Wind Power

With soaring fuel prices making wind energy seem economical as well as green, a local wind-power company agreed yesterday to be bought for $30 million by Iberdrola, a big Spanish rival. Community Energy Inc., of Wayne, said it was selling out because wind's sudden emergence as a competitive alternative has made it difficult for a small company to obtain equipment increasingly in short supply. The privately held company, which had revenue last year of about $10 million, markets about 500 megawatts of wind power to 75,000 residences, businesses and institutions all across the country, said Brent Alderfer, its cofounder and president.

Gavin Shire is vice president of the American Bird Conservancy in Washington When the young boy in the Hans Christian Andersen fable cried out, "The emperor has no clothes!" the people of the kingdom realized that the ruse was over. They could no longer keep up the pretense that their leader's imaginary new suit was indeed splendid. Had one of the emperor's aides spoken out earlier, he could have been spared a great deal of embarrassment. A trick similar to the one played by the tailors in the Andersen tale is being perpetrated on us today by the wind industry.

Viridity Energy Inc., the Conshohocken energy management firm, is expanding its smart-grid technology to Thomas Jefferson University and its Center City hospital. Viridity announced Tuesday that it has signed a letter of intent with Thomas Jefferson to develop a one-megawatt battery system that will allow the institution to cut electrical costs by storing cheap power produced at night for use during the day. Thomas Jefferson will use the system to optimize power purchases for its 18 Center City buildings, which occupy 4.5 million square feet and consume up to 22 megawatts, said Ron Bowlan, Jefferson's chief facilities officer.

What's wrong with Mario Andretti's windmill? Atop a ridge behind Andretti's northern Pennsylvania home, the racing car legend has built a 120-foot-tall windmill. On a recent morning, its three blades spun briskly in the breeze. But Andretti, a man accustomed to high performance, was unhappy. He has invested close to $70,000 in the wind machine, and it generates only a fraction of the electricity he'd thought it would. "I'm disappointed," he says. "I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Turkey Hill Dairy, the Lancaster County ice cream and ice tea maker, said today that it will receive 25 percent of its annual electricity needs from a new wind power turbine facility along the Susquehanna River. The Frey Farm project, consisting of two wind turbines, will produce enough power to produce six million gallons of ice cream and 15 million gallons of iced tea annually, the Conestoga-based company said. In February, the turbines' first full month of operation, they provided about 32 percent of the dairy's electricity.

Investors on Tuesday proposed to build an underwater electricity superhighway that would carry wind power generated off the Mid-Atlantic Coast to land. The $5 billion transmission line, announced by backers including Google, would run about 15 to 20 miles offshore. It would act like a spine, linking the offshore projects to land at four locations - North Jersey, South Jersey near Atlantic City, the coast of Delaware and the coast of Virginia south of Norfolk. "This is a huge, bold project," said Robert Mitchell, CEO of Trans-Elect, an independent transmission company operating nationwide, which is leading the project.

The great blackout of 2003 has exposed, with too stark a drama, that the country faces not one but two power problems: One is the matter of electric power; the other is the matter of political power. It will be easier to deal with the former than the latter. Among the experts in the electric power world, there seems to be agreement that to assure an uninterrupted source of power, we need more power plants and more transmission lines. Among the experts in the political power world, there is no agreement at all on how to get there - and as they argue the possibilities, another blackout festers.

Rising out of the Mojave Desert, on brown mountains dotted with sagebrush and Joshua trees, they appear first as a flock of lost seagulls. On closer inspection, the wings are the arms of 80-foot soldiers doing calisthenics in unison. This is the otherworldly view that greets visitors to Tehachapi Pass, where nearly 5,000 of these three-armed soldiers borrow the wind rushing through the Sierra Nevadas from the San Joaquin Valley - and turn it into electricity. Tehachapi Pass is the site of the largest collection of wind turbines in the world.

A group of local hospitals has banded together in an unusual initiative to buy power generated by the wind in Schuylkill and Columbia Counties. The wind power will supply approximately a third of their electricity for 10 years, the hospitals said in a news release yesterday. The health institutions participating in the group purchase are Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, Thomas Jefferson University, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Inc., Main Line Health System, Frankford Hospitals, and Magee Rehabilitation.

The three New Jersey wind developers thought they had the whole deal locked up. After years of study, the Board of Public Utilities had granted each of them not only its blessing, but $4 million apiece for more research. But then, along came a Seattle businessman, and suddenly the ocean wasn't nearly big enough to hold them all. He proposed a wave farm smack in the same spot of ocean the wind guys thought they had dibs on, about 17 miles off Atlantic City. To do it, he took advantage of a bureaucratic loophole that has yet to be sorted out. The resulting storm of legal filings, protests and accusations of a land grab - make that an ocean grab - has yet to abate.

Gavin Shire is vice president of the American Bird Conservancy in Washington When the young boy in the Hans Christian Andersen fable cried out, "The emperor has no clothes!" the people of the kingdom realized that the ruse was over. They could no longer keep up the pretense that their leader's imaginary new suit was indeed splendid. Had one of the emperor's aides spoken out earlier, he could have been spared a great deal of embarrassment. A trick similar to the one played by the tailors in the Andersen tale is being perpetrated on us today by the wind industry.

Wind-turbine manufacturer Gamesa, a Spanish company with U.S. headquarters in Langhorne, is working with the Department of Energy to transform wind-power technology, making it cheaper and more reliable. Gamesa has sent a turbine to the department's National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, where scientists will load it with sensors to verify how much power is produced at certain wind speeds and otherwise check the accuracy of computer models used to design the equipment. With all the instrumentation, one might compare the turbine to a heart patient, except "this is more like an athlete," said Jeroen van Dam, senior engineer at the lab. By better understanding how the turbine works, engineers can design closer to the limits, he said.

ATLANTIC CITY - The company planning to build what could be the nation's first offshore wind farm says it's ready to start construction on the multimillion-dollar project as soon as New Jersey officials give their approval. Fishermen's Energy of Cape May wants to build the wind farm about 2.8 miles off Atlantic City. It plans to erect five wind turbines that would produce up to 25 megawatts, capable of powering about 10,000 homes. The company says it hopes the state Board of Public Utilities will issue a decision on its proposal by March.

Looking back, Swarthmore's leaders are a tad foggy on how the borough came to far outpace other communities in the use of alternative energy. Maybe it stemmed from the borough's long history of environmental activism. Or the nature of a town founded by Quakers that is host to a celebrated liberal-arts college. In any event, Swarthmore has achieved a level of green that most towns would envy. In the last year, more than a quarter of the energy needed to power its homes, buildings, and schools - 27.9 percent - came from renewable sources.

Eleven companies have submitted proposals to build green-power wind turbines on 554 square miles off New Jersey's shore. The companies submitted proposals to erect giant windmills on federal tracts stretching from Avalon to Barnegat Light. The tracts lie between eight miles and 26.5 miles offshore. "This robust response from offshore wind developers makes it clear that commercial interest in development of wind turbines is strong," Bob Martin, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, said in a statement.

Viridity Energy Inc., the Conshohocken energy management firm, is expanding its smart-grid technology to Thomas Jefferson University and its Center City hospital. Viridity announced Tuesday that it has signed a letter of intent with Thomas Jefferson to develop a one-megawatt battery system that will allow the institution to cut electrical costs by storing cheap power produced at night for use during the day. Thomas Jefferson will use the system to optimize power purchases for its 18 Center City buildings, which occupy 4.5 million square feet and consume up to 22 megawatts, said Ron Bowlan, Jefferson's chief facilities officer.

President Obama shucked his suit jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and even dropped a couple of g's from his gerunds as he bantered with the audience at a Bucks County wind-turbine plant Wednesday afternoon, selling the administration's energy policy - and himself. Obama was folksy and feisty during the visit to the Gamesa Technology Corp. factory in Fairless Hills, on the first presidential trip since Monday's official announcement that he is seeking reelection. It was a chance for Obama to test campaign themes and try to soar above what he called the "petty politics" of Washington, where a stalemate in budget negotiations between Democrats and House Republicans on Wednesday brought the federal government closer to a possible shutdown.

Turkey Hill Dairy, the Lancaster County ice cream and ice tea maker, said today that it will receive 25 percent of its annual electricity needs from a new wind power turbine facility along the Susquehanna River. The Frey Farm project, consisting of two wind turbines, will produce enough power to produce six million gallons of ice cream and 15 million gallons of iced tea annually, the Conestoga-based company said. In February, the turbines' first full month of operation, they provided about 32 percent of the dairy's electricity.

Porfirio Lobo , president of Honduras, visited a ridge called Hula Hill last month to break ground for a new electric plant that will use 51 wind-powered turbines made at the Gamesa Wind US plant in Falls Township. The site is supposed to produce 6 percent of the Central American nation's electric power when it goes on line next year. "The wind blows past; we've got to put it to work," Lobo told Honduras' La Prensa newspaper. "This way, we won't have to fight high oil prices.

Nearly six miles into a southwestern Pennsylvania coal mine, about 900 feet underground, two massive steel wheels ringed with carbide teeth chew chunks from a pitch-black wall. A monstrous crusher smashes excavated rock - some pieces half the size of a car - under the white light of 12-volt halogen lights strung along the mine roof. More than 200 steel shields, each able to bear 975 tons, prop up that roof as the walls below it crumble. High along some of the state's forested ridges, meanwhile, wind turbines churn, their sleek, 150-foot-long fiberglass blades slicing through air in a mesmerizing rhythm.