Chilean president Michele Bachelet announced last week that his country will be doubling its clean energy generation by 2010.

The country plans to accomplish this goal with seven new wind power projects totaling 850 MW, a 500-kW solar farm and a 10-MW solar thermal plant.  Exact timelines for each of the wind farms weren't made available, but the solar farm should be operating by 2010, while the solar thermal plant will take until 2012 to complete.

In addition to this slew of renewable energy projects, Bachelet said the country will also be creating a center for renewable energy that will research potential renewable energy opportunities and promote efficiency throughout the country.

It seems South America is not to be overlooked when it comes to large clean energy projects.  Chile's neighbor Argentina has also made renewable energy headlines with a plan for the world's largest wind park.  The 700-turbine park will be located in Patagonia and will have an installed capacity of between 600 and 900 MW.

via Treehugger

There is a lot of potential energy to be gathered from the high plains of the upper midwest United States. A look at the United States Department of Energy's 50-Meter Wind Resource Map shows much of the Dakotas and Nebraska to have desirable wind power resource potential. Big ranches and open land areas offer lots of wind power potential, but there is far less demand for it there than there is in "load centers" like Minneapolis and Chicago, further to the east.

Just as with offshore power, the question of power generation is only one of the problems that needs to be addressed. Getting the power from where it is generated to where it is needed is also part of making the new system useful. To this end, a new network of extra high-voltage (765 kV) transmission lines, called the Green Power Express is under development. It will cross portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois with 3000 miles of transmission lines to be able to provide 12,000 megawatts of power from new wind farms in the high wind areas of the upper midwest.

The infrastructure to get the power from where it can be harnessed to where it is needed is part of the current administration's energy policy.

The Green Power Express is consistent with the vision outlined by President Obama in his national energy agenda. President Obama specifically mentioned his desire "to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago." The Green Power Express will allow this goal to be met.

Development of wind power in this region needs both the wind farms which will harvest the wind to produce electricity and the grid infrastructure to be able to bring the power to the load centers where it is needed.

This is still a project very much in progress, and development and construction are going to take years before this system comes on line. The Green Power Express won't be completed until 2020 (at the earliest), depending on regulatory processes and approvals and construction timetables. But, once it is connected and in place, this grid segment and the associated wind farms will be able to provide enough power from clean sources to replace seven to nine 600 MW coal plants or nine to eleven million automobiles, with a corresponding reduction of 34 million matric tons of carbon emissions.

via: North American Windpower