbine, which rises close to Lake Palmdale and the water treatment plant, according to Asoka Herath, assistant director of planning...

Technology helps wind compete head-to-head with fossil fuels Even with oil prices marching toward $70 a barrel, most alternative energy sources require heavy federal subsidies to allow producers to turn a profit. Wind power, though it still enjoys subsidies, is one of the few that is becoming economically competitive in its own right -- thanks to rising electric power costs in many parts of the world and technological advances in the design and manufacture of wind turbines. < snip > Cape Wind is well on its way to building an $800 million, 420-megawatt, 130-turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound offshore...

Technology helps wind compete head-to-head with fossil fuels Even with oil prices marching toward $70 a barrel, most alternative energy sources require heavy federal subsidies to allow producers to turn a profit. Wind power, though it still enjoys subsidies, is one of the few that is becoming economically competitive in its own right -- thanks to rising electric power costs in many parts of the world and technological advances in the design and manufacture of wind turbines. < snip > Cape Wind is well on its way to building an $800 million, 420-megawatt, 130-turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound offshore...

When the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan destroyed two 1,600-year-old Buddha statues lining Bamiyan Valley's soaring cliffs, the world shook with shock at the demise of such huge archaeological treasures. Now, artist Hiro Yamagata plans to commemorate the towering Buddhas by projecting multicolored laser images onto the clay cliffsides where the figures once stood, about 80 miles west of Kabul. "I'm doing a fine art piece. That's my purpose — not for human rights, or for supporting religion or a political statement," said the 58-year-old artist, whose other laser works include a current display at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao,...