Sustainability for the PV Industry: Field Service
By examining the differences in cost of service and downtime between three types of PV systems, we have demonstrated that the lowest TCO, and thus lowest LCOE, can be achieved by utilizing a field-serviceable string inverter.
Solar Power and the Future Energy Mix
In the near future, as solar becomes even more efficient and cost effective, it will play a larger role in industry and energy production. Plants that primarily burn natural gas for fuel, for example, will increasingly use solar to supplement the process to increase the efficiency of power generation.
The Key To Residential Solar Power Is Now Marketing
The potential for solar power is now enormous. The economics are attractive; the appeal is proven; the code has been cracked. With proper marketing, the future of solar power is very bright indeed.
The Benefits of Converting Waste Heat to Power
Waste heat to electricity uses less fuel to produce a given energy output, and avoids transmission and distribution losses that occur when electricity travels over power lines. It also decreases the impact of outages when the power grid goes down.
From Selenium to Silicon and Beyond
The 60th Anniversary of the First Practical Solar Cell
Technology Increasing Wind Industry Competitiveness
The benefits of a centralized database and platform for managing data extend beyond the scope of one software product.
Considerations for Determining Energy Requirements and Technologies for Renewable Projects
Understanding the water needs for energy and power production is key for using a nexus approach. In a nexus approach, knowing the impact of water and the interlinkage is essential for determining optimum choices for energy technologies.
Unbiased, Comprehensive Solar Module Rating System
Although we have over 12, 000 PV modules in the database today, we are always searching for new modules. Manufacturers and consumers can contact us if they have modules that are not listed.
Solar Power is Growing at a Rate Faster than Silicon Valley
Already in the lead as the fastest-growing clean and renewable energy source in America, solar power is growing to account for 29% of new American electricity, trailing just behind natural gas at 46%.
PURE Energies Infographic Highlights Water Usage by Power Plants
The PURE Energies #WorldWaterDay infographic compares different energy generation methods and how much water each of them consumes.
Siemens to construct factory for offshore wind power in Great Britain
Siemens is investing more than EUR190 million (GBP160 million) in new offshore production facilities in Great Britain. Production of rotor blades for offshore wind turbines of the 6-megawatt class is planned, with a new logistics- and service centre slated for Hull. The British Prime Minister David Cameron and Michael Suess, member of the managing board of Siemens AG and CEO of the Energy Sector will reaffirm their common dedication to these projects this afternoon in Hull.
"Our decision to construct a production facility for offshore wind turbines in England is part of our global strategy: we invest in markets with reliable conditions that can ensure that factories can work to capacity. The British energy policy creates a favourable framework for the expansion of offshore wind energy. In particular, it recognizes the potential of offshore wind energy within the overall portfolio of energy production", stated Michael Suess, member of the managing board of Siemens AG and CEO of the Energy Sector.
The offshore wind market in Great Britain has high growth rates, with an even greater potential for the future. Wind power capacity has doubled here within two years, to roughly 10 gigawatts. By 2020, a capacity of 14 gigawatts is to be installed at sea alone to combine the country's environmental objectives with secure power supply. Projects for just over 40 gigawatts are currently in the long-term planning.
GE Taps Into The Coolest Energy Storage Technology Around
Batteries are far from being the only new energy storage technology out there and one of the more obscure and unlikely initiatives has just received a massive vote of confidence from GE.
A tiny UK company called Highview Power stores energy by using cheap, off-peak energy to cool air to -196°C using a conventional industrial refrigeration plant, turning 700 litres of ambient air into a litre of “liquid air” that can be stored in a simple insulated tank. When you need the energy, you simply open the tap, the liquid air turns back into a gas, expands in volume, drives a turbine and creates electricity. If you add heat when you release the gas, you make the process more efficient.
Highview says liquid air energy storage (LAES) has advantages over other emerging storage technologies in that it uses well-established technologies and doesn’t require any inputs such as the lithium that batteries need – the most exotic material involved in the process is stainless steel, the company says, while the extra heat can come from the process of cooling the air or from the waste heat of other industrial processes, including power stations. It is not geographically constrained like pumped hydro, it is long-lasting unlike many battery technologies and there is an existing global industrial gases infrastructure it can tap into. And unlike for a gas such as hydrogen, the storage tanks do not have to be specially reinforced or highly pressurised.
Fresh Breeze for Wind Power in China
Chinese wind-power stocks, once given up for dead in the investor doldrums, have roared back to life in recent weeks on expectations of government support for the renewable energy sector and overseas demand.
Investors are betting on future Chinese government policy directives and subsidies that boost profits for manufacturers of wind power turbines, gearboxes, blades, towers and transmission equipment.
They're also betting that multinational wind energy companies such as Vestas, Siemens,General Electric and Senvion will step up orders for the Chinese-made equipment and parts that are used to build offshore and onshore wind energy farms worldwide.
Contractors building big wind farms, particularly those off the European coast, often buy lower-rung products such as steel towers from China. And tower fabricators such as China's Titan Wind (002531:Shenzhen) are making good money on that demand.
Shenzhen-listed Titan, which is only nine years old and listed in 2010, has seen its stock value climb 55% since the beginning of the year. The company has gotten major contracts from Vestas and GE. And it's currently planning to build a factory in India to complement existing plants in China and Denmark.
Pilots complain that glare from the world's biggest solar power plant is blinding them
Airplane pilots reported that they were blinded by the intense sunlight reflecting off some of the 340,000 mirrors at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System on the California-Nevada border. Yet six months elapsed before their reports reached the regulator that oversees the plant, which is located near the Las Vegas airport.
The mirrors, called heliostats, focus the sun on 459-foot-high (140 meter) towers that contain water-filled boilers. The concentrated sunlight boils the water to create steam, driving turbines that generate 377 megawatts of carbon-free electricity. The heat is so blistering that it has melted the feathers of b irds in mid-flight .
Planes fly far too high to be affected by the heat—but by not the light. “From the pilot’s seat of my aircraft the brightness was like looking into the sun,” reported one pilot as his small plane climbed from 6,000 to 12,000 feet after taking off from the Boulder City, Nevada, airport. In a report he filed with the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), the pilot wrote that, “In my opinion the reflection from these mirrors was a hazard to flight because for a brief time I could not scan the sky in that direction to look for other aircraft.”
A Peek Into The Astonishing Future Of Wind Power
“What if you could scoop the air? Scoop it and move it downward, amplifying its kinetic energy along the way, concentrate it to a single point of intensity, the way a magnifying glass concentrates sunlight to a single incendiary point?”
Dr. Daryoush Allaei, an engineer and founder of Sheerwind, an innovative wind power company, is concentrating his unique thought process on harnessing wind energy in new ways.
“And assuming you could do this technically, could you do it on a large enough scale to make it economically feasible?” Allaei writes in his company description. “More to the point, could you generate energy so inexpensively that it stages a renaissance?”
Sheerwind is pushing the boundaries of wind power innovation with its bladeless wind turbine, called INVELOX. The turbines funnel wind into ground-level generators through a tapering passageway that squeezes and accelerates the air. The units are about half as tall as traditional wind towers, which rise up to 260 feet into the air, and the ground-based turbine blades are more than 80 percent smaller than conventional wind turbine blades, which are about 115-feet long. The device resembles a giant gramophone that sucks in wind instead of blurting out sound. Cont'd..
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