From India to Italy, the Global Wind Day photo competition has now received over 1,000 entries from across the globe. “Surpassing all our expectations, we have received hundreds of stunning images portraying wind energy in new and unusual ways,” Elke Zander, Campaigns Officer for the European Wind Energy Association, said.

The photo displayed here – an intriguing juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern – was entry number 1,000!

You still have time to submit your best shot for this international competition – ‘Wind In Mind’ – and put yourself in the running to win a €1,000 Amazon voucher and for your photo to become part of the online professional photography archive www.hardrainproject.com. In addition, five runners up will get an Amazon voucher worth €250.

Long reliant on nuclear as its chief source of energy, France is having to think long and hard about its energy strategy in the face of increasing public questioning about the safety of nuclear after the Fukushima disaster and greater evidence about the potential future high financial costs of the technology. The decision by the French government late last week to award tenders to build offshore wind farms to produce 2 GW of energy suggests that wind power is high up the Elysée’s list of alternatives to nuclear.

Next week Copenhagen will be buzzing with wind energy professionals keen to find out the latest market and technology developments at the EWEA annual conference and exhibition. The EWEA blog spoke to Michael Nørtoft Frydensbjerg from Siemens Wind Power who is chairing a session on 17 April aiming to uncover how wind power is driving the modernisation of European grids…

What are the limitations of the current EU grid and why does it need to change?

The electricity grid in Europe is mainly designed with an eye to distributing electricity from large power plants. Today power generation is more decentralised and large wind power plants are located away from traditional power plants. These changes in the power generation pattern have to be considered when designing the electricity grid in order to avoid bottlenecks and system collapse.

Today’s turbines can be mind-bogglingly big, but big is not necessarily better. Mike Woebbeking, Vice President of GL group and chair of a session at EWEA 2012 in Copenhagen on 16 April that delves into turbine size, tells the EWEA blog that size isn’t everything…

How has the average turbine size changed over the last decade?

Ten years ago the average size was around 1.5 MW, today it is close to 3 MW. Thus the average size of onshore wind turbines more or less doubled. For offshore wind this is more difficult to say. A decade ago there were only very few turbines installed offshore. The average size could be assumed to be around 1.5 MW. Today the average offshore turbine size is below 5 MW, however 7 MW turbines and bigger are under development. The average size of offshore turbines has roughly tripled within a decade.

As youth unemployment rises in the UK, the need for green jobs and training for young people becomes ever more essential, writes Christopher Ibbet from the UK Youth Climate Coalition…

The UK’s Office for National Statistics recently released its latest figures on unemployment, showing that in last quarter of 2011, 28,000 more people became unemployed, while the number of 16 – 24 year olds out of work rose to 1.04 million.