Solar Power's Promise Infuses a New Film
Emily J. Gertz for TakePart: Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya set out to show that climate change isn’t all gloom and doom. The result, Catching the Sun, ably makes that case but may still leave you inspired and infuriated in equal parts.
This fast-paced and compelling new documentary, which premieres Friday in New York City and in cities nationwide during April, follows a diverse group of job seekers, activists, politicians, and entrepreneurs as they tap into the world’s growing solar powereconomy.
Kantayya jumps between nations that have unequivocally adopted policies to speed up adoption of renewables and more fitful efforts here in the United States to expand solar energy—from a program in Richmond, Virginia, training unemployed men and women to become solar panel installers to a “Green Tea Party” member and energy independence advocate working both sides of the halls of power in Georgia. Cont'd...
The World's Largest Renewable Energy Developer Could Go Broke
Ben Walsh for The Huffington Post: There is a “substantial risk” that SunEdison may file for bankruptcy, the world’s largest renewable energy developer said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday. The company’s fall isn’t a referendum on the solar industry as a whole, as much as it is on SunEdison’s aggressive growth strategy fueled by excessive debt and financial engineering, analysts say.
SunEdison “just thought they were smarter than everyone else,” said David Levine, the founder and CEO of Geostellar, a solar energy marketplace that has done deals with the company.
The company’s shares have fallen steeply since they hit a high of $30 in July. They were at just $1.26 before the filing. The stock immediately dropped another 40 percent when the market opened after the filing, and the company was trading at just $0.59 by Tuesday lunchtime.
“What happened from late-2014 to the middle of 2015, the company began embarking on a hyper-growth strategy,” S&P analyst Angelo Zino told The Huffington Post. Cont'd...
Panasonic Continues To Innovate HIT® Technology In Their PV Panels
Panasonic HIT® panels recently set a world record for conversion efficiency at the research level (laboratory), a full percentage point increase over the previous record.
Lithium-Ion Energy Storage for PV System in Puerto Rico
Li-ion solutions are both scalable and flexible in their power-to-energy ratio. The flexibility enables MTR-type solutions for high-power smoothing, medium-power options for shaping renewable output to meet a forecast, and high-energy systems for shifting of renewable energy to periods of peak load.
Could uphill train tracks solve the problem of energy storage?
James Murray for BusinessGreen: is commonly regarded as a green form of travel, typically boasting lower levels of carbon emissions and air pollution than road transport, but could it also serve to deliver a cleaner and more resilient power grid?
That is the hope of innovative US start up Advanced Rail Energy Storage, LLC, which yesterday announces it has secured a crucial right-of-way lease from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to develop its planned 50MW gravity-based energy storage project.
The ARES Nevada project uses the same principles as pumped hydroelectric energy storage projects, but instead of relying on water in a water-stressed region it plans to make use of an inclined rail track and generator locomotive cars that will run along it. Cont'd...
Bi-Partisan Support Driving Solar Energy Development
Each political party strives to differentiate itself in terms of platform and policy. Liberals tend to emphasize environmental aspects of solar and renewable energy, while conservatives like to encourage market forces for job creation and consumer choice. Both of these are great reasons to support solar, and that is why we see an opportunity for bipartisan support of this technology.
Why Power Markets Tilt Toward Renewables Even With Cheap Oil
Anna Hirtenstein for Bloomberg Business: If you’re a power plant developer, chances are you’ll be selling renewables in a developing nation in the decades ahead -- even with fossil fuel prices bumping along historic lows.
That’s been the conclusion for some time of the International Energy Agency and independent researchers such as Bloomberg New Energy Finance. A report out Thursday from the United Nations Environment Program using BNEF data gives more statistical backing for the trends.
For the first time in 2015, more investment went into renewables than fossil fuels, and most of the money went to emerging markets. BNEF is hosting a conference in New York starting April 4 to bring together executives and bankers attempting to generate value from the boom.
Here are six charts from the UNEP report showing why cheap oil and natural gas aren’t about to slow the rise of wind and solar.
Converting Carbon Dioxide into Fuel
The desire to halt climate change has drawn researchers around the world to the pursuit of CO2 conversion.
Newly Built Concentrated Solar Power Plants - Time To Consider Flushing and Cleaning as an Industry Standard?
A recent research paper published in Applied Thermal Engineering highlights the importance of defined protocols to effectively flush and clean newly built facilities, which is needed prior to filling the system with expensive fluids, such as solar thermal fluids.
EPFL Scientists Achieve Record-Level Reproducibility for Perovskite Solar Cells
Perovskite solar cells hold much promise for cost-effective solar energy. However, heat stability is an issue, and can significantly limit the solar cell’s long-term efficiency. A team of scientists led by Michael Grätzel’s lab at EPFL has now developed a cesium-containing perovskite solar cell that has achieved efficiency of 21.1%, as well as record-level reproducibility. The work is published in Energy and Environmental Science.
By adding cesium, the EPFL scientists, led by postdoc Michael Saliba, made the first ever triple-cation perovskite mixture (Cs/MA/FA). The new films are more heat-stable and less affected by fluctuating surrounding variables such as temperature, solvent vapors or the heating protocol used for the device. But more importantly, they also show stabilized power-conversion efficiencies of 21.1% and outputs at 18% under operational conditions, even after 250 hours.
“This is an absolute breakthrough,” says Michael Saliba. “These properties are crucial for commercializing perovskite photovoltaics, especially since reproducibility and stability are the main requirements for cost-effective large-scale manufacturing of perovskite solar cells.” Source AZOCleantech...
What is Solid-State RF Energy?
Magnetrons will eventually be replaced by solid-state RF power amplifier modules and controllers within the following applications: industrial heating and drying, plasma generation, chemical processing, commercial cooking (restaurants, fast re-heat and thawing) and, last but not least, consumer microwave ovens.
Tesla Discontinues 10-Kilowatt-Hour Powerwall Home Battery
Julia Pyper for GTM: Tesla has quietly removed all references to its 10-kilowatt-hour residential battery from the Powerwall website, as well as the company’s press kit. The company's smaller battery designed for daily cycling is all that remains.
The change was initially made without explanation, which prompted industry insiders to speculate. Today, a Tesla representative confirmed the 10-kilowatt-hour option has been discontinued.
"We have seen enormous interest in the Daily Powerwall worldwide," according to an emailed statement to GTM. "The Daily Powerwall supports daily use applications like solar self-consumption plus backup power applications, and can offer backup simply by modifying the way it is installed in a home. Due to the interest, we have decided to focus entirely on building and deploying the 7-kilowatt-hour Daily Powerwall at this time."
The 10-kilowatt-hour option was marketed as a backup power supply capable of 500 cycles, at a price to installers of $3,500. Tesla was angling to sell the battery to consumers that want peace of mind in the event the grid goes down, like during another Superstorm Sandy. The problem is that the economics for a lithium-ion backup battery just aren’t that attractive. Cont'd...
Solar Panels Grown on the Moon could Power Earth
Sarah Fecht for Popular Science: Currently a high school senior in California, Lewis-Weber has just published a paper in the journal New Space with what he thinks could be the solution to the upcoming energy crisis: putting self-replicating solar panels in space. These solar panels would to build copies of themselves, autonomously, on the surface of the moon. Then they would enter Earth's orbit, collect the sun's energy, and wirelessly beam it to the ground.
That may sound like a crazy idea, but the notion of space-based solar power actually dates back several decades, to the 1970s oil crisis. It was set aside after oil prices went back down, but since then, two things have happened: One, the world has become a lot more desperate to solve climate change; and two, technological innovations have brought this crazy idea out of the realm of science fiction. The idea is gaining attention, and with some big investments, it's possible that space-based solar power could become a reality within a few decades. Cont'd...
Obama administration opens up Long Island to offshore wind development
SCOTT WALDMAN for Politico : The federal government has designated an 81,000-acre area off of Long Island for possible commercial offshore wind development.
The move by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Wednesday to open the federal waters 11 miles off of New York to major wind development projects will be a significant boost to the Cuomo administration’s aggressive climate policies. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will now conduct an environmental assessment, with a possible sale of leases to follow.
“New York has tremendous offshore wind potential, and today's milestone marks another important step in the President's strategy to tap clean, renewable energy from the Nation’s vast wind and solar resources,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said in a statement. “We will continue to work with the State and local stakeholders through a collaborative effort as we determine what places have the highest potential and lowest conflict to harness the enormous wind energy potential off the Atlantic seaboard.” Cont'd...
Lead Recycling Threatened By Lithium-ion
The U.S. Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the International Electrotechnical Committee (IEC) are proposing to develop standardized labels that are color-coded to allow for better identification between lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries.
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