Wind just isn’t only the cleanest source of vitality readily available to humanity, it’s also the world’s fastest growing source of electrical strength. But the United States has been slow to adopt. A Canadian business is changing that though €“ one particular wind farm at a time.
Western Wind Power Corp (TSX.V:WND) is North America’s largest publicly traded pure wind stamina producer, currently providing 34 megawatts of wind turbine-generated electricity to the California electrical grid. Correct now, it will be the only publicly traded business in North America deriving its income exclusively from the sale of electric power produced from wind power.
With the announcement on February 14th of the successful acquisition of a 100 MW wind and solar vitality website near Barstow, California, Western Wind has an additional 1,300 MW in its pipeline of expansion sites throughout the state.
The corporation now has over $1 billion of electrical power sales agreements totaling 155 megawatts from the sale of wind energy electrical generation to two separate utilities.
Within the United States during 2007, 5,244 megawatts of generating electricity was installed by the wind power business, breaking all previous records and growing the U.S. national wind generating potential by 45%.
The new wind projects account for about 30 percent in the entire new power-producing capacity added nationally in 2007 and will energy the equivalent of 1.5 million American households annually.
American wind farms will generate an estimated 48 billion kilowatt-hours of wind stamina in 2008, just over one percent of U.S. power supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes.
California is, as might be expected, is a leader among states for installed megawatts of wind produced power with 2,439 MW of installed capability, second only to Texas.
Nancy Rader, executive director from the California Wind Vitality Association said, “I think that wind could realistically offer 20% with the state’s electric power needs 13 years from now “ up from less than 2% these days, which would be aboutಔ,000 MW of ability.”
Western Wind Energy is perfectly positioned to capture a huge piece of that evolving capacity for a single simple reason: the management team has 24 years of continuous wind installation operating experience – a lot more than any other corporation within the industry.
The secret to creating profitable wind installations is inside siting on the turbines. Meteorologist Rich Simon, a consultant to Western Wind, has chosen the locations of over 40,0Ǡ turbines, or 10,000 MW of generating potential around the world. He is a single on the industry’s few “go-to” guys, responsible for siting 10% on the world’s turbine capability since 1977.
As wind resource areas vary, so does the cost of generation. A wind farm operating in a 15 mph yearly average wind speed may perhaps have total costs of 6.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. That same wind farm, operation in a 20 mph yearly average wind speed, may well have total fees of only 4.9 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Like most major forms of electrical power generation, wind electricity is capital intensive. In economic terms, wind electricity has an very low marginal price and a high proportion of up-front charges. The power consumption for generating, installing, operating and eventually decommissioning a wind turbine is typically earned back within three months of operation.
At a robust wind location within the state of California, for each a person megawatt set up, or
US$2 million capital invested, $400,000 is created annually in vitality sales with a further $80,000 in annual federal tax credits (Production Tax Credit or PTC).
The Senate Finance Committee last month included an extension in the expiring tax credits for wind, solar, and other renewable strength technologies as part of its economic stimulus package now working its way through Congress.
Western Wind is not content to remain a “wind-only” corporation, and recently announced a cooperative agreement with Solon America Corporation to develop five to 40 megawatts of photovoltaic – solar power projects in California and an extra 5 – 40 megawatts of photovoltaic – solar stamina projects in Ontario, Canada.
Solon America could be the subsidiary of $1.2 billion German solar stamina equipment manufacturer Solon A.G.
The corporation was founded in 1998 by CEO Jeff Ciachurski, who has negotiated a lot more than 200MW of off-take agreements and raised more than $50 million to acquire real estate and develop the company’s projects.
His objective?
“To grow Western Wind Energy into a mid-size wind developer and operator having a market capitalization of between US $1 billion and US $4 billion.â
Given the company’s success to date, that doesnât come across as just many wind.
