09/10/2008 12:01 PM

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Weekly Clean Energy Roundup: September 10, 2008

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For the advanced building code projects, Florida, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Washington are improving their existing residential or commercial energy codes in order to produce a 30% energy usage reduction over the existing codes. In addition, North Carolina will update its state energy code by 2010, while California plans to build the California Building Energy Efficiency Standards Learning Management System, an online system that will educate building department processionals about enforcing its current building energy efficiency standards and the next standards update. See the DOE press release.

U.S. Wind Power Capacity Exceeds 20,000 Megawatts

The U.S. wind industry has doubled its generating capacity over the past two years, exceeding 20,000 megawatts in installed capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). The wind industry trade group announced last week that U.S. installed wind capacity is now at 20,152 megawatts, producing enough electricity to serve 5.3 million average U.S. homes. The industry hit the 10,000-megawatt milestone in August 2006, just over two years ago, which means that the industry grew as much over the past two years as it did in the previous two-and-a-half decades.

AWEA expects more than 7,500 megawatts of wind power capacity to be installed in 2008, bringing the total U.S. wind capacity to more than 24,000 megawatts by year end. However, the looming expiration of federal tax credits at the end of the year could cause the industry's growth spurt to sputter in 2009. See the AWEA press release.

A recent report from BCC Research suggests that the U.S. wind industry is poised for further rapid growth. With an estimated market value of $11.2 billion in 2008, the industry is projected by BCC to grow to $60.9 billion in 2013, clocking a compound annual growth rate of 40%.

Among the companies preparing to help achieve that growth rate is Vestas Americas A/S, which announced in August that it will build two new wind turbine factories in Brighton, Colorado, about 20 miles northeast of Denver. When they reach full capacity in 2010, the factories will manufacture 1,800 wind turbine blades per year and annually assemble 1,400 nacelles (the housings that sit atop the wind towers), creating 1,350 jobs. Vestas already has a wind turbine blade manufacturing facility in Windsor, Colorado, about 35 miles north of Brighton, that can also produce 1,800 blades per year, and the company plans to build another factory in Colorado to manufacture 900 wind towers per year. The company is also establishing a research center in Houston, Texas, that will open next year. See the BCC press release and the Vestas press releases about the Colorado wind turbine factories (PDF 27 KB) and the Houston research center (PDF 28 KB). Download Adobe Reader.

NSF to Invest $18.5 Million in Green Grid Technologies

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on Monday that it will establish a new NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) at North Carolina State University for power grid technologies that can effectively integrate renewable energy and energy storage systems. The new "NSF ERC for Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems," or FREEDM systems for short, will develop a new, distributed power grid network that will permit any combination and scale of energy sources and storage devices to be connected to the grid through standard grid-interface modules. This "Internet for energy" will work as a "plug-and-play" system to make it easy to sell excess energy from renewable energy systems to power companies. NSF will invest about $18.5 million in the new ERC over the next five years.

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