Excellent story in the Portland Press-Herald (read it here) about the noise effect of utility-scale (1.5 megawatt) wind turbines, which have turned some pro-wind folks on Vinalhaven Island into doubters. (Note: For more details about sound from windmills, see Earle Rich’s comment after the article.) From the story:
Workers will make small modifications to the equipment [...]

(An update: A Maine contractor is about to erect his 100th wind-power windmill!)
Maine is by far the region’s leader in terrestrial wind farms, and they want to be the leader in offshore wind, too. A state task force has announced (read the short story here) three sites where it can run more tests, to determine [...]

Tux Turkel of the Portland Press-Herald, who has (a) the second-best byline in New England* and (b) a long history of reporting intelligently about alternative energy in Maine, writes a good piece in the Sunday paper about one town’s decision to place restrictive zoning on wind power after a few turbines had gone up. This [...]

The Portland Press-Herald has a story (read it here) about Vinalhaven island, not too far from Acadia National Park, and how it has built two wind turbines totaling 1.5 megawatts that provide all its electricity, plus a surplus which is sold to the grid. It’s a good, comprehensive story - the sort of thing that [...]

The 99-megawatt ridgeline wind farm heading for Dixville Notch in Coos County is probably going to be the last big wind farm in New Hampshire for a while (assuming it gets final federal approval, which it probably will), since it uses up the spare grid connection to the North Country, which is where all our [...]

There are legitimate concerns about wind farms (cost effectiveness, best way to reduce bat mortality), but there are also some really goofy ones - like the fear that they will suck so much energy out of the atmosphere that they’ll alter weather, or even the rotation of the Earth!
But here’s a concern about a really [...]

The state’s first wind farm got officially dedicated last Friday - I have been a reporter long enough to know to skip the speeches by politicians, which is why I previewed its opening last month instead.

The 99-megawatt wind farm proposed for a long ridgeline north of Berlin has gotten approval from the state, reports in the Concord Monitor. Clearing could begin this fall and construction next spring. It will be roughly four times the size of Lempster Mountain Wind (shown above), the state’s only wind farm, and will have annual power output roughly equivalent to two of the hydropower dams on the Merrimack River.

It will also pretty much use up all the spare capacity in the power grid North of the Notches, making it tougher for biomass power plants to get future approval. However, as New Hampshire Business Review reports, the proposal to bring a massive, 1,200-MW line down through the state to carry HydroQuebec power, may solve that problem.

Foster’s Daily Democrat, the daily newspaper in Dover, NH, has a story about the Kittery, Maine, dump cancelling a $191,000 wind turbine because it generated just 15 percent of the projected power (it’s a 50KW system). This quote from Town Manager Jon Carter shows why small-scale wind power is more difficult than it seems when [...]

SORT-OF-RELATED ITEM: Here’s a story about hearings of health concerns from people living near the Mars Hill wind farm in Maine, due (it seems) to audible and low-frequency noise disrupting sleep and/or causing other stress.

Researchers say turning off wind farms in low winds would greatly reduce the number of bats killed by the spinning blades, [...]

The latest attempt to build a wind farm in New Hampshire, a 99-megawatt proposal sprawling across a long ridgeline in Coos County, has plenty of fans and plenty of haters, as this Union-Leader story about the final public hearing makes clear. It’s a boon to a poor region or a boondoggle for the environment, depending [...]

Those big, 1.5-megawatt wind turbines are becoming - well, if not commonplace, at least less rare. Placing a single turbine isn’t really news any more. Except in Portsmouth, R.I., I think, where one has just been erected next to the high school. The interesting thing is that the $2.92 million deal was paid for by the town, which will be using most of the power itself. It will provide about two-thirds of the annual electricity for municipal buildings, at a savings of “over $100,000″ a year.

Mass High Tech has a story about a Portsmouth-based start-up called Highest Wind (it’s so young that it’s still using friend-and-family money) that wants to make windpower using kites, which they say is viable even with winds too light and variable for windmill-type turbines. From the story:
Highest Wind’s system uses a device … tethered to [...]

Noble Environmental’s financial problems, worsened by the recession, has thrown doubt on a 33-turbine proposal (99 megawatts max) in Coos County, as the Union-Leader reports. From the story:
Peter C.L. Roth, a senior assistant attorney general for the state, filed the request to suspend the hearings, set to begin March 9, saying there was inadequate financial [...]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10075828-54.html?tag=mncol;title
Here’s another wind machine with greatly optimistic power ratings. That, along with a healthy price tag doesn’t bode well for the company’s long-term prospects.
The site has a long list of commenters on the wind machine. Most are thoughtful analysis of the specifications that serve as a guide to anyone thinking of installing any wind machine. [...]