A Piece of Work, Part I

You know when something is going to be lengthy or "soapboxish" when Roman numerals are used in a title. With that warning, off we go.

A recent wave of large wind turbine orders and project announcements spanning four states suggests that wind power will continue growing strong at least through 2007. That domestic demand for large wind turbines (LWTs) has created a two- to three-year backlog at the manufacturers of LWTs as new wind farms also sprout up throughout America.

Coteau Wind & Power is being developed to meet a dometstic demand for a large wind turbine it the 750 - 900 kW range that is expected to continue and actually accelerate. Price increases of crude oil, natural gas, and coal, and the spectre of nuclear power plants make wind a very appealing alternative power source for electricity generation.

In a 1999 study conducted by the World Energy Council (WEC) projected worldwide wind capacity of 13 gigawatts (GW) by 2000 (actual installed capacity was 13.6 GW by the end of 1999), increasing to 72 GW by 2010 and 180 GW by 2020.

• (1 gigawatt = 1,000 megawatts = 1,000,000 kilowatts; if you're paying 7 cents per kWh, 1 GWh = $70,000,000. "There's money in them thar breezes!")

Coteau Wind & Power will use these numbers as goals in order to be "in the right place at the right time" to profit from the surge in growth in wind turbine installations with a goal of manufacturing and delivering 4,040 turbines by 2020 in the Great and Upper Great Plains.

A faster pace of wind development comes at a crucial time for electricity producers; crude oil peaked at $78.00 per barrel in mid- July, 2006, as did the price of natural gas (NG) ( in dollars per million cubic feet). A main derivative of NG, agricultural nitrogen,
also shot up in price.

By June 2007, the price of crude oil had declined to $68.00 per barrel and Big Oil company executives commented that with the increased production of biofuels, there is much less urgency to expand crude oil refining capacity.

{Americans should expect higher food costs as more food grains are converted into ethanol rather than put in grocery stores as well as higher gasoline and other petrochemical product prices because of "less urgency to expand capacity."}

Even the highest-use fossil fuel for generating electricity- coal- indirectly became more expensive due to pollution-reduction equipment regulations, special-interest groups' objections, and train coal-car derailments.

Nor is hydro-electric power immune from price increases. For decades "hydro" has been a mainstay for rural electricifcation, providing thousands of megawatthours of inexpensive power from major U.S. rivers like the Missouri in the Upper Great Plains.

Extended drought or near-drought conditions in the watersheds of their rivers, compounded by higher average water consumption for water parks, lawns, U.S. Open greens watering, wild-fire fighting, and agricultural irrigation, will result in record-low water levels and subsequent decreased electricity production by water turbines in the rivers' dams. When supply decreases, spot-market electricity purchases lead to consumer rate increases.

Coteau Wind & Power will manufacture wind turbines that efficiently harvest electricity from wind power, a renewable resource that will never "dry up," can't be doled out by foreign governments, and doesn't poison the evironment with mercury, cadmium, and sulfuric acid.

Unlike the traditional fuels of electricity-generating plants, wind turbines are not constrained by

• global geopolitics
• an inability to safely dispose of nuclear or petroleum wastes
• heightened concerns about environmental damage
• almost complete concentration of generation capability in single sites
• labor and transportation disruptions
• increasingly limited water supplies and
• increasing "Not In My Back Yard" resistance stemming from concerns regarding

• land consumption
• aesthetics
• air, noise, traffic pollution and
• materials and time costs

in the construction of new traditional power plants.
____________________________


A handful of South Dakota wind-

• 8 PM Jun 18, W at 25 mph
• 5 PM Jun 18, W at 29 mph
• 10 AM Jun 18, WNW at 14 mph
• 3 AM Jun 18, SE at 6 mph
• 9 PM Jun 17, SSW at 22 mph.

Do contact me if you want to buy any of this blog's content or would like to have other specific wind power-related content uncovered.

'Til next time. Best Wind.