“Each and every day I have to go out and do battle with the sun that comes up in the east until it sets in the west,” said Dave Tharp of Palouse, Wash.

“Every day, that blasted sun comes up and coats my solar electric panels with sunshine. That sunshine then makes electricity that I have to figure out a way to use up. One way or another, I have to use the electricity that the sun gives me or the energy that falls on my roof just goes to waste,” complained Tharp who, with wife Sharon, installed the solar panels recently. “I just can’t seem to keep the panels clear of the stuff,” Tharp said.

“It seems to come in waves,” Tharp said. “Sometimes it starts washing across my property as early as 5 in the morning and sometimes as late as 8, but you can pretty much count on it being there every day until the evening, then WHAM, next day, here it comes again. The mess seems to be somehow associated with light.”

According to Sharon Tharp, “The same sun that is wreaking havoc by reducing our energy bills also causes my plants to grow and even sometimes causes moisture to rise into the air and then rain on us so that the plants grow even more. Sometimes I have to go out and pick vegetables and trim flowers just to keep them under control. I really wish there was a way to make it stop. I just wish we could figure out a way to plug the solar leak that seems to reappear from the sky each and every morning.”

Both Tharps lament the damage the sun has done to their lives by making things grow, warming their south-facing home, and giving them electricity to use as they see fit.

Mike Carlton, a nearby neighbor, has a similar problem.

“Not only do I have the same problem as the Tharps, but I have an even bigger ecological disaster. Nearly every day the wind washes across my property and coats everything as far as the eye can see. Most of the time it’s pretty invisible, but then other times it bends over the wheat and barley stems, making them look like the entire planet is covered with this stuff. The wind blows so much up here that the trees are bent over in one direction” Carlton said.” I knew there was a problem when I bought the place, but I figured I could get a handle on the cleanup.”

In an effort to stem the tide of wind pollution, Mike put up a wind turbine (or a “wind containment boom” as he calls it) about three years ago.

“I hoped it would slow down the wind a bit, but it didn’t,” Carlton said. “The only thing it did was to start my electric meter spinning backwards. Go figure. I guess that’s the law of unintended consequences for you. Now, not only do I have wind pollution, but I’ve got an electricity spill to deal with as well. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and find that the spill overnight has covered my entire monthly electric bill. I’ve had such a huge electricity spill that for the last three years I’ve ended up putting a pretty large amount back into the utility’s power grid so they can help me get rid of the stuff. You’d think that someone would develop some sort of leak-proof 
cap that would stop this mess.”

“What really makes me mad,” said Carlton, “is having to look out on the horizon and see the damage the wind and the sun are doing to the planet. Both the Tharps and I are doing our best to clean up this mess that will eventually kill us all, but many people don’t seem to realize it’s there. It’s amazing. Sometimes I wish I could be like them and just send off a check every month and stop worrying about the spills so much. I know there are other people around who share our concerns — these spills seem to be washing onto nearly everyone’s property — but there are only a few people around involved in the cleanup.”
Both Carlton and the Tharps are a bit thankful when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing.

“It is a bit of a relief to have night occasionally and to have the wind stop,” sighed Dave Tharp.

news release courtesy of Mike Carlton; reproduced here with Mike’s permission. Thanks, man!

China is set to become the world’s third largest wind power producer in 2009, state media reported, as the Asian giant seeks various ways to expand energy supply to power its economic boom.

The country’s installed wind power capacity will reach 20 gigawatts this year, said Shi Lishan, vice director of the National Energy Administration’s New Energy Department, the Xinhua news agency said Wednesday.

That will lift China to surpass Spain and become the world’s third biggest wind power producer after the United States and Germany, the report said.

The United States had 25.2 gigawatts in installed capacity of wind power in 2008, or 20.8 percent of the world’s total, compared with China’s capacity of 12.2 gigawatts, figures from the Global Wind Energy Council showed.

China has set a target of generating 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources — mainly wind and water — by 2020.

In a WSU Energy Extension news release, Terry Meade, plant manager at Energy Northwest’s Nine Mile Canyon Wind Farm, said, “The skill sets defined in the report are an important first step to help the education sector provide the specific training needs of this industry, where good fundamental skills, technical knowledge and a safe work environment are extremely important.”

Alan Hardcastle, a senior researcher at the WSU Extension Energy Program, directed the development of the standards over the past year and, with research colleagues, wrote the final report. “Industry and labor were actively engaged in this project from the beginning, and that says a great deal about the importance they attach to having a skilled workforce, including the key roles that our postsecondary education and workforce development partners need to play to support continued growth in renewable energy,” he said.

The original press release, mostly puffery, is here.

Air Bear, NYC Urban Art, from William Fuentes on Vimeo.

in a plain-spoken style, Wind Energy Basics spells out the pertinent facts without any effort to sell readers on a system that, while environmentally friendly, may not be the ideal power source for a particular individual or community. Gipe includes a thoughtful and eminently practical chapter on the technology of wind turbines, complete with a warning about scams, frauds, and flakes. Gipe is even so upfront that he lists specific brands of wind power generators to avoid.