A couple interesting items about wind in Germany from Paul Gipe have come across my e-mail this week.

1) Most Wind Development in Germany (the world's leader in renewables) has been in small clusters of 10 MW and less:

In December 2004, Germans installed 402 MW. Of that only 56 MW or 14% was greater than 10 MW. In otherwords, 86% of installed capacity in December was less than 10 MW. What can you read into this? Most importantly that the stunning development of wind energy has been done in small clusters. We've been saying this based on physical observation but the stats show it as well. In December the biggest project was eleven 2 MW turbines or 22 MW in the state of Brandenburg--near Berlin. Wow. There have been bigger projects and some turbines have been added in small groups to existing projects so that the cumulative size of the project is greater than 10 MW. Nevertheless, a large part of the 16,000 MW in Germany is in small clusters.

--Neue Energie, 02/2005, seite 104

2) The German Renewables market is BIG.
German Renewables Near 10% of Supply

In 2004 renewable sources of energy generated 55.9 TWh, or 9.3% of electricity consumption. This was up from 7.9% in 2003. Last year for the first time wind generation exceeded generation from hydroelectric plants.

Germany has now taken the lead in photovoltaics from Japan. Last year Germany installed 300 MW of solar photovoltaics, Japan 280 MW.

Overall Germans invested 6.5 billion Euros renewable energy in 2004: 1.5 billion Euros in photovoltaics, 2.4 billion Euros in wind energy, and nearly one billion Euros in biomass plants.

A recent study by DENA, the German Energy Agency, says that it is possible to integrate 20% of German electricity supplies with wind energy between 2015 and 2020.The study estimated that the cost of integration would average one Euro per household. At present the study is available only in German.

In other news, the German association for nature protection (BUND), an affiliate of Friends of the Earth, has launched a photo contest for the most scenic wind turbine, old and new. The environmental group, long an advocate of renewable energy, launched the photo contest on February 16, the day the Kyoto protocol went in to effect.

–from the 24 February, 2005 issue of BWE’s Wind News