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The Greening of IT
266 How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment

At present, few grid systems have penetration of wind energy above
5 percent: Denmark (values over 18 percent), Spain and Portugal (values
over 9 percent), and Germany and the Republic of Ireland (values over
6 percent). The Danish grid is heavily interconnected to the European
electrical grid, and it has solved grid management problems by export-
ing almost half of its wind power to Norway. The correlation between
electricity export and wind power production is very strong.
Denmark has active plans to increase the percentage of power gener-
ated to more than 50 percent. A study commissioned by the state of
Minnesota considered penetration of up to 25 percent and concluded
that integration issues would be manageable and have incremental costs
of less than one-half cent ($0.0045) per KWH.
ESB National Grid, Ireland’s electric utility, in a 2004 study con-
cluded that to meet the renewable energy targets set by the EU in 2001
would “increase electricity generation costs by a modest 15%.”
Good selection of a wind turbine site is critical to economic develop-
ment of wind power. Aside from the availability of wind itself, other fac-
tors include the availability of transmission lines, value of energy to be
ptg
produced, cost of land acquisition, land use considerations, and environ-
mental impact of construction and operations. Off-shore locations might
offset their higher construction cost with higher annual load factors,
thereby reducing cost of energy produced. Wind farm designers use spe-
cialized wind energy software applications to evaluate the impact of
these issues on a given wind farm design.

Offshore Windfarms
On December 21, 2007, Q7, a 120 MW offshore wind farm with a
construction budget of €383 million, exported first power to the Dutch
grid, which was a milestone for the offshore wind industry. Q7 was the
first offshore wind farm to be financed by a nonrecourse loan (project
finance). The project comprised of 60 2 MW V80 Vestas machines and
features monopile foundation to a depth of between 18–23 meters at a
distance of about 23 km off the Dutch coast.

Utilization of Wind Power
Many thousands of wind turbines now operate with a total capacity of
73,904 MW, of which wind power in Europe accounts for 65 percent
(2006). Wind power was the fastest-growing energy source at the end of