YOUR TAX MONEY THROWN TO THE WIND BY CUYAHOGA COUNTY COMMISSIONERS?

Cuyahoga County has issued RFQ 8382 for a so called “Feasability Study concerning Lake Eire Wind Energy Center”. See County site here [1]. Responses are due April 23. 2007 The "Center" is not a center as in a building, but an offshore installation of turbines.

Has anyone seen any advertising for this RFQ? There was a meeting held on March 28 which, unfortunately, I could not attend. Was this RFQ in the Dodge Reports [2]? If it wasn't, this RFQ is definitely bogus. I searched Dodge quickly and found nothing.

Although Mr. Rosenberg was not on the list of :”task force” members voted on and approved by the Commissioners, Mr. Rosenberg (GE Marketing) is back on this list presented at the March 28th, 2007 meeting.

You can see further information about the meeting here [1]

I don’t believe that this RFQ has been adequately advertised because there were no international turbine manufactures/ developers represented on the list of attendees – correct me if there was one. I don’t like taxpayer money going out on a bogus inadequately advertised RFQ. It is worth noting that in the :”task forces” original report released a month ago – the “task force” identified only one company who expressed any interest in offshore wind – French EnXco. The following material is from page 22 of the County publication Building a New Energy Future available as a PDF on the County Development web site here [1] The list of firms was originally in a table so it is a little scrambled here. The point is that only one company was identified as having any interest in offshore wind, yet the County is determined to proceed with water wind rather than land wind. Something seems amiss.

Table 2: Major Wind Farm Developers

Major Wind Farm Developers Offshore Experience & Interest

John Deere Credit/Suzlon/FPL

(considering Long Island project, USA) Not interested

Babcock and Brown Recommend contact

Have a pilot offshore project, but not

interested in third party offshore

EnXco

Offshore development is an emphasis

area for the company and it has

expressed interest in our project

European developers, various Not contacted

FPL

Offshore development in process in Long

Island

Goldman Sachs (Horizon) May be interested

Outland Renewable Energy

No offshore experience; not interested in

offshore at this time

Second Wind Not contacted

Shell

Have a pilot offshore project, but not

interested in third party offshore

I do compliment the County for getting the above material up on their web site – now if we can get the Cleveland Foundation to do the same that would also help drive open networking.