Wind turbine, Saint Brais, Jura, Switzerland (photo: ©2010, Suisse Eole)
Geneva, Switzerland (Geneva Lunch) - New wind turbines at Saint-Brais, canton Jura, will raise Switzerland’s total annual renewable energy power production to 17.5 MW, according to Suisse Eole, the Swiss wind energy promotion association. Switzerland has a limited number of wind turbines, but the Jura wind park is the first in the country to be financed by a broad citizen base: some 600 private investors are behind the two 2 MW turbines. Suisse Eole predicts an increase of 200 MW of power by 2015.
By 2030 wind farming in Switzerland could provide 2.5 percent of the national electricity supply, and by 2050 that figure will jump to 7 percent, the group says.
The figures show the promise of wind production in Switzerland, although newly published international figures indicate that Switzerland is unlikely to match some other European countries’ adoption of wind power.
Power has been restored to much of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil after the two cities experienced four hours of electrical blackout. The power outage, apparently caused by transmission problems at a hydroelectrical station at the Itaipu dam, also briefly affected neighbouring Paraguay and, for longer, nine of Brazil’s 27 states. MCNBC reports that the dam is the world’s second largest, after China’s Three Gorges dam. The blackout is raising concerns about the country’s management of its electricity infrastructure, with recent accusations that earlier accusations that smaller blackouts have been caused by hackers, and with worries that power problems could be a problem in the runup to the 2016 Olympic Games.
Links to other sites: BrazzilMag, MSNBC, Shanghai Daily
