Offshore wind development is being pushed further out into deeper waters, emphasizing longer, higher-capacity transmission systems. Most newer offshore wind farms from Europe to the U.S. are looking at hundreds of kilometers of transmission lines: the U.K. Crown Estate's Round 3 allocations, interconnection systems from Germany's North Sea to the U.K.'s National Grid Western Link, and the proposed Atlantic Wind Connector in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic.

Solar Wind Energy Tower Inc. won approval from an Arizona city to develop a $1.5 billion project that would use ambient desert heat to create a draft to generate electricity, in a concrete colossus that would be the tallest structure in North America.

ABB Ltd. said a power-cable technology that allows offshore wind farms to transmit more than twice the energy of current set-ups will boost orders at the company’s power systems division in coming years.

Four energy companies are proposing an $8 billion renewable energy project that would supply Los Angeles with more than twice the power generated by the Hoover Dam.

According to the latest "Energy Infrastructure Update" report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) Office of Energy Projects, wind power provided over two-thirds (68.41 percent) of new U.S. electrical generating capacity in October 2014. Specifically, five wind farms in Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, and Texas came on line last month, accounting for 574 MW of new capacity.

Let's review some notable news headlines from the month of November.

The first round of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) programme — the UK scheme that is designed to support low-carbon generation and a capacity margin in the energy sector — has concluded. Contracts were offered to 27 renewable electricity projects with a total value of some £315 million (US$500 million), which include two offshore wind farms with a total planned capacity of more than 1.1 GW, 15 onshore wind projects and five solar projects. In total, more 2 GW of new low-carbon capacity (including renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage) could be built under the CfD scheme.

Vestas has become the first company to install 100 GW of wind turbines.

While it’s well known that corporations were some of the earliest trailblazers of large-scale renewable energy purchasing — they’ve closed over 14 gigawatts of deals in the past six years, according to tracking by Rocky Mountain Institute’s Business Renewables Center — higher education has also made impressive strides. In fact, a report released last fall showed that the top 30 renewable energy-buying universities are using around 3 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually. That’s enough to power 276,000 homes.

GE Renewable Energy and Future Wind said this week that they have signed an agreement to install the first Haliade-X 12-MW wind turbine prototype in Maasvlakte-Rotterdam this summer. The deal includes five years of testing and a 15-year full service Operation and Maintenance agreement.

Recent political changes have shaken Taiwan, and could put at risk the development and growth of its nascent offshore wind market.

Digitalization has become a worldwide focus and the race to become the global leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly competitive, with many countries, including Canada, China, and the UK releasing strategies in the last twenty months to promote the use and development of AI.

This week Siemens Gamesa said it signed its third contract in so many years with Voltalia in Brazil to supply wind turbines for wind farms the company is building.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is set to hold more auctions for offshore wind power, plugging a current gap in tenders for the next three years that the industry has said would harm turbine makers and hamper green targets.

Analysts at Huajin Securities in China said they expect newly installed capacity nationwide for 2018 to be somewhere between 21 and 22 GW, and that the wind power curtailment rate would continue to drop. Newly installed capacity for wind power is expected to continue to grow steadily over the next two years, while the proportion of the country’s total power sourced from wind is expected to continue to increase as well.

Fortune 500 brands and a range of other non-utility entities are catalyzing America’s growing demand for renewable energy by purchasing a record amount of wind power in 2018, according to a recent report by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Consumer demand combined with policy stability and low, stable prices helped wind power capacity installations rise to the third strongest quarter in the industry’s history.

Over the past year, U.S. Wind got calls “every day” to sell a lease the energy company bought for $1 million in 2015 in its push to build a wind farm off the New Jersey coast.

Sempra Renewables jointly owns all of part of seven wind farms and one battery installation in seven states. 

The first blade has been manufactured for the 714 MW offshore windfarm East Anglia One in the UK.

Details on the solar and battery storage components are still up in the air, but the wind farm itself was comfirmed to include 120 turbines manufactured by GE Renewable Energy Inc.

Global commissioning of onshore wind turbines declined 3 percent in 2018, partly due to a slowdown in India and Germany. Growth is expected to bounce back in 2019, with a 32 percent jump to 60 GW.

Unusually still weather in the upper Midwest and Great Plains in late 2018 has already taken a bite out of earnings at NextEra Energy Inc. and Avangrid Inc., which both operate large wind farms. Other wind generators have yet to report fourth-quarter results, including Pattern Energy Group Inc., TerraForm Power Inc. and Clearway Energy Inc.

India has drawn global attention since it started awarding wind power projects at record-low tariffs, spurring optimism that renewable energy could supplant the nation’s abundant coal resources in electricity generation.

Investment manager Nephila Holdings Ltd. and insurance giant Allianz SE have banded together to offer an insurance policy of sorts to wind farm developers known as a “proxy revenue swap.” It’s a technical way of saying they’re guaranteeing that revenue from a farm will fall within a certain range.

Last week Wisconsin’s Madison Gas and Electric's (MGE) said its 66-MW Saratoga Wind Farm is fully operational and delivering energy to the electric grid. MGE and Vestas – the company that built the turbines – have completed testing of the turbines and electrical systems, and the wind farm is fully online.

Offshore wind is set to provide more than 30 per cent of UK electricity by 2030 after the government today launched a landmark deal with the renewables industry.

A trailblazing wind-solar hybrid project in western Minnesota could be a preview of what’s to come as renewable developers look for new ways to bolster projects.

According to an analysis by the SUN DAY Campaign of data just released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), new solar and wind generating capacity has taken the lead over natural gas and all other energy sources for the first month of 2019.

RenewableUK highlighted last week that Great Britain’s onshore and offshore wind farms generated more electricity than any other source of power last week.

The U.S Jones Act affects the construction of U.S. offshore wind farms by limiting certain activities in U.S. waters to U.S.-registered vessels owned and operated by qualified U.S. citizens. Much of the expertise in the construction of offshore wind farms is European based. The logical mechanism for marrying European expertise with U.S. firms qualified to operate where the U.S. Jones Act applies are joint ventures. Such joint ventures must take into account the stringent U.S. citizenship requirements applicable to the ownership and operation of Jones Act vessels.

In order for wind energy power purchase agreements (PPAs) to see sustained uptake in central Europe, sellers need to take a lead in managing long-term risks including power price forecasting, covenant strength and buyer inexperience.

The offshore wind market in the is lagging behind other areas of the energy sector when it comes to embracing – and understanding – the potential of digital technologies.

Tucson Electric Power (TEP) is building a 247-MW wind farm that will help the company more than double its use of renewable energy by 2021. The company hired EDF Renewables North America to construct it in a Build and Transfer Agreement (BTA) worth approximately $370 million.

Over the past week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced multiple funding opportunities to renewable energy research including $130M for early-stage solar and $28M for wind. Further, the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium announced up to $7M in funding for offshore wind.

Yesterday, the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) unveiled the 14th edition of its Global Wind Report, which it says has been completely revamped.

Amazon.com announced today that it plans to purchase the energy produced by three new renewable energy projects as part of its long-term goal to power all Amazon Web Services (AWS) global infrastructure with renewable energy. These projects – a 91.2-MW wind farm in Donegal Ireland, a 91-MW wind farm in Bäckhammar, Sweden, and a 47-MW wind farm in Tehachapi, California – will deliver an expected 670,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of renewable energy annually.

Saudi Arabia will become a regional heavyweight in windpower by the early 2020's, according to new research.

As plans for wind farms across New England’s waters progress, fishermen continue to express concerns about the impact of the burgeoning offshore wind industry on their livelihoods.

Building solar and wind energy projects on potentially contaminated lands can be a golden opportunity, both effective and cost-effective, for developers. The 120-acre Reilly Tar & Chemical Corporation Superfund site was recently redeveloped with a utility-scale solar farm and is a prime example of the reuse potential inherent in thousands of Superfund sites, brownfields, retired power plants, and landfills.

Citing planning delays, a global renewable energy developer has canceled plans for a major wind project in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Last week, LM Wind Power said it had successfully manufactured the world’s first wind turbine blade to surpass 100 meters in length.

The wind farm will produce renewable energy credits that, combined with the company’s previous agreement, should equal 100 percent of electricity used annually at General Mill’s domestic facilities.

This week LM Wind Power, a subsidiary of GE Renewable Energy, announced its plan to recruit 300 additional employees at its wind turbine blade manufacturing site in Bergama, Turkey.

This week global energy and infrastructure group, Eversheds Sutherland, announced that it helped Ball Corporation secure two virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs) – one wind and one solar – for a total of 388 MW of new renewable energy. According to Ball, these agreements will allow the company to power 100 percent of its corporate, packaging and aerospace operations electricity load in North America with renewable energy by the end of 2021.

With more than 3,000 MW installed in Canada, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy is the market leader by cumulative installed capacity

Turns out the best place to install a small turbine in the U.S. isn’t the Plains, where winds blow the strongest, but the Northeast where the incentives are better.

British people need to fly less, drive electric cars, eat little meat and turn their home thermostats down to 19 degrees Celsius (66 Fahrenheit) in order to rein in greenhouse gases damaging the planet.

Even though there is only one small existing offshore wind farm in the Northeast, the 30-MW Block Island wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, two announcements this week highlight the growing economic importance of the region's burgeoning offshore wind industry.

This week global engineering company Emerson announced that it had formed a 3-year alliance with Vayu to combine Emerson’s Ovation automation platform with Vayu’s cloud-computing wind energy optimization technology. The new technology will optimize wind farms in the Americas, Caribbean and Europe.

How do you install a wind turbine almost the size of the Chrysler building in the open ocean? Just get a boat with deck space larger than a football field and a crane that can lift the weight of 1,100 Chevy Suburban SUVs.