Forgive the horrible historical reference in the title— and I mean no disrespect to the UK— but I couldn't help but instill a bit of bad humor in my weekly forays into the blogging world. Anyways, back to the mother ship here.

The UK's coastal areas could see a major upgrade in renewable energy production. Though the proposals are just, well, proposals at this juncture, the UK government is serious about bolstering it's wind power production by 2020. Offshore wind farms could begin dotting the landscape like seashells by the seashore, with an estimated 33 GW of wind energy powering nearly 25 million homes.

The move is bold. It's plausible, considering that there are ample wind resources on UK shorelines, and government plans to target a 20 percent renewable energy production by 2020 means that they could well be on their way to setting the global bar for wind power.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman recently announced that DOE has selected the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Partnership in Massachusetts, and the Lone Star Wind Alliance in Texas, to each receive up to $2 million in test equipment to develop large-scale wind blade test facilities, accelerating the commercial availability of wind energy. They have been selected to negotiate cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) to design, build, and operate new facilities to test the next generation of wind turbine blades.

"These two testing facilities represent an important next step in the expansion of competitiveness of the U.S. domestic wind energy industry," Secretary Bodman said, while hosting a press conference with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. "We congratulate Massachusetts and Texas for their outstanding proposals and we believe this work will build upon the Administration's goal of prompting states to research, develop and deploy more clean energy technologies."

The states' consortia were selected to enter into agreements with DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to build facilities to test large wind blades, with an ultimate goal of testing blades up to 330 ft. (100m) in length. NREL will work with states to provide equipment and technical assistance for development and operation. This capability will help the rapidly growing wind industry achieve the President's vision that wind energy has the potential to supply up to 20 percent of the electricity consumption of the United States.

Including the DOE investment, total project costs of each test facility will total approximately $20 million. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Partnership has pledged $13 million in grants and loans for construction and startup costs, and has established reserve funding of $5 million for future blade design research and testing. The Lone Star Wind Alliance has pledged approximately $18 million from state and private sources for initial capital and startup costs.

The Lone Star Wind Alliance proposes to build a test facility in Ingleside, Texas. This Alliance includes: the University of Houston; the Texas General Land Office; Texas Workforce Commission; Texas State Energy Conservation Office; Texas A&M University; Texas Tech University; University of Texas-Austin; West Texas A&M University; Montana State University; Stanford University; New Mexico State University; Old Dominion University; the Houston Advanced Research Center; BP; DOW; Huntsman; and Shell Wind.

Blade testing is required to meet wind turbine design standards, reduce machine cost, and reduce the technical and financial risk of deploying mass-produced wind turbine models. Rapid growth in wind turbine size over the past two decades has outgrown the existing capabilities of the DOE-NREL's National Wind Technology Center, which operates the only blade test facility in North America capable of performing full-scale testing of megawatt-scale wind turbine blades.

For more information on these new testing facilities, check out the DOE press release.

GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of General Electric, recently announced that it is expanding its wind energy portfolio by agreeing to invest in a 209-megawatt project under construction by Airtricity Inc. in West Texas. The announcement was made earlier this month at Universal Studios California at GE's "Green is Universal" exhibition, a celebration of GE customers' improvements in operating and environmental performance.

GE Energy Financial Services and a subsidiary of Wachovia Corp. are each investing in a $300 million Roscoe Wind Farm in Mitchell, Nolan and Scurry counties. Construction of the Roscoe project began in March and is scheduled for completion by the end of this year in Roscoe, Texas, 45 miles southwest of Abilene in a cotton farming area. The Roscoe Wind Farm, the third wind project successfully developed by Airtricity in the United States, all in Texas. It will employ 209 one-megawatt Mitsubishi WTG turbines, with power sold to TXU Wholesale, a subsidiary of TXU Corp., under a five year contract.

The wind farm will annually produce power sufficient for 60,000 homes and will avoid 375,000 tons a year in greenhouse gas emissions, compared to equivalent fossil fuel generation. The project supports GE's ecomagination efforts by helping Texas, which leads all US states in installed wind power capacity, meet its renewable energy requirement to produce 5,880 megawatts of its power from renewable sources by 2015. Ecomagination is GE's initiative to help its customers meet their environmental challenges while expanding its own portfolio of cleaner energy products.

"With strong wind resources, West Texas is an attractive site for new wind farm development," said Kevin Walsh, Managing Director and leader of renewable energy at GE Energy Financial Services. "As we strive to grow our renewable energy holdings to $4 billion by 2010, we will continue to invest in quality wind projects, such as Roscoe, that take advantage not only of strong winds, but of strong partnerships with wind energy leaders such as Airtricity."

For more information, visit the GE Energy Financial Services site.