WIND ENERGY WEEKLY,
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The following is the electronic edition of WIND ENERGY WEEKLY,
Vol. 15, #682, 29 January 1996, published by the American Wind
Energy Association. The full text of the WEEKLY is available
in hardcopy form for $450/year and is recommended for those with
a serious commercial interest in wind (the electronic edition
contains only excerpts). A monthly hardcopy publication, the
WINDLETTER, more suitable for those interested in residential
wind systems is included with a $50/year individual membership in
the Association. AWEA's goal is to promote wind energy as a
clean and environmentally superior source of electricity. Anyone
sharing this goal is invited to become a member. For more
information on the Association, contact AWEA, 122 C Street, NW,
4th Floor, Washington, DC 20001, USA, phone (202) 383-2500, fax
(202) 383-2505, email
GLOBAL WARMING
Weird weather reminds media of climate change
TRADE NEWS
Canadian firm to sell Vergnet small turbines
Developer, utility team in Ontario Hydro bid
Ontario bid deadline is postponed by month
Wind capacity soars in Europe and Asia
CANADIAN FIRM IN DEAL FOR
VERGNET SMALL TURBINE LINE
Wenvor Technologies, of Guelph, Ontario, has entered into a
joint venture agreement with French small wind turbine
manufacturer Vergnet to produce machines of the Vergnet design in
Canada, Wenvor spokesman Al Paulissen said January 10 in an
interview.
Vergnet's turbines, which include 10-, 15-, 20-, and 25-kW
models, are based on the design used by Aerowatt, a defunct
French manufacturer which sold some turbines in Canada in the
1980s. Vergnet has "a fair number of machines operating in the
Caribbean and Africa," Paulissen said.
The Vergnet machine initially appeared too expensive for the
Canadian market, Paulissen said, "so we started looking at what
the components would actually cost if purchased here and
assembled, and the numbers came out very different. We plan to
assemble the machines here with Canadian components and local
machining." Wenvor has been working on the agreement and the
production arrangements for a year and a half, he added.
Local sales of the turbines have been spurred by a recent
decision by Ontario Hydro to allow net metering (under which
excess power produced by a utility customer's wind turbine can be
sold to the utility for the same price as it charges the customer
for power), Paulissen said: "We've presold several units on that
basis."
Wenvor, Paulissen said, initially proposed to install four
25-kW Vergnet machines in response to Ontario Hydro's recent
request for proposals (RFP) for renewable energy (see Wind Energy
Weekly #680, January 15, 1996). "We were hoping to install them
in some areas where the grid is weak, but Ontario Hydro didn't
want to do that at this time," he said, so Wenvor joined with
Danish manufacturer Micon to propose instead the installation of
a single 225-kW turbine. If Wenvor's bid is successful, the
Micon 225 would be erected at a site near Collingwood, Ontario,
Paulissen said. Currently, Wenvor is among several bidders who
have passed an initial cut and are on Ontario Hydro's short list.
Wenvor Technologies previously has sold mostly small wind
turbines and photovoltaics, Paulissen said: "We have a few
Whisper machines [from World Power Technologies of Duluth, Minn.]
installed--one 3-kW unit in the Northwest Territories that
provides heating and hot water, and several 1-kW units at remote
cottage locations."
WOLFE ISLAND TEAMS WITH UTILITY IN ONTARIO BID
Wolfe Island Power, of Trout Creek, Ontario, a joint venture
of small hydro developer Trout Creek Power and Great Lakes Power,
a Sault Ste. Marie-based utility, submitted two bids for small
windfarms in response to Ontario Hydro's recent request for
proposals (RFP) for renewable energy projects (see Wind Energy
Weekly #680, January 15, 1996).
Martin Parker of Wolfe Island said the company proposed wind
plants of 2 MW and 5 MW capacity and envisions using German
Enercon E-40 500-kW turbines. The 5-MW proposal is on Ontario
Hydro's short list of potential projects, and if Wolfe Island is
a winning bidder, the facility would be built on the island of
the same name in the St. Lawrence River, at the eastern end of
Lake Ontario.
One of the principals of Trout Creek Power, Parker said,
owns land on the island, and "we did some wind measurements and
found that the winds were pretty good." Wolfe Island Power, he
added, also plans to submit a proposal for a "medium wind farm"
to Ontario Hydro (the deadline for proposals in that category was
extended until later this year to allow bidders time for wind
speed measurements).
Parker said the outlook for wind and other renewables in
Ontario appears positive. "Like everywhere else, Ontario Hydro
is in the middle of big change right now," he added. "There have
been studies about selling off parts of the company, and anywhere
else that would be the death of windpower, but the impression we
get so far is that either there will be legislation to guarantee
some percentage of renewables or renewable energy development
will remain with [the utility]. So far, all signs are positive,
and that, along with Great Lakes Power's interest, has made us
keep going."
Great Lakes Power, Parker said, has a service territory in
the Algoma area of northern Ontario and installed generating
capacity of several hundred megawatts. The utility is owned by
the Bronfman family, which made a fortune in the liquor business
with the Seagram's brand and has extensive business holdings.
ONTARIO HYDRO PUSHES SHORT
LIST BID DEADLINE BACK
In a related story, Ontario Hydro has postponed the deadline
for shortlisted bidders to submit final bids from January 31 to
February 29, company spokesman Bunli Yang confirmed January 23.
The change, Yang said, resulted from the utility's inability
to provide bidders with a firm ceiling on interconnection costs
for projects, which is information that is needed for a final
bid. A slippage in internal timetables caused the holidays to
interfere with the gathering of cost information, and as a
result, the utility still had not delivered the information to
bidders by January 23. "We hope to have it out later this week,"
Yang said.
EUROPEAN, ASIAN WIND CAPACITY
SURGES AS WORLD MARKET BOOMS
Confirming earlier AWEA projections (see Wind Energy Weekly
#675, December 4, 1995), Europe surged ahead of the U.S. in
installed wind generating capacity during 1995 and wind
installations in Asia also jumped, according to preliminary
figures on global wind installations gathered by Paul Gipe &
Associates of Tehachapi, Calif.
Worldwide, wind power plants totalled 4,783 MW at the end of
1995, according to Gipe, who said in an accompanying memo that he
believes totals "are accurate within plus or minus 10-15
percent." The new cumulative capacity total is up from 3,640 MW
a year earlier, for an increase of 1,143 MW or 31 percent. In
dollar terms, the global wind industry, after achieving its first
$1 billion year in 1994, reached "$1.5 billion in 1995 in
equipment sales alone and will approach $2 billion in 1996," Gipe
said.
On a percentage basis, Asia, where the Indian market has
been booming, led the way, racking up a rise of 160 percent, from
238 MW installed at the end of 1994 to 618 MW one year later.
Asia's increase of 380 MW in capacity, however, was dwarfed by
Europe, where 781 MW in new capacity was installed as the
continent moved out from a virtual dead heat with the U.S. at the
end of 1994 to a nearly 50 percent lead. Europe's increase
amounted to a healthy 46 percent.
While wind capacity in Europe was going from 1,694 MW at the
end of 1994 to 2,464 MW a year later, total installed capacity
for U.S. wind power plants actually declined slightly, from 1,662
MW to 1,654 MW. Industry observers say the decline is the result
of sharply falling power purchase prices in California, where 10-
year power contracts signed in the early 1980s on the basis of
projected escalations in the future cost of electricity have been
replaced by payments at market rates. For some wind plants in
the Golden State, this has meant a drop of up to 80 percent in
power sales revenues, and as a result, a few facilities have
ceased operations.
In sharp contrast to California, the European surge is
largely due to new installations in Germany, where wind continues
to gain at a rapid pace owing to that country's Electricity Feed
Law, which requires utilities to pay a premium for power from
renewable energy suppliers. Germany, where 643 MW of wind
capacity was in place at the end of 1994, will surpass
California's current total of 1,563 MW by the end of this year,
according to Gipe.
"At a time when countries such as the United Kingdom,
Germany, Spain, and India have found it advisable to encourage
wind energy through various types of government support, both to
stimulate their domestic manufacturers and to gain the benefits
of this nonpolluting energy technology, the U.S. wind industry is
having to fight off attacks on its tax incentive and on the
federal wind research budget," commented AWEA Executive Director
Randall Swisher. "We have said for several years now that
without a coherent government policy to encourage wind energy
deployment, the U.S. cannot maintain its world market leadership,
and today that prophecy is coming true."
BLIZZARDS, FLOODS THROW MEDIA
SPOTLIGHT ON CLIMATE CHANGE
January, 1995, may go down in history as the month when the
media rediscovered the problem of climate change, once again in
part because of some unusual weather on the media-heavy east
coast of the U.S.
After the Blizzard of '96 dumped a record 30 inches of snow
in Philadelphia, topping the previous record of 24 inches by 25
percent, and inundated other Eastern population centers, Newsweek
magazine titled its January 22 issue "The Hot Zone," adding,
"Blizzards, Floods & Hurricanes: Blame Global Warming." The
Washington Post weighed in on January 22 with a commentary in its
Outlook section on how the insurance and banking industries view
the prospect of climate change with growing concern.
In part, of course, the new-found interest is due to new
pronouncements from the scientific community that have made it
respectable to talk about climate change again. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United
Nations-sponsored group of 2,500 experts from around the world,
agreed in December that climate patterns show "a discernible
human influence."
However, the Newsweek article included a map of extreme
weather events worldwide during 1995 that makes it clear that the
frequency of unusual hot spells, droughts and floods is also
beginning to be worrisome. During the year, according to the
map, severe heat waves or droughts occurred in the northeastern
and midwestern U.S., northeast Brazil, Argentina, the United
Kingdom, southwestern Europe and northwestern Africa, Austria,
central Russia, Siberia, and eastern Australia. Severe floods
also occurred in a number of locations.
The seemingly disparate combination of droughts and heavy
rainfall is related, climate scientists say, because unusual heat
in one area causes extreme evaporation, which appears as rainfall
elsewhere. A team headed by Thomas Karl at the National Climatic
Data Center reported last May that since 1970, rainfall in the
U.S. has become more concentrated, arriving in a smaller number
of heavier storms.
Climate scientist James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute
for Space Studies, who was derided by many when he told a
Congressional committee in 1988 that global warming had arrived,
was featured in the Newsweek spread, commenting that "The climate
system is being pushed hard enough that change will become
obvious to the man in the street in the next decade."
The Washington Post opinion piece, by Mark Hertsgaard,
recounted a series of recent statements by insurers, particularly
in Europe, to the effect that their industry is potentially
threatened by climate change. Since actuarial tables and the
cost of such products as flood and crop insurance are based on
past weather history, the possibility that history may no longer
be an accurate guide is cause for alarm.
Ocean geologist Jeremy Leggett, who works for Greenpeace and
has been organizing seminars and lobbying sessions among
insurers, is hoping to persuade the industry to divert some of
the $1.4 trillion it collects in premiums every year to
investment in renewable energy projects, the article said.
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