Iowa Now Second Largest Wind Producer

The Wall Street Journal reports that Iowa has become the second largest producer of wind power in the U.S.. Tax breaks, cost recovery assurance and few zoning regulations for wind turbines are cited as reasons for the ranking.

At the end of the second quarter of 2009, Iowa had 3,043 megawatts of total wind capacity, compared with 8,361 megawatts in Texas and 2,787 megawatts in California, according to the wind-energy association. The article continues by saying that Iowa is flat landscape and lies in an enviable position on the grid - close to load centers like Chicago and Milwaukee.

Power transmission is now the road block to continued success in Iowa. Roya Stanley, Director of the Iowa Office of Energy Independence said "While we still have some room on the grid in the state, it will be critical to have agreement regionally for further transmission build-out."

The WSJ also has a very interesting article on Five Technologies that Could Change the Energy Picture. It discusses space-based solar power, advanced car batteries, utility storage, carbon capture and storage, and next-generation biofuels.

Wind Energy

For anyone that has read my blog for a while, you will know that I have a side interest in Wind Energy. Power and renewable energy sources are obviously huge issues for the data center industry and since I live in one of the top wind energy producing states, it has always been of interest to me. Tonight I read two lines from an article about a Berkshire Hathaway meeting that piqued my interest.

"Berkshire is investing heavily on wind energy, especially in Iowa. "We'll continue to be a leader" in wind power, Buffett said. They'll also invest in additional utility businesses."

Berkshire lists MidAmerican Energy Holdings, based in Des Moines, IA as a subsidiary company. MidAmerican has some large wind projects in Iowa. As much as wind power is picking up in popularity around the world, I have to wonder what projects (specifically) Bershire is investing in.

After reading the above quote I turned on the TV (Science Channel of course) and watched one of those "future world" type programs. One of the segments was on a huge wind farm in Denmark that was producing double-digit megawatts of electricity. I 'think' they were referring to the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Co-operative, off the coast of Amager, Denmark. I of course proceeded straight to online maps and Google Earth to check it out.

• You can see the line of wind turbines from Google Earth / Maps
• Google Earth also noted a few Panoramio photos (here and here, and here)
  
• Microsoft Live Maps has a nice bird's eye view of the turbines

An October 2008 article at Treehugger has an aritcle on the wind farm - stating that it will have 207 Megawatts by 2010.

Exiting times for Wind power as a renewable energy!

UPDATE: Thanks Sune Christesen for a link to Offshore Wind Farms - complete with a Google Earth Placemark collection!

Links for June 24, 2008

As I mentioned a few days back, this is one busy week! Here is a wrap-up of some interesting links I have run across over the last few days:

• Aaron Phillips does a very nice job of summarizing the Iowa Floods and the impact on Fast Servers (now a part of Layered Tech). It echoes what I had said about the tremendous teamwork and compassion that was witnessed over the last few weeks and how this really makes a difference when experiencing an event like this.

• I ran across mashable.com (again). I really liked this site a year ago or so and my Bloglines list got so long I have neglected to go there in quite some time. It is a wonderful Web 2.0 resource though and I've also started following the author Pete Cashmore on twitter as well. I am a self-admitted information junkie, but even I am a bit overwhelmed at the content that this blog produces. Search Engine Journal recently did a very thorough review of the 70+ most useful Mashable.com posts.

• CleanTechnica.com has a write-up and video of vertical-axis wind turbines. Pretty interesting stuff....

• An IDC forecast was released last week that warns of the high cost to cool storage. The Storage Forum Blog has a nice write-up of the IDC report.

• IBM reports that it is opening Africa's first "Cloud Computing" center and a second cloud center in China.

  "The two new centers are part of IBM's expansion of its cloud computing capabilities around the world. IBM launched Europe's first Cloud Computing Center in Dublin, Ireland in March. Over the past year, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as Wuxi City of China, Sogeti, the Local Professional Services Division of Capgemini, the Vietnamese government institutions and universities, and iTricity, a computing host service company based in the Netherlands"

• IBM has also launched "Blue Cloud", a "collection of enabling technologies that is used to create cloud computing experiences for customers in data center, hosting service and other cloud environments."