Technology Helps Wind Industry Through PTC Debate
Despite the historic success of tax credits in helping to move renewable energy industries forward, the reality is that these credits might not be renewed. Industries will have to rely more heavily on the savings possible through equipment and technology improvements.
How a Manmade Tidal Lagoon Could Change the Future of Clean Energy
FEARGUS O'SULLIVAN for CityLab: Just outside the Welsh city of Swansea, the U.K. is planning one of the most innovative power plants ever constructed. It’s not the plant’s size that is striking, though it could ultimately provide power to 155,000 homes for 120 years. It’s the source of its power that breaks ground: tides channeled into an artificially constructed lagoon.
Granted full planning permission this June, the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon will be the world’s first ever plant to generate electricity using this method. Should it prove successful, the plant’s template could be adopted worldwide as a way of generating green power while simultaneously providing sea wall protection to coastal communities. Cont'd...
Increasing Wind Turbine AEP with Vortex Generators
Vortex Generators are small attachments made from durable material that energizes the flow around the blade and reduce flow separation.
As California Rolls Out More Solar Power, Regulators Could Undercut The Industry
Ken Silverstein for Forbes: The fall season is kicking off a sizzling solar power debate in California and one that has the potential to undercut the state’s climate mission.
Utility regulators there are in discussions over how to balance the interest of rooftop solar generators with the utilities on which they will still depend. Just how those hearings are resolved with have implications for the rollout of renewable energy not just in California but also around the country.
At issue is something called “net metering,” which is technical term used to measure the amount of money that rooftop solar generators should get paid relative to retail electricity prices. Utilities, generally, want to offer them the wholesale rate for what they send to them over the grid. Those are expensive wires to maintain and ones that all customers will use, even those who power their homes with solar panels. That’s because the sun is not always shining and the utilities would then have to provide them electricity over their networks.
The present net metering rules in California were set a dozen years ago, with the intent that they would expire when solar penetration reached 5 percent at any of three investor-owned utilities: Edison International’s SoCalEd, PG&E Corp. and Sempra Energy, which is nearing the threshold. Generally, those utilities are paying customers the full retail value for their electricity generated and transmitted. Cont'd...
UK - It could be lights out for solar power under this government
Terry Macalister for The Guardian: Ministers rightly wring their hands over the 2,200 jobs being lost at the 98-year-old Redcar steelworks hit by low-cost Chinese competition. But they seem deaf to warnings of 27,000 jobs being potentially lost in a brand-new industry now facing crisis due to their own clumsy cuts.
Almost 1,000 redundancies have already been made by the solar panel installersMark Group and Climate Energy. No one in the industry believes this will be the end of the sad story.
The latest flashpoint for “green” developers is the government plan to slash the feed-in tariff – which subsidises people installing solar panels on their home – by almost 90%. Meanwhile, an energy-efficiency regime has been scrapped with only a vague promise of a future replacement.
If these were isolated examples, then companies might be willing to hang on in the hope of better things to come. But they are the latest in a series of cuts not just to solar but also to onshore wind, and come at a time when it seems maximum effort is being expended on removing roadblocks to shale-gas frackingand nuclear power. Cont'd...
Infinite Possibilities of Internet of Things (IoT) in Renewable Energy Sector
Here is how the internet of things technology can drive the next revolution in the global renewable energy industry
Energy Production in Motion: The Advantages of Single-Axis Solar Tracking Systems
Despite the fact that tracking systems are more complex than fixed-tilt systems, they represent the future of the industry and a glimpse of all that is possible in terms of solar energy capacity.
Energy From Stars
This paper proposes possible new energy sources. One of these sources can be the "energy from stars".
Cloaking Principle Could Boost Solar Cell Performance
Invisibility cloaking may be a long way from reality, but the principle could help improve the performance of solar cells in the near term.
In a series of simulations, researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have demonstrated how cloaks made of metamaterials or freeform surfaces could eliminate shadows cast by energy-harvesting components onto the active surfaces of solar cells.
Contact fingers, which extract electric current, cover up to one-tenth of the surface area of a solar cell. By guiding light around these features, more of the sun's energy could be captured by the solar cell.
"Our model experiments have shown that the cloak layer makes the contact fingers nearly completely invisible," said doctoral student Martin Schumann. Cont'd...
Two Explosions a World Apart: From Disaster Comes New Power
How Roys Poyiadjiss and Martua Sitoruss Partnership is Creating the Largest Biofuel Plant in Japan
Germany & China Lead in Solar Installed Capacities
Germanys top place in the ranking is not surprising given its Energiewende focus to transition away from fossil fuels & its declared war on coal.
Molten Salt Energy Storage - Time to Bottle the Sun
A total of about 2,125 MW of molten salt energy storage projects are in pipeline which are scheduled for deployment by 2018.
SolarCity claims highest efficiency solar panel
Tristan Edist for the Business Spectator: SolarCity, the largest retailer of solar systems in the US (over 30% market share) and partly owned by Tesla’s Elon Musk, has announced it will produce the most efficient solar module available on the market at 22.04% conversion efficiency. SolarCity is claiming it has therefore managed to pip SunPower who have been the longstanding holder of the most efficient conventional silicon solar module on the market.
However in a subsequent discussion with Greentech Media, Peter Rive’s Chief Technology Officer conceded the majority of the panels coming off its pilot 100MW manufacturing line were hitting 21.8%. In 2017 the company will be then moving production to a new 1 gigawatt per annum capacity plant in Buffalo which can sometimes encounter challenges with achieving stable quality levels during production start-up.
SunPower claims 21.5% efficiency for its X-Series panel although often manufacturers will have some variance in performance of panels and make claims based on conservative estimates of performance. Greentech Media quotes an anonymous Sunpower source saying that 22% efficient panels are already coming off its production lines. In addition the company is targeting achieving 23% conversion efficiency from panels it will manufacture from its fifth fabrication line, scheduled for start-up in 2017.
Cont'd...
Renewable Energy Surpasses Coal in the UK
Written by Keith Kohl for Energy & Capital: For the first time ever, more energy in the UK was supplied by renewable sources than coal. For an entire quarter. Wind, solar, and bioenergy checked in at 25% of the energy supplied.
All of this was possible due to the fact that more wind turbines and solar panels were installed, which must be a good amount if you want to compare it to the same period last year, for which these energy options only accounted for 16.4% of electricity.
Recently, the UK has been working to close aging coal and nuclear power plants.
Of course, this will lead to its own issues...
[Solar Panels] Conservative ministers collectively believe that the subsidies given to renewable energy were too numerous, going so far as to suggest plans for an 87% reduction of solar power, and to cut support for onshore wind farms.
With that kind of spending cut, it's not surprising to hear that industry execs believe these actions would unjustly put an end to renewable energy just as it was gaining traction. Cont'd...
Technical Summaries of Wave Energy Prize Official Qualified Teams
Judges have completed reviewing the technical submissions and a total of 20 Qualified Teams are advancing to next phase of the Wave Energy Prize! Here are the entries.
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