Distributed Wind Energy

What is Distributed Wind Energy?

The vast majority of the growth in wind energy production in the past 20 years has occurred in so-called utility-scale wind projects - massive windmills in large fields producing huge amounts of electricity sold directly to utilities and other large-scale electricity buyers. Until Now.

SHINE has begun developing projects that produce wind energy on location. Unlike traditional wind farms, which produce power that has to be transmitted over high voltage power lines for tens or hundreds (or even thousands) of miles, our projects produce wind energy right where our commercial and industrial customers use the electricity - also known as distributed wind energy projects.

Combining Wind and Solar

One of the major criticisms of wind and solar energy is that the resources are intermittent and seasonally variable. One little known solution to the problem is to combine wind turbines and solar panels on the same project. “Wind resource tends to complement solar resource,” says Sarah Kurtz of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In many locations, the wind resource is higher in the months where the solar resource is lower.