Tracking the Sun - A Growing Opportunity
Tracking is still relatively young -- the majority of deployments have really been in just the past few years -- but its growing up fast.
Energy storage is America's industry to lose
David Ferris, E&E News reporter: The problem, Blunden said, is that the United States is wandering into a global competition without much urgency or a plan. "Are we going to make the decision to take a significant share of the next wave of manufacturing growth globally?"
Trump Should Make Space-Based Solar Power A National Priority
Space-based solar power (SBSP) --- in which satellites in Earth orbit capture the Suns radiation, convert it to electricity and then transmit it back to Earth in the form of either microwaves or lasers --- would arguably do more to positively impact the lives of everyday Americans and fellow citizens of the world than almost anything the new President could champion.
Perceptual Robotics, Autonomous wind turbine inspection
SUAS News: Â Â Perceptual Robotics is applying leading edge autonomy concepts to industrial applications. Â Currently based in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, our passion is to bridge the divide between academia and industry.
Perceptual Robotics is applying leading edge autonomy concepts to industrial applications.
Currently based in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, our passion is to bridge the divide between academia and industry. Â Through our Innovate UK project, we will be developing a fully autonomous system for the intelligent, efficient and reliable inspection of wind turbines. Â Cont'd...
Automation in the Energy Industry
Automation should be the prologue to a discussion whenever a new process is introduced, not a postscript. This fundamental shift in thinking is critical to maximize any automation strategy.
The Economics of Small Commercial Solar Projects
Solar projects can be a great investment for many businesses and offer a solid ROI, but it takes time and energy to put together a project that works for all the interested parties-the customer, the bank, and the installer.
Google: 4 out of 5 US homes have solar power potential
Steve Dent for engadget:  A five kilowatt rooftop solar installation now costs just $12,500 on average after tax credits, and pretty soon, installing one might soon be a matter of re-tiling your roof. Whether it's right for you, however, depends in large part on how much sun your house gets. That's where Google's Project Sunroof comes in -- launched just two years ago, it has now surveyed over 60 million US buildings in 50 states. That means there's a good chance you can see the electricity production potential in your city, neighborhood and even specific house.
Google calculates the amount of sunlight on your roof based on "3D modeling of your roof and nearby trees," weather patterns, the position of the sun in the sky during the year and shade from buildings, trees and other obstructions. That info is then converted to energy production "using industry standard models for solar installation performance," Google says. Â Cont'd...
Scientists harness solar power to produce hydrogen from biomass
University of Cambridge via Biomass Magazine: Â Dr Moritz Kuehnel, from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, joint lead author on a new research paper published in Nature Energy, says:
"Lignocellulose is nature's equivalent to armoured concrete. It consists of strong, highly crystalline cellulose fibres, that are interwoven with lignin and hemicellulose which act as a glue. This rigid structure has evolved to give plants and trees mechanical stability and protect them from degradation, and makes chemical utilisation of lignocellulose so challenging."
The new technology relies on a simple photocatalytic conversion process. Catalytic nanoparticles are added to alkaline water in which the biomass is suspended. This is then placed in front of a light in the lab which mimics solar light. The solution is ideal for absorbing this light and converting the biomass into gaseous hydrogen which can then be collected from the headspace. The hydrogen is free of fuel-cell inhibitors, such as carbon monoxide, which allows it to be used for power. Â Full Article:
Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves
Diane Cardwell for The New York Times: Â Brooklyn is known the world over for things small-batch and local, like designer clogs, craft bourbon and artisanal sauerkraut. Â Now, it is trying to add electricity to the list.
In a promising experiment in an affluent swath of the borough, dozens of solar-panel arrays spread across rowhouse rooftops are wired into a growing network. Called the Brooklyn Microgrid, the project is signing up residents and businesses to a virtual trading platform that will allow solar-energy producers to sell excess-electricity credits from their systems to buyers in the group, who may live as close as next door.
The project is still in its early stages - it has just 50 participants thus far - but its implications could be far reaching. Â Cont'd...
The Atacama Desert, Extreme Conditions for Instrumentation
Due to extreme weather, high solar radiation, high UV index and the salinity of certain areas, the Atacama Desert in Chile presents conditions that contribute to the early degradation of instrumentation, communication and energy systems.
What Is Net Metering, and How Does It Work?
Depending on the size of your solar system and the amount of solar you produce each month, you can greatly reduce your monthly electric bills, and even profit from it.
Elon Musk: I can fix South Australia power network in 100 days or it's free
Elle Hunt for The Guardian: Elon Musk, the billionaire co-founder of electric car giant Tesla, has thrown down a challenge to the South Australian and federal governments, saying he can solve the state’s energy woes within 100 days – or he’ll deliver the 100MW battery storage system for free.
On Thursday, Lyndon Rive, Tesla’s vice-president for energy products, told the AFR the company could install the 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage that would be required to prevent the power shortages that have been causing price spikes and blackouts in the state.
Thanks to stepped-up production out of Tesla’s new Gigafactory in Nevada, he said it could be achieved within 100 days. Cont'd...
Large-scale floating offshore wind power is finally here
Sami Grover for TreeHugger: Offshore wind energy has been growing like crazy in the last few decades—so much so that there's even talk of serious talk of multi-gigawatt offshore wind farms in the US in the not too distant future. But offshore wind has so far been limited to areas where the seafloor is relatively shallow, and where it's easy to build foundations for these gigantic turbines.
Floating wind turbines are different. Instead of using fixed foundations, they are anchored to the sea floor using cables. And that means they can be located in deeper waters, opening up many more areas where wind conditions are favorable and concerns about views and/or bird migration routes are less relevant. Alongside opening up new areas for development, the other major advantage of floating turbines—once they are being developed at scale—could also be reduced costs. Cont'd...
German institute successfully tests underwater energy storage sphere
Megan Geuss for ArsTechnica: Pumped storage is a decades-old technology with a relatively simple concept: When electricity is cheap and plentiful, use it to pump water up into a reservoir above a turbine, and when electricity is scarce and expensive, send that pumped water down through a turbine to generate more power. Often, these pumped storage facilities are auxiliary to other electricity-generating systems, and they serve to smooth out fluctuations in the amount of power on the grid.
A German research institute has spent years trying to tailor pumped storage to ocean environments. Recently, the institute completed a successful four-week pilot test using a hollow concrete sphere that it placed on the bottom of Lake Constance, a body of water at the foot of the Alps. The sphere has a diameter of three meters and contains a pump and a turbine. Much like traditional pumped storage, when electricity is cheap, water can be pumped out of the sphere, and when it’s scarce, water can be let into the sphere to move the turbine and generate electricity. Cont'd...
New process for manufacturing PV cells means cheaper solar power
Phys.org: A major roadblock to the mass use of solar energy are photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. This is because the cost, inefficiency and negative environmental impact that the manufacturing of these cells outweighs any potential savings provided by the resulting solar energy. If, however, cost could be were minimised, then solar power would be more able to compete with traditional fossil fuel-based methods for generating energy.
To overcome this hurdle, the EU-funded SOLNOWAT project has developed an innovative dry process for manufacturing PV solar cells.
PV cells are typically created via a wet chemical process that etches away layers of silicon from a crystalline wafer, leaving behind the solar cell. The SOLNOWAT process replaces the expensive and inefficient wet chemical process with the use of atmospheric pressure dry etching technology – a process that cuts costs and speeds up production. Because less silicon is removed during dry etching, the resulting cells are darker, making them very efficient at absorbing light. In fact, they are so efficient that they have been classified as having zero global warming potential. Cont'd...
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