HomeSun states: “The FiT was due to reduce in April 2012, and the industry had proposed a reduction of 30%. Suddenly on 31st October, government announced a ‘consultation’ running to 23rd December, and a proposed cut of 50% from 12th December 2011. This announcement created chaos: thousands of people trying to get installed when there weren’t enough people or kits to do the job; thousands of businesses going to the wall because they had committed stock which wouldn’t be arriving until 2012; thousands of people put on notice of losing their jobs.”

A report commissioned by Friends of the Earth states that: “DECC’s plans will have dramatic, negative impacts on the solar industry and on the deployment of solar PV in the UK. DECC’s own Impact Assessment concedes that PV installations will fall 50-95%.The rate of new installations forecast by DECC in its proposals would support only around one-third of the jobs currently in the sector, placing at least 18,000 jobs at risk.”

The Government has now announced that no matter what the outcome of this latest appeal, they will implement the cuts on the 3rd March. The fear is that this will generate another rush on installations that the industry simply won’t be able to fit in time.

SolarCentury hosted a web-based Q&A session with Which? magazine to try to answer questions from the general public about the current status and the future of solar. By far and away the most common question was “Should I gamble on achieving a March installation?” Clearly the drive is still there to install panels and reap the rewards of clean energy, but even companies whose business is solar are advising caution until this final appeal is resolved.

Trump, whose plans for this windswept, remote part of the Aberdeenshire coast include a high-rise tower and several 4 story units, has long complained that the offshore windfarm will be an eyesore.

The Trump Organisation released a statement: “We intend to open the championship golf course at the end of June, well ahead of schedule.

“All further plans for future development, including the hotel, are now on hold until the Scottish government makes a decision on the application for the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre.

“If the north east of Scotland is serious about tourism and creating a global golf destination it cannot allow the coastline to be ruined by an ugly industrial park directly off the shoreline.”

Suspicions have been voiced that Trump has decided to abandon the golf resort as it is no longer financially viable and is using the windfarm, known as the European offshore wind deployment centre, as the reason.

Trump admitted in June that the global recession had lead him to postpone construction of the resort’s luxury hotel, apartments and housing. He said “the world has crashed” since he bought the Menie estate, in Aberdeenshire, and its vast area of dunes in 2005. Linking this delay to the windfarm is a new angle that he did not previously take.

Trump has called for the first minister Alex Salmond’s support in his opposition of the windfarm, but despite initially being a supporter of Trump, he has now refused to intervene.

The proposed windfarm is backed by the European commission and will be a testbed for some of the most advanced offshore wind turbine designs. The £200m project, which will be 2.5km (1.5 miles)south-east of the Menie estate coastline, is expected to create jobs and economic benefit by attracting scientists, researchers, engineers, offshore wind supply chain companies.

The Assessment of Energy Production Potential from Tidal Streams in the United States, led by researchers at Georgia Tech Research Corporation in collaboration with DOE, is the first of its kind in the U.S. and includes a geographic information systems (GIS) tool available for public use. The report data concludes that U.S. water power resources, including ocean wave, tidal and conventional hydropower, have the potential to provide 15 percent of the U.S’s electricity by 2030.

The U.S. Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition welcome the reports. “The release of both reports demonstrates the attainable energy potential of our nation’s vast ocean resources,” said Sean O’Neill, OREC’s President. “DOE’s investment in these studies, as well as the corresponding results, is a testament to the importance of our unique opportunity to pursue a diverse energy portfolio that includes wave and tidal energy in an effort to secure our energy supply, create jobs and lower greenhouse gas emissions.”

The reports are the most rigorous assessments thus far undertaken by DOE and its collaborative partners, and show the significant renewable energy contributions that waves and tidal currents off of U.S. coasts could provide to the grid. DOE announced the information in the resource assessments could “help to further develop the country’s significant ocean energy resources, create new industries and new jobs in America, and secure U.S. leadership in an emerging global market.”

The wave energy assessment concludes that the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast (Washington, Oregon and California) and Alaska encompass the greatest available wave energy resources in the U.S. The report also outlines the wave energy potential along the East Coast from Maine through to North Carolina, and from South Carolina through to Florida as well as in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska’s Bering Sea, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

The tidal energy assessment designates and details data for energy resource ‘hot spots’ across the U.S. including Alaska, Maine, Washington, Oregon, California, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

An executive from Spirit Solar, Erica Robb, challenged David Cameron at a small business event today over the “weeks of chaos” that have resulted from the government’s proposals to cut feed-in tariff incentives for solar installations. She branded the decision to give the industry just six weeks notice of the tariff reductions as “disgraceful”. Confronting the Prime Minister, Miss Robb said: “Before Christmas we employed 80 people. We made 30 people redundant in the week before Christmas. This was following weeks of chaos caused by the short-notice cut done by your government to the feed-in tariffs.

“The High Court has ruled that the way you did that was unlawful and (the chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee) Tim Yeo has said it has undermined confidence, which you yourself have said is fundamental. Yet yesterday you lodged an appeal against the High Court decision twenty-five thousand people’s jobs rely on. How can you justify the appeal?”

Cameron replied “I’m afraid the government and the taxpayer and the bill-payer faced a really big problem which was that there was a feed-in tariff system set up under the last government that had very generous payments for people fitting solar panels to their roofs. I think that was a very good idea.

“The prices fell quite radically, in terms of the cost of solar panels, and so suddenly what was a reasonable tariff and a reasonable return for householders was looking like something that was much too generous – a 10% rate of return – and that was going to use up all the money that was set aside for years of this feed-in tariff.”

The reality is that the FIT scheme for solar is already in the red and the government has no choice but to act if they are to keep the scheme up and running. One solar company, Leeds Solar, have analysed the latest installation figures and calculated that the scheme will be over £100m over budget in 2012 based on today’s installations alone. Even the proposed cuts will not address this shortfall and the industry warns that the government must increase this budget.

The high court ruled just before Christmas that it would be unlawful for the government to cut feed-in tariff rates for Solar PV installations completed after 12 December on the grounds that the changes pre-empted the close date for the consultation. The government was also warned that any appeal was unlikely to be successful and were denied permission to lodge an immediate appeal.

Climate Minister, Greg Barker, is now waiting for permission to appeal the ruling and hopes to have a resolution by the end of January. He has also confirmed that the review of the consultation process over the FIT scheme is still on track for the end of January, with one key factor being to align the falling cost in technology with the level of subsidies. This should make any future changes to the FIT levels across the renewables industry much more transparent to all concerned and allow businesses to track and plan for these changes.

Statistics for the third quarter of 2011, released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, show that renewable sources generated 9 per cent of the UK’s electricity from July to September. That represents an increase of nearly 1 per cent on the same quarter last year.

DECC highlighted the fact that the amount of electricity generated from offshore wind has increased “substantially” compared to the same quarter in 2010, partly because of increased capacity, and partly because it was the windiest September for at least ten years.

When the overall figures for the first three quarters of 2011 (Jan – Sept) are taken into account, the statistics show a 64% increase in the amount of electricity generated by offshore wind on the same three quarters for last year (up from 4865 gigawatt hours to 6618GWh), and a 36% increase for onshore wind (up from 1943 GWh to 3189 GWh).

Dr Gordon Edge, RenewableUK’s Director of Policy, said: “This is another strong set of statistics from DECC, proving that despite the anti-wind propaganda being spouted by lobbyists with their own particular agendas, wind turbines are continuing to generate increasingly large amounts of electricity for the UK’s households.

We will continue to offer a secure supply of clean energy which will reduce our dependence on ultra-expensive fossil fuels such as gas. Let’s not forget that it’s the cost of importing gas which has sent domestic fuel bills through the roof, so we have to get off the fossil fuel hook. Renewable sources such as wind offer us excellent value for money overall. We believe that hard-pressed households deserve the best deal when it comes to cutting their energy bills in the long term, Dr Edge commented.

DECC also highlighted the growth in the UK’s installed capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources of 400 megawatts in the third quarter of the year – a 12 per cent increase on Q3 a year earlier. Nearly two-thirds of that increase (240MW) came from onshore and offshore wind, with the first turbines of the Ormonde and Greater Gabbard offshore wind farms beginning operation.

The UK now has enough installed capacity to supply more than 3,300,000 homes from wind energy.

All electricity retailers in the UK are required to supply a proportion of their electricity from renewable sources (currently 11%). If they don’t they have to pay a ‘buyout’ fee – a bit like a fine. So how do you find out whether your chosen green electricity supplier is being forced into supplying your electricity from renewable sources as part of its legal obligation or whether it is going the extra mile in encouraging new renewable energy because you are paying a green electricity rate?

Each electricity supplier has to provide information to Ofgem on the fuel mix that makes up its supply to domestic customers. This is public information and from this we can ascertain whether companies are doing more than their fair share or less. For example last year Good Energy provided electricity matched from 100% renewable energy sources compared with a UK average of 7.9%. Further Good Energy’s tariff at around 12.9 pence per kWh depending on the area, is competitive with the big 6 electricity prices and in many cases cheaper. By comparison EDF only supplied 3.9% from renewable sources and Scottish Power only 7.6%.

None of the electricity from Good Energy is from nuclear and the company is currently sourcing electricity from a whopping 1000 independent and small scale renewable energy generators. Those independent generators are harnessing wind energy, hydro, solar energy and biomass. For example Good Energy buy solar power from St Aldhelm’s Church in London and housing association Peabody. They even buy electricity from a prototype onshore wave generator on Skye. So before you sign up to a green electricity tariff, check out how much green electricity your company is genuinely supplying and where it is coming from.

RenewableUK’s Chief Executive, Maria McCaffery MBE, said: “Contrary to the Duke’s comments, the irrefutable facts are that wind energy is providing a clean, secure supply of electricity to more than three million homes in the UK, displacing six and a half million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year”.

“Overall, the long-term cost-effectiveness of wind makes it an economic necessity for our future – we can’t go on relying on expensive imports of fossil fuels, which are the real reason why energy bills are going up. We need to explode some of these myths that are being peddled by anti-renewables campaigners. I fear that, with great respect, the Duke of Edinburgh has been seriously misinformed, and he has failed to understand the many benefits offered by renewable energy”.

The trade association highlights the fact that the independent electricity regulator Ofgem says that the cost of supporting wind adds only about £10 per year to the average domestic electricity bill of £600 – a figure far lower than those misreported in some sections of the media. Ofgem has also warned that any failure to invest in renewable energy will result in domestic bills increasing by as much as 52%, if we remain over-reliant on increasingly expensive fossil fuels from unstable regimes abroad.

McCaffery also points out that a quarter of our traditional sources of electricity – coal-fired and nuclear power stations – will reach the end of their natural lives within the next ten years: “Wind energy is vital for our future if we are to keep the lights on. The UK has the best wind resource in Europe. Wind turbines generate electricity for 80-85% of the time – far more than the lower statistics bandied about by some ill-informed commentators”, she said.

The trade association also highlights the enormous economic benefits wind energy offers in terms of job creation. About 11,000 people are working in the UK wind industry, many of them in highly skilled engineering jobs. By 2021, a study by the respected analysts Cambridge Econometrics shows that this will increase to nearly 90,000 jobs as we build a new low-carbon economy and meet our carbon reduction targets

On the topic of investment, Chris Huhne said “Last year, global investment in renewable energy rose by 32% to $211 billion. And $142 billion of that was new financial investment, which excludes government and corporate R&D.
Renewables are grabbing a large and growing share of new energy investment.
We subsidise renewables to bring on deployment and reduce costs. And we’ve seen some remarkable successes: the cost of solar energy just keeps on tumbling.”
Although many disagree, the government say that this success is borne out in the recent reduction in subsidies for domestic solar panel installations. Although unpopular to those whose plans for an installation have stalled, it is testament to the fact that the initial investment has paid off.

Chris Huhne also addressed the question of capacity; “Today, more than 10 gigawatts of our electricity capacity is renewable. That’s enough to power six million homes.
And with every passing year, renewable energy takes over another percentage point of global electricity capacity.”
“Renewable energy can make our system more secure – not less. According to the International Energy Agency, renewables increase the diversity of electricity sources, making energy systems more flexible – and more resistant to shocks.”

The popularity of renewable energy schemes was also discussed; “Earlier this year, Ipsos MORI polled a thousand UK adults on which energy source they preferred. Eighty-eight per cent of those polled viewed solar power favourably; 82% for wind, 76% for hydroelectric, 57% for biomass.”

On the subject of job creation, Chris Huhne said “Across the United Kingdom, renewables are providing jobs, investment and growth. And the numbers are really starting to add up. Over the last financial year, nearly 4,500 new jobs were created in the low-carbon sector, which grew by 4.3%.”

The subject of EU and UK targets was discussed; “By the end of this decade, we must cut our carbon emissions by 34% on 1990 levels. By the end of the next decade, they must be halved.
To hit our EU renewable energy target, we must generate 30% of our electricity from renewables by 2020. That means a fourfold increase in deployment – turning our back on an inheritance that ranked us as the dunce in class, 25th out of 27 EU countries for renewables.”

Subsidies
As we have seen in recent announcement regarding solar subsidies, the government are reviewing their renewable subsidies across the board. “Where new technologies desperately need help to reach the market – where they can be scaled up significantly while bringing down costs over time – we are raising support.
Where investors are on the cusp, we will give them the short-term impetus they need. So marine energy projects up to 30 megawatts will receive five ROCs under our plans.
Where market costs are coming down – in onshore wind, for example – we’re consulting on reducing the subsidy.”

Research
Support of research into new technologies is key to being at the forefront of the market for being technology providers as well as simply providing cheap, green energy. The government has “allocated up to £30 million over the next four years to fund innovation to reduce offshore wind costs. We’ve also allocated up to £20 million to support the world’s first commercial-scale marine energy arrays.”

Finally Chris Huhne talked about measures to be taken to facilitate the development of this array of sustainable energy projects. “Over 1,000 pages of local planning policy for England are being replaced by clearer and more streamlined National Planning Policy Framework. And the Government will consult on measures for a ‘planning guarantee’.”

Forewind have recently signed a deal with National Grid for two 1GW grid connections, potentially located in Middlesborough (subject to technical site assessment). In March last year Forewind accepted a 1GW grid connection offer made by National Grid to connect its first project into the existing Creyke Beck substation, north of the Humber Estuary in East Riding of Yorkshire. This latest signing will enable Forewind to proceed with the development of two more 1GW projects.

Forewind have also announced their new venture to deploy two meteorological masts with an innovative foundation structure. Forewind Limited, developers of the Dogger Bank zone, signed a contract with Fred Olsen United AS to design, construct and install the two met masts and foundations at the site by late 2012.

The foundation design, known as a suction installed bucket, was identified as part of the Carbon Trust’s collaborative Offshore Wind Accelerator programme, an initiative which aims is to reduce the cost of offshore wind energy by 10 per cent via research, development and demonstration.

The Carbon Trust held a foundation design competition that attracted 104 entries from across the world and resulted in seven finalists including the suction bucket, designed by Danish specialists Universal Foundation A/S.

The foundation is guided into place via an operator varying the pressures within hundreds of water jets integral to its base, as the vacuum sucks it into the seabed. It uses less steel than conventional piled foundations and its design removes the need for pile driving, seabed preparations, scour protection and a transition piece.

The foundations will be installed on Dogger Bank using a new 132m jack-up vessel, Brav e Tern, which is now under construction.

To confirm the performance of the innovative foundations, verify the design parameters and measure the loads and conditions they endure on Dogger Bank, one will be equipped with strain gauges, meters and data collection systems.

Finally, talks between Siemens and ABP regarding the development of a turbine production facility at the Green Port of Hull are ongoing. Although movement has been slow since Siemens signed an MOU with ABP back in January, both Siemens and the UK Government are keen for the development to remain on track.

Following the recent announcement of renewable energy financial support from Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, which specifically promotes offshore wind and tidal power, Mr Cameron said: “I am very passionate about this investment – I have spoken to the head of Siemens about it personally. We have made the decision this week about the ROCs, so in terms of the investors needing certainty about funding for offshore wind, it is there. I think there’s every reason for it to go ahead, and I’ll work extremely hard to make it happen.”

The Siemens production facility is key to serving Siemens’ Round 3 Offshore commitments as part of the Government’s aim to deliver one quarter of the UK’s total energy needs by 2020 and is likely to generate 700 jobs.

Nordex say they are responding to the latest market requirements as well as drawing on their 25 years of wind energy experience in their release of the N90/2500kW and N100/2500kW Efficiency Class turbines.

Based on the over 1700 2.5.MW units already installed the Gamma Generation is, according to Nordex designed for all wind and weather conditions in compliance with international and Chinese standards.

The N90/2500 and N100/2500 turbines are based on a common technical platform. Nordex say that the modular design makes delivery, installation and maintenance fast and simple.

“A new software version for Nordex Control 2 is used in 2.5MW gamma platform. With the new software, power yield is improved at partial load operation.” Dr. Ni, Engineering Director of Nordex China stated.

“Starting from Germany, we are expanding our business across the globe with branches in 19 countries. Our subtlety, foresight and flexibility in the global and local markets have enabled us to gain strong footholds in three core regions: Europe, America and Asia. This is why we were one of the first foreign suppliers to enter the Chinese market, back in 1995.” Mr. Jens Olsen, CEO of Nordex China stressed.

With the demand in China increasing, Nordex say they will continue to make inroads in this market with its latest products.

Photo – http://www.nordex-online.com/en