Friday, August 14, 2009 at 3:36:53 PM - by Danny Vo

The West Coast is continuing to establish itself as a national leader in both the wind and solar energy industries, with help from a new research competition.

This week, the Bonneville Power Administration in Oregon announced that it is holding a competition between two teams of researchers, one from Germany and the other from the United States that will work on ways to better predict significant changes in the region's winds.

The competition is being conducted in an effort to maximize the performance of wind turbines in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. By better predicting changes in the wind, power companies will potentially find it easier to work the energy that is generated into the power grid.

John Pease of the Bonneville Power Administration called the contest a way to get researchers focused on "developing an important new tool."

The utility is also comparing the competition to the X Prize, which awards multimillion dollar grants to researchers who can meet certain goals with advanced technologies in areas that include energy and medicine.