The Joint Coordinated System Plan (JCSP’08), the first step of a transmission and generation system expansion analysis of the majority of the Eastern Interconnection, estimates the electricity sector will need more than US $80 billion in new transmission infrastructure to obtain 20% of the region’s electricity from wind energy generation.
American Electric Power operating units have signed power purchase agreements for wind energy totaling approximately 250 megawatts (MW). The power will serve customers in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. With these new agreements, AEP has contracted for 903.4 MW of wind generation capacity since 2007, when the company committed to adding 1,000 MW of renewable wind energy to its generation mix by 2011.
The Switch, a provider of megawatt-class permanent magnet generator and full-power converter packages for wind power and other new energy applications, has announced that it plans to release a new drive train technology.
Saying he needed to restore order to a broken process, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar this week announced his strategy for developing an offshore energy plan that includes renewable energy.
At the heart of the economic stimulus package making its way through Congress is the creation of jobs in renewable energy and other environmentally friendly services. But a new report released by labor organizers and environmentalists warns that those jobs must be more than green.
The U.S. Senate voted today to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The bill (H.R. 1) is the US $839 billion stimulus package that the Obama Administration has been pushing as a means to help the nation recover from the current economic situation. The bill passed by a vote of 61-37, mostly along party lines.