Bigger, Powerful Windfarm Projects Looking for Storage Technology and Continue to Factor in Public Program Incentives

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Electrical power generated from renewable energy sources has been gaining a high popularity profile among both domestic householders and industrial and commercial users who have bought into the virtuous circle of environmental concern and renewable energy credits. This positive user profile has been promoted, sometimes a little coyly, by its champions. It has a digestible perspective when small communities or suburbs are seen to living on clean outputs, or at least switching on their lights with a clean conscience.

The power generated from 'clean' sources has come down in price by significant factors over the past two decades. For example the claim is made for windpower that its delivered cost has come down by 81% in twenty years from 32 cents per kilowatt hour to 4-6 cents a kilowatt hour currently. Skeptics and opponents of windpower's claims continue to dig and harass over hidden and over public subsidies and take their own principled position in criticizing the environmental impact of regiments of windfarm rotor towers marching across the countryside or standing watch between the horizon and the beach.

The generating technology, which has developed over the past decades, is now looking for a complementary storage technique which will smooth out the problem of interrupted power supply when the wind dies down. Utilities and companies buying into windpower are faced with the choice of taking ownership of the generating windfarm and balancing the renewable energy credits with variable power outputs or developing a geographical spread of wind and other clean energy inputs which will provide its own median power output level. For windpower, the balancing factors, which must be taken into account, include the current average cost of windpower at around $45 per MW hour compared to the average rate for established power generation sources of $30 per MW hour. The application of power storage innovations may impact further on these costs or at least make them more difficult to reduce.

Perhaps the scale and scope of new windfarm installations will provide answers and direction to the development and cost questions raised. Certainly the small or medium sized farmer or community operator type, who has relied on his windpump for water and power, plus a solar panel or two as backup, biomass fuel and a generator in the barn, is a model for the small scale use of cleanish energy, and is also fashionably 'hybrid' in his use of mixed sources.

But at the 'big consumer' end of the scale with big MW numbers, it is significant that as the power output for windfarms (and the component generators) increases, project objectives are now being stated as 'contributing to commercial and industrial users' and the power output is fitting into the considerations of regional and national power planning beyond the single targeted site or domestic suburban household.

The possibilities are evident in the announcement by Endesa Cogeneracion y Renovables, a wholly owned subsidiary of Endesa (NYSE:ELE) (Madrid, Spain), that it will build five new windfarms in Tarifa, near the Spanish city of Cadiz. The $75 million project will start construction in the second half of this year and produce its first power output in the first quarter of 2004. The windfarms will have 98 aerogenerators, supplied by MADE Tecnologias Renovables (Madrid, Spain), each rated at 800 Kw (giving a nominal peak capacity of 78.4 MW). The windfarms will be connected to the 400kV network of national grid operator Red Electrica (MADRID:REE) (Madrid, Spain). The estimated output will be around 190 GWh per annum. This represents an annual saving for the domestic economy of fuel imports equivalent to 16,000 tons of oil.

The same Endesa company has plans to build a further four windfarms in Tarifa with a joint installed capacity of 42.4 MW. The Tarifa projects form part of a targeted promotion of windpower to top 100 MW in the province of Cadiz and 200 MW in the provinces of Malaga and Seville.

ENDESA currently participates in 55 operating windfarms and a further six nearing completion. These installations will have a total joint installed capacity of 856 MW.

In November 2002, Enmax, a wholly owned subsidiary of the City of Calgary, Alberta, and Vision Quest Windelectric, an independent subsidiary of TransAlta (NYSE:TAC) (Calgary, Alberta) began construction of the Lake McBride windfarm. By mid March 2003, 32 wind turbines had been built with 22 of those ready to start generation. When the facility is completed in the middle of this year, the 75 MW, $100 million project will produce 235,000 MWh per annum using 114 Vestas (COPENHAGEN:VWS/DK 0010268606) wind turbines.

Interestingly, at the same time, the claim is made that the output of the installation will be enough to power more than 32,500 homes annually. Sean Durfy, president and coo of ENMAX Energy Corporation says, "With the development of this facility, windpower is becoming an increasingly viable option for residential and commercial customers."

Fred Gallagher, managing director and CEO of Vision Quest makes one telling claim for windpower, "Even given the severe challenges of construction during the winter, we were able to have wind turbines generating within only four months of breaking ground on the project."

Vision Quest and ENMAX Green Power are equal partners in the MacBride Lake installation. Vision Quest will operate the facility and Enmax Energy will purchase the electrical output.

The project is supported by the Canadian Federal government's Wind Power Production Incentive (WPPI) program.

Providing clean, commercial/industrial scale power generation with windpower (but not in my particular viewsite backyard please), and providing a really 'power-on' quick fix at a marketable price could well see the rotor-boys building a profile in the mainstream of power generation and supply.

There is still some thrashing out do in the debate on whether programs supported by public money are accepted as part of a circle of virtue in the power market and the body politic or are just subsidies which will not stand the test of market forces combining with the increasing cleanliness of the latest range of powerfully efficient combustion-based power generating technologies. The majority of users and suppliers have feet in both camps. Just a bunch of hybrids in the end.