Weather Guard Lightning Tech

States Calculate Onshore Wind Opportunities
In September, when some farmers and homeowners in St. Joseph County in north-central Indiana received letters from German-based UKA Group about the company’s interest in developing a new wind farm, it wasn’t necessarily welcome news. A handful of the letter recipients took to social media to state their opposition. But for the western edge of neighboring state Ohio, wind has provided a significant economic boost for small communities.
Sparsely-populated Paulding County Ohio is home to fewer than 19,000 residents, three utility-scale wind farms, and one-and-a-half solar farms.
Each year from 2015-2020, the county saw roughly $2.5 million in “pilot payments,” pre-tax investments the county negotiated to be paid prior to the project’s completion. (More money was to be paid out once all of the turbines came online.) In 2020, Jerry Zielke, then Paulding County’s economic development director, told Ohio reporter Rod Hissong the new wind farm has been “a really really great opportunity for us and our community financially and it really has helped our economy here in Paulding County.”
Local media chronicled the process, explaining how the money generated was spent, invested, and shared in a variety of ways – including $120,000 in annual scholarships for local students.
Wayne Trace schools were an obvious beneficiary. According to the Spectrum article, “Wayne Trace Superintendent Ben Winans said since the school started receiving wind farm money in 2013 they’ve hired 18 new teachers. ” Winans also noted that the GAP closing – getting lower-performing students to achieve at higher levels – “improved from an ‘f’ to an ‘A,’ ” he told SpectrumOne.
Since then, Paulding County’s new economic development director, Tim Copsey, has increased the county’s income by negotiating to bring two solar farms to the area. Timber Road Solar Farm has been supplying local farmers with a “drought resistant form of income” since it came online in 2023.

Image credit: EDP and Timber Road Solar Farm (Ohio map) and Google Maps (Indiana map inset, below)
Will Indiana WElcome a New Wind Farm?

It may be an uphill battle for the UKA wind farm.
St. Joseph County recently enacted an ordinance to deter solar power generation in the county. But, the state already generates 3,368 MW – more than three times what Ohio’s wind farms generate – and another 302 MW are under construction, according to the US DOE and American Clean Power.
And it’s not a new development – according to the Indiana Office of Energy Development, wind energy has been part of the state’s fuel mix since 2006.
In Illinois, Indiana’s neighbor to the west, 7665 MW, or about 12% of the state’s energy, is derived from wind.
Will Indiana continue to do as other states do – including its neighbors, and other farming states like Iowa, and even oil-rich Texas – and sell wind power to fuel income for their state and county budgets? Time will tell, and we’ll be watching as things develop.
You also might be interested in: New Jersey’s Electricity Rate Crisis is a Perfect Storm for Wind Energy
For regular updates on wind and other renewable development projects, technologies, and news, subscribe to the Uptime Tech News newsletter and tune in to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
https://weatherguardwind.com/states-calculate-onshore-wind-opportunities/
Renewable Energy
CDC Investigates Offshore Wind in the US
Weather Guard Lightning Tech

CDC Investigates Offshore Wind in the US
The CDC is investigating offshore wind farms and Virginia Wind has paused blade installations, while the rest of the world installs and benefits from offshore wind.
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There’s trouble brewing off America’s Atlantic coast. But it’s not coming from beneath the waves.
A few weeks ago, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JUNIOR issued unusual marching orders. He directed the CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL to investigate offshore wind farms. The reason? Alleged threats to whales and fishing businesses.
The investigation would focus on electromagnetic frequencies from undersea cables. Wind proponents say these frequencies are harmless. But KENNEDY had his concerns.
KENNEDY met personally with National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health director JOHN HOWARD. He provided a list of specific experts to contact. The mission: complete the investigation within two months.
Now, you might wonder why a health secretary would suddenly become concerned about wind turbines.
KENNEDY, once a prominent environmental lawyer, fought for years against a wind project off the coast of MASSACHUSETTS. That project just happened to be near the Kenendy family’s compound. During the twenty twenty-four presidential campaign, he called offshore wind quote “a catastrophe.”
If you haven’t heard, the US administration has halted billions of dollars worth of offshore wind projects.
But here’s what the administration didn’t mention.
Wildlife veterinarian JENNIFER BLOODGOOD performs whale necropsies for NEW YORK STATE and CORNELL WILDLIFE HEALTH LAB. In her experience, about half the humpback whales in good enough condition to examine show signs of vessel strikes or human interaction. The minke whales? They’re dying from a common infection called brucella [brew-SELL-uh].
“There is currently no evidence that wind energy is influencing whale strandings,” BLOODGOOD reports.
Three active mortality events are happening for whales in the Atlantic. But these events involve clusters of deaths that experts consider unusual for reasons that have nothing to do with turbines. The scientific consensus is clear: no evidence links wind farms to whale deaths.
BLOODGOOD has even examined dolphin ear bones under microscopes and CT scans, looking for trauma from surveying sound waves. She found nothing.
“When a whale strands, there’s a huge effort that goes into responding and figuring out why it died,” she explains. “Many people’s job is to go out and figure out what’s happening.”
While AMERICA retreats from offshore wind, CHINA is doubling down. The nation aims to add at least one hundred twenty gigawatts of new wind power capacity annually from twenty twenty-six to twenty thirty. That’s more than twice AMERICA’s goal from twenty twenty.
CHINA’s total installed wind power capacity targets one point three terawatts by twenty thirty and at least two terawatts by twenty thirty-five.
At DOMINION ENERGY’s Virginia wind project, there’s a different kind of delay. The CHARYBDIS [kuh-RIB-dis], a massive twenty-three-thousand-ton ship that took five years and seven hundred million dollars to build, sits at the PORTSMOUTH MARINE TERMINAL. It can’t begin installing turbine blades yet. Quality assurance items need addressing.
The one hundred seventy-six turbine project off the coast of VIRGINIA BEACH would power six hundred sixty thousand homes. Its cost has risen to eleven point two billion dollars, up from nine point eight billion, partly due to tariffs.
So while AMERICA investigates phantom threats, the CHARYBDIS waits at the dock. CHINA races ahead with ambitious targets. And whales continue dying from boat strikes and fishing gear entanglement, just as they have for decades.
The US administration canceled funding for two programs that used aerial surveys and underwater listening devices to track whale populations. The very programs that could definitively show what’s really happening to these magnificent creatures.
https://weatherguardwind.com/cdc-investigates-offshore/
Renewable Energy
Within Christianity, the Battle Rages On
As we all know, there has been a battle being fought for hundreds of years between the Christians who follow the teachings of Jesus and the hateful warmonger hypocrites. Yet seldom has this been expressed any more beautifully than what Rev. Benjamin Cremer wrote at the left.
Renewable Energy
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