Wind energy initiative coming to North Carolina

The U.S. Departments of the Interior and Energy have announced a $50 million strategic plan to encourage development of wind energy in offshore areas of the Mid-Atlantic -- and  it targets seven Wind Energy Areas, including offshore North Carolina, where environnmental studies and approval processes will be sped up.

 Four of those areas -- Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and 165 square miles off Virginia's coast -- will get early enviornmental reviews, reducing the time it takes to get approval of offshore wind turbine facilities, the departments said.

  In March, the departments expect to add Wind Energy Areas offshore of Massachusetts and Rhode island, and in the South Atlantic region, "namely North Carolina, this spring."

  You can read more about these initiatives at www.boemre.gov/offshore/RenewableEnergy/index.htm.

  The $50 million in research and development funding is meant to help reach the president's goal of generating 80 percent of the country's electricity from clean sources by 2035. The list includes up to $25 million over 5 years to support technology development, including innovative wind turbine design tools; up to $18 million over 3 years for environmental studies and research as well as wind market analysis; and up to $7.5 million over three years to develop the next generation of wind turbine drivetrains, a technology considered critical to produce cost-effective power from wind turbines offshore.

Meanwhile, Pete Danko at the Wedsite Earth Techling writes that a Spanish company is proposing a 15O turbine wind farm on flat farmland in the northeastern part of the state:

Much of the attention regarding wind power generation in North Carolina has been focused offshore, but the world’s biggest wind-power developer has other ideas: Iberdrola Renewables, part of the Spanish company Iberdrola Renovables, said that after two years of laying the ground work it had officially applied to build the state’s first utility-scale plant.

Iberdrola has in mind a 150-turbine, 300-megawatt capacity plant on a 20,000-acre swath of private, flat farmland in the northeast corner of the state, but it struck a cautious tone in announcing the filing of an application with the North Carolina Utilities Commission. “The filing today represents the first step of many regulatory reviews that must be completed before Iberdrola Renewables makes a final decision on the project, which could begin construction as early as late 2011,” the company said.

http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/02/wind-power-may-blow-in-north-carolina/
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