The two 250 kW wind turbines owned by Aspenall Energies are expected to provide 7 percent of the Bacardi distillery’s needs and offset over 900 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

In this TED presentation, Makani Power’s Saul Griffith says that commercial wind turbines are restricted from utilising the full potential of wind energy because the towers cannot be constructed higher than circa 100 metres high. He says a kite system is much better because it can capture increased wind energy at higher altitudes.

The company is currently developing control systems for a robot to fly the kite for sustained periods of time. What is not explained in the presentation or on Makani’s website is how much space you need to operate the kite, how you stop it getting tangled with the next kite along, how you make it robust and how you stop it being whipped away by passing air traffic. Good luck guys…

The five turbine wind farm is located within half a mile of the village of Westmills in South Oxfordshire, England. The turbines started generating electricity in February of last year after a long planning haul patiently negotiated by landowner Adam Twine. More than 200 local people bought into the wind farm co-operative and now receive a financial return on their investment.

The BBC report interviews Director of Westmills Co-op – Rod Blunden who says that modern wind turbines are not noisy. Blunden said “some of the older turbines were noisy there is no doubt, however the noise has now been engineered out”.

Neighbours within half a mile of the wind farm say that the wind farm is not a problem. They believe it is a local landmark which brings in business.

Click here to watch the interview.

Xcel Energy is the biggest purchaser of wind generated electricity in the US and has chosen to investigate the possibilities of energy storage. It has installed a 1 MW sodium-sulphur battery within the Minwind wind farm in Minnesota with the aim of managing excess energy more flexibly. The experiment seeks to establish whether it is more effective to combine variable energy supply (i.e. wind energy) with stored power through the use of batteries instead of conventional reserve power generation.

A key feature of a wind turbine is that electricity is only generated when the wind speed reaches a threshold level. The objective of wind energy operators and grid network providers is to maximise the use of electricity generated so that as little as possible is ‘wasted’. The usual way of dealing with intermittent wind energy generation is to combine it with “reserve energy generation” already connected to the grid system in the form of gas storage, hydro-electric power, coal etc. and to ensure wind energy projects are located in geographically diverse locations.

Frank Novachek, Xcel’s Director of Corporate Planning, said storing wind energy will help the system run more efficiently. He said: “It would smooth out the ups and downs that wind has on our system …there are often times when Xcel doesn’t use all of the energy generated by a wind farm in a given day, and without a way to store it, that energy is lost. The largest barrier to the project is the high cost of the batteries“.

Novachek said that the battery is not intended to expand the integration of wind energy immediately but the project is being set up for when wind penetration on Xcel’s system is at its maximum thereby resulting in a real need for the storage. Xcel will be required to supply 30% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 25% of that is likely to be wind energy generated.

Testing of charge and discharge cycles has been carried out over the last few months and Xcel say that the system is working as envisaged. A fully charged battery will release a steady megawatt of power output over seven hours and on a busy grid network a one megawatt battery can potentially allow more wind energy generated megawatts on-line. The battery however has its down-sides, as 25% of the stored power is lost and it costs a whopping US $3 million (£2 million).

When wind turbine operator Buergerwindpark Galmsbuell GmbHthe decided to “replant” the old wind energy site at Marienkoog, Germany with fewer more powerful wind turbines, local people were offered a third of the shares in the new 7 turbine wind energy project. Altogether, in what is dubbed the Galmsbüll Bürgerwindpark (citizens’ wind energy project), of which Marienkoog is part, a total of 240 wind farm neighbours invested €5 million.

Many believe that as a result there has been more acceptance of the new larger (Siemens 3.6 Megawatt) wind turbines in the landscape of this rural area. The local council also receives income from the business taxes paid by the wind energy project operators.

Last year, the new wind turbines at Marienkoog produced more electricity than expected, generating a healthy return to the community investors.

Jess Jessen, farmer and one of the people involved in developing the Marienkoog scheme said “We have a very strong relationship with the communities in North Friesland, If you have so many local people involved you get greater acceptance.”

On the remote north coast of Scotland, near Banff, Falck Renewables built 7 turbines on the old Boyndie Airfield. Bondie Co-op was established in 2005 to allow the community in Banffshire to own a share in the first wind energy co-operative for Scotland.

Co-op members receive annual interest on their investment. The minimum investment is set at £250 to ensure the broadest possible membership.

Following the success of Boyndie, Falck Renewables introduced a community share scheme for their Isle of Skye, Ben Aketil wind farm. The Isle of Skye Renewables Co-op purchased a stake in the Ben Aketil wind farm in January 2008. The 570 members, each with a shareholding ranging from £250 to £20,000 will receive annual interest on their shares.

The Ben Aketil wind farm comprises ten 2.3MW Enercon wind turbines. Construction of the wind energy project began in September and power started to be generated in November 2007. The ten turbines generate enough green energy to supply around 14,000 homes.

Further south near Oxford, England, five wind turbines making up Westmill Wind Energy project were commissioned in March 2008. The project was developed by an independent farmer – Adam Twine further to protracted planning issues over the size of the wind turbines. The wind energy project produces enough green electricity to power more than 2,500 homes and is unusual in the UK as it is 100% community owned.

In March, Westmill wind energy project completed its first year of operation as 250 shareholder members of the co-op gathered for its Annual General Meeting. Since commissioning last year Westmill wind farm has produced green energy totalling 11.5GWh, within 5% of the predicted output of 12GWh.

Westmill director Adam Twine said: “This is a great reward for the 2,400 individuals and organizations that make up Westmill Co-op and who almost exactly three years ago, raised the 4.5 million of capital needed to purchase the wind turbines; its also positive encouragement for other community groups who are considering embarking on similar initiatives and in its own small way, its a successful, local initiative working to avert catastrophic climate change. We just need more!”

To investigate if there is a community ownership scheme near you in the UK visit the not for profit Energy4All website.

The Spanish Island of Hierro may well become energy self sufficient over the next few years. In this video Gonzalo Piernovieja, Research and Development Director at the Canarias Technology Institute talks about the renewable energy project which in a few years time could generate 80% of the Island’s electricity requirements.

Construction of the components of a combined wind energy and hydro project has started. A wind energy project comprising 5 turbines is proposed to be installed providing electricity for the islanders when it is windy with the excess being used to pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir of a hydro-electric scheme. When it is not windy, they can use the height of the waterfall to generate electricity.

The president of the island Tomas Padron, former employee of the electric utility on the island said “It just so happened that I was the president and I worked at the energy company on the island. A department for researching alternative energy was set up, however the people were not supportive as they did not believe. We convinced the people by passing on the message, providing data and telling them this was a reality“.

The island as a whole is expected to serve as an experiment, not only for the energy combination proposed but for other related energy issues too.

As an example, a 10 turbine wind energy proposal near Bradwell on Sea on the coast of Essex, England was granted planning consent in 2007, further to an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, and a 3 week public inquiry dealing with a host of issues from the effects of the wind farm on the setting of nearby listed St Peters Chapel to the operations of the airport at Southend.

Local anti-wind energy campaigners paid for a legal review of the consent and discovered that one the planning conditions governing the maximum noise limits emitted from the wind farm had been written into the consent incorrectly by the planning inspector by mistake. Current planning legislation does not allow for the amendment of planning conditions for consents granted at appeal. On this basis the consent was quashed further to the high court challenge and it was decided that the “noise” topic be dealt with again at public inquiry.

Since these events which took place during 2007/2008 the planning inspector has retired and the Planning Inspectorate has decided to hold the same full public inquiry again rather than restricting it purely to the noise condition issue. To hear all the same evidence twice will come at a high cost to the taxpayer purely because there was no mechanism to simply amend the noise limit to the correct figure.

A public inquiry such as this will cost the energy company at least one hundred thousand pounds and will also cost Maldon District Council residents a similar amount through their council taxes (after having spent at least fifty thousand pounds in 2007). Furthermore taxpayers will pay for the national body – the Planning Inspectorate to consider the proposal a second time around.

Anthony Fyson, writer at Planning Magazine accuses the British Wind Energy Association as wanting renewable energy projects to merely be rubber stamped without proper consideration – however everyone must agree that there is something wrong with a system whereby a proposal that was appealed in 2006 is still with the Planning Inspectorate for consideration 3 years later in 2009. The project went public in early 2005 and environmental work started several years before that meaning that 6 years on – there is still no decision.

If you want to find out more about the project – visit the energy company’s website. You can make a difference by submitting comments to the Planning Inspectorate before 21st April by going to the planning portal website You can access the case by putting in reference number APP/X1545/A/06/2023805/NWF into the ‘Case Ref’ field of the ‘Search’ page and clicking on the search button. Alternatively you can e-mail the Planning Inspectorate at sarah.banwell@pins.gsi.gov.uk

The team have christened the new wind turbine ‘Paula’ after the UK greatest long distance runner and marathon world record holder, Paula Radcliffe. Team member Justin Hyde said “and boy does our Paula run well too! She is in it for the long haul. We have all been awestruck by her strength and speed, spinning against the incredible skyline of Bellinghausen. It therefore seemed fairly appropriate that we name turbine number 2 Kelly in honour of our other great UK runner, Kelly Holmes. We hoped she would bring us such good fortune.” The team however have struggled to get Kelly running due to difficult weather and working conditions.

Another of the e-base team members said “Now that we have a sustainable (fingers crossed) source of clean energy, our next challenge is to wire up the weather station and webcam, so that we can broadcast live video and weather data to the 2041 website 365 days a year”

Check out the 2041 website for educational videos on climate change, the e-base story, living in Antarctica, wildlife and wind energy at the e-base.