The Northern Maine Community College has announced approval of a wind power technology program on its campus. The program is designed to train wind power technicians to operate, maintain and repair wind turbine generators.

Released by the 25' X 25' Alliance, The Energy Foundation and Harvesting Clean Energy, this report makes clear that community wind must be an integral part of the nation's energy strategy and lays out a set of public policies designed to grow local wind investment and ownership.

Specifically, Community Wind 101 finds:

The Minnesota Department of Commerce, Office of Energy Security has a Rural Wind Energy Development Revolving Loan Fund.    The purpose of the program is to provide financial assistance to owners of eligible community-based wind energy projects for wind studies and transmission interconnection studies.

Thank you to all of our partners and volunteers for making the Wind Energy Center at the Minnesota State Fair a great success! Some highlights from this year:

• Trying out different careers in the wind energy industry.
• Climbing inside a replica turbine tower section and seeing a video of what it's like to be inside a real wind turbine.
• Getting your wind energy questions answered by an expert.
• Pickicking up a wind energy bookmark to take home.
• Experimenting with blade design and participating in other fun activities in the Renewable Energy Kid's Corral.
• Learning about home- and farm-scale wind turbines.

We had over 100 volunteers and more than 350,000 visitors during the twelve days of the fair. Stay tuned for next year's opportunities and in the meanwhile, enjoy some photos!

Windustry has a variety of connections to the many organizations that encourage the growth and expansion of community wind energy development. Saint Francis University in Loretto, PA is one such institution. Their announcement of a new educational program which we thought might be of interest to many visitors to our website follows.

The United States Department of Agriculture ("USDA") is seeking comments from the public on its proposed strategic goals and planning priorities for climate change research, education and outreach programs.

Grant Applications are now being received for the Great Lakes Tall
Tower Wind Monitoring project. The project is funded through the U.S.
Department of Energy.

The program's scope of work requires the State of Wisconsin to use the DOE funds to award a total of two grants for: