"Around the globe, wind-generating capacity has been expanding at a rapid 30% clip in recent years," notes value investor Nathan Slaughter, who adds, "And 2008 is already shaping up to be even better."

The editor of Half-Priced Stocks looks at industrial product firm Trinity Industries (NYSE: TRN), explaining, "The company's most promising division is involved in the production of structural wind towers." Here's the advisor's of the latest addition to his "deep-discount' model portfolio.

"Led by states such as Texas and California, wind farms around the country will generate almost 50 billion kilowatt hours of electricity this year. Of course, the U.S. is still playing catch-up with many other regions.

"In fact, countries such as Spain, Portugal and Denmark all rely on wind farms for as much as one-quarter of their total power needs. Across Europe, wind turbines will account for roughly one-third of all new generating capacity installed over the next few years and could provide electricity for 90 million people by 2010.

"The outlook is even brighter in many booming, energy-hungry Asian markets. In China, installed wind power capacity surged +130% last year and will reportedly supply a great deal of the electricity needed for the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

"Thanks to the great strides in engineering, wind turbine output has increased by a factor of ten (or higher in some cases) over the past decade.

General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) moved up 6 cents, or 0.17%, to end the day at $35.53. GE has a big industry milestone to announce today, some 5000 1.5 megawatt wind turbines have been installed by the company.

GE's investment in wind power has been a big winner in GE's energy division. It even merited several mention during the last earnings call with its over 200% growth. Though GE doesn't expect it to continue that dramatically, GE is banking on solid demand for windpower to continue. By the end of 2008, GE is saying it expects to have 10,000 1.5 megawatt wind turbines worldwide.

Though, for comparison, a single nuclear plant is capable of putting out thousands of megawatts, and turbines offer megawatts in the hundreds. A city like Austin has almost 3,000 megawatts of power generation on its grid. Therefore, GE has sold enough windpower turbines to run a decent sized city.

GE ended the day at $34.55, up 33 cents, a neat feat considering that the rest of the market took a dive for the second day running. Despite some awkward news for its NBC division about a potential strike, GE has a run of good news it's reporting.

The first piece is that GE is breaking ground on the world's largest solar panel power plant, another big victory for their Ecomagination campaign. For GE it is a major cross-company focus that pays off by letting them pull to the front and create large alternative energy projects with their backing. GE was in the news yesterday for a large wind turbine deal as well.

GE also showcased technology that will go into upcoming LCD screens, something we're not going to see less of around the world anytime soon, demonstrating that GE's materials division is going strong. Not a bad day for the conglomerate, everything else considered.

GE closed today at $34.22, down 44 cents. Again, many suspect this is thanks to interest rate worries. Meanwhile GE's Ecomagination reeled in a positive result for the company: GE announced today several wind turbine sales to LA and Hawaii.

GE Energy sold 80 turbines to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and in the right, gusty conditions, they're all capable of pumping out 1.5 megawatts of power each They'll be installed near Mojave, 110 miles north of LA. The Hawaii deal is not as big, with only 14 of these wind turbines sold, but that still makes almost 100 wind turbines added to the board for GE's Energy division. Not a bad day for renewable energy.