News and notes - wind, grids, lists and kite powered ships

News and notes from the past few days:

Acciona opens first wind turbine facility in U.S.: Acciona, the Spanish utility, has been making a strong U.S. push via Acciona Energy North America, especially in the solar, geothermal and wind segments. Given the current lack of turbines, it makes sense for Acciona to ensure stable supply for its own U.S. wind push, as well as offering turbines for other companies (given wind’s current growth rate of 45% annually).

Ensuring future reliability of the North-American power grid: The state of the U.S. electricity transmission grid could prove a significant deterrent to any domestic renewable energy strategy. The current grid is already stretched to the point of breaking, and the geographic remoteness of some power from solar, wind, ocean, etc. will require extensive new investment in grid upgrades and innovation. A sobering October study from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation points to a multitude of challenges in the future: limited long-term capacity, aging workforce, and lagging transmission build-out. Investors, executives and policy planners will all need to focus on this area in the future. The actual study is here. Meanwhile, you can get more on the investment perspective here at AltEnergyStocks.com.

Smart Grid Consortium to Develop Smart Grid City: More smart grid news. In this case, Xcel Energy is looking for a city of 100,000 residents to serve as a testbed for smart grid technologies. And, as Green Car Congress points out in the headline – plug-in vehicles with Vehicle to Grid technology (i.e. transferring energy from electric vehicles to the grid) as storage will be part of the proposed test project.

Do Something for the Glacial Good http: Apparently, I’m posting every list I come across now. Still, this list from Absolut Vodka of all things, is perhaps more noteworthy for the source than the actual contents. But the site itself is fun enough to play around in for a few minutes.

“Huh, it Works” says Captain of First Kite Powered Commercial Ship: If the post on new wind technologies a few days back interested you, here’s some additional information on the kite powered ship.