REpower contracts 143 MW with enXco in California

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Excerpt: REpower Systems AG has signed a delivery agreement  for up to 143.5 megawatts with the enXco – the American arm of the French EDF Energies Nouvelles Company. The 70 2.05 MW REpower MM92 turbinesare intended for a wind farm project in the West Coast market for delivery in mid-2011. REpower and …

How communities can establish wind plants

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Excerpt: An emerging group of wind-farm developers are focusing on midsized projects and in places that traditional, large-scale developers are overlooking. These community wind projects, ranging from 5 to 80 MW, are cropping up in part due to recent financial incentives and guidance from firms such as OwnE …

General Electric recieves $1.4 billion wind turbine contract

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Excerpt: GE announced earlier this month that it received a $1.4 billion contract from independent power producer Caithness Energy to supply wind turbines and provide services for an 845-megawatt (MW) wind farm project to be located in Oregon. The wind farm, called Shepherds Flat, has received the majority o …

Wind-to-H2 plant more efficiency with multilingual controls

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Excerpt: In large facilities such as water treatment and power plants, it’s common to find many different control systems on a range of equipment. The simple programmable logic controllers frequently encountered can operate the equipment, but offer little additional capability. Most vendors pay little a …

Scanning Spot Laser Sensor Speeds Welding of Wind Towers

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Excerpt: A new, scanning-spot laser sensor designed to automate and speed the manufacture of wind towers and other structures containing metal of different thickness has been launched by Meta Vision Systems. Designated DLS200, the sensor is produced at the company's factory in Eynsham, Oxfordshire. The th …

The Gearbox Standard for Windturbines gets an Upgrade

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Excerpt: The recently drafted ISO/IEC standard for wind-turbine gearboxes is significant for many reasons. First, several organizations collaborated to produce ANSI/AGMA/AWEA 6006-A03, which was adopted without change in 2005 as ISO 81400-4, an international standard. The new draft (IEC project 61400-4), exp …

Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen

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Excerpt: The highly-anticipated United Nations climate change conference kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, today with countries issuing urgent calls for action to curb global warming. Over 15,000 people, including government officials and representatives from the private sector, environmental organizatio …

Community College Soon to Generate Wind Workers

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Excerpt: There’s good news and bad news in the wind industry. The bad news is that some of its jobs are physically demanding, such as climbing a 180-ft tower in winter to nurse an ailing drivetrain. A director at a support company familiar with the industry’s working conditions says the turnover for the …

Variable Transformer Frequency Connects Unruly Grids

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Excerpt: Four separate electrical grids cover the U.S. and Canada. Most are synchronous (same frequency and phase) so they can be connected by direct transmission lines. They are all busy places but the Eastern Seaboard is perhaps more so because of large population concentrations, such as New York City. …

Encoders Give Turbine Controls More Data

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Excerpt: To improve the efficiency of large turbines, many operators have turned to a rather small, 58-mm dia. absolute encoder from Denmark’s Leine&Linde. The Model 500 series of Incremental and absolute encoders provide speed and positioning  feedback to controls in nacelles. Siemens wind turbines, …