Permanent Magnet Technology: The Wind Industry's New Drive Train Standard
As PMG+FPC drive trains outperform DFIGs from both a full-cycle cost-efficiency and reliability perspective, the turbine manufacturing industry needs to revise some of its old assumptions and obsolete turbine technology choices to embrace the generator technology that leads to better AEP.
The Birth of Thermodynamics
Here is an account of something I stumbled upon on a visit to Munich last year which I hope will be of interest. The four laws without which nothing whatsoever throughout the universe that happens, happens.
This Solar Power Plant Can Run All Night
Justin Worland for Time: Crescent Dunes looks and sounds a bit like an invention lifted from a science fiction novel. Deep in the Nevada desert more than 10,000 mirrors—each the size of a highway billboard—neatly encircle a giant 640-foot tower. It looks like it might be used to communicate with aliens in deep space.
But the engineers and financiers behind the facility, located in the desert about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, say the power plant’s promise is anything but fiction. The solar power facility built and operated by the company SolarReserve can power 75,000 homes. What sets it apart from other big solar projects is that this plant can store power for use when it is most needed, including cloudy days and after dark—a major advance for renewable energy technology. Cont'd...
SunEdison Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection
PEG BRICKLEY and ANNE STEELE for The Wall Street Journal: Solar-energy Company SunEdison Inc. on Thursday filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a dramatic move for a company whose market value stood at nearly $10 billion in July.
SunEdison said its publicly traded entities, TerraForm Power Inc. and TerraForm GlobalInc., aren’t part of the filing. The two so-called yieldcos—separate entities that buy operating projects from developer SunEdison and pay out cash flow to their shareholders—said Thursday they believe they have sufficient liquidity to run their businesses and meet financial obligations, although SunEdison’s bankruptcy “will present challenges.”
Bankruptcy has been a near-certainty for SunEdison for some time. The company borrowed heavily to buy up wind and solar developers, accumulating a pile of debt that worried investors. Disappointing earnings didn’t ease their fears about the pace of SunEdison’s growth, and an accounting move last year that reclassified more than $700 million worth of debt heightened anxieties. Cont'd...
What is Hydropower in a Pipe?
According to the US Geological Survey, 66% of public water comes from surface water. Presumably some of that is pumped at some point, but even if only half of that were gravity fed, the potential for electricity production from municipal water pipes is significant.
Manage Costs and Risks With Long-Range Probabilistic Weather Forecasts
Deterministic weather forecasts have their place, but probabilistic forecasts are the clear choice for alternative energy companies that take the weather seriously and need long-term data.
WattJoule Develops Cost Breakthrough for Liquid Energy Storage
WattJoule Corporation, a developer of next-generation liquid electrical energy storage systems, has developed and built a new system demonstrating a major industry cost breakthrough. The new storage platform is called ElectriStor™ and will be offered to system integrators as the preferred core component for storing large amounts of solar and wind energy.
One of the major barriers preventing the widespread adoption of large-scale energy storage has been cost. WattJoule has engineered the ElectriStor™ platform based on the redox flow battery concept where electricity is stored in a liquid. WattJoule's proprietary liquid electrolyte is mostly water, and the company has developed a new, inexpensive process to make it in large quantities. Early liquid energy storage systems have suffered from a number of technical and cost limitations. Recently there have been several technical breakthroughs to overcome these constraints. WattJoule has both developed and exclusively licensed key technologies that, in combination, dramatically lower energy storage costs to $150 per kilowatt-hour in its first-generation energy storage product. Full Press Release:
Upcoming Tradeshow, Conference & Exhibition Summary - May, June & July 2016
Here is a summary of what Tradeshows, Conferences & Exhibitions to look forward to in the coming months.
Tesla And Other Tech Giants Scramble For Lithium As Prices Double
And while lithium has traditionally been controlled by a handful of major global suppliers, spiking demand is changing this landscape drastically.
Why companies like: Google and Walmart are buying so much wind power
Brady Dennis for The Washington Post: The U.S. wind energy industry had a memorable 2015, from installing thousands of new turbines across the country to supporting a growing number of jobs.
But perhaps one of the most noteworthy brights spots of the past year, according to an annual report released Tuesday by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), was the growing demand for wind energy from major corporations. High-tech firms such as Google Energy, Facebook and Amazon Web Services, as well as more traditional companies such as Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Walmart and Dow Chemical, have signed contracts to purchase increasing amounts of wind energy in coming years.
Corporations and other non-utility customers — including some municipalities and universities — accounted for more than half of the wind power capacity sold through so-called power purchase agreements in 2015, according to the AWEA. The group said that corporate and other non-utility buyers have signed contracts for more than 4,500 megawatts of wind power capacity, or enough to power the equivalent of about 1.2 million American homes. Cont'd...
Two-thirds of US solar installers do not offer storage, study finds
Ian Clover for PV Magazine: A study by EuPD Research shows just 34% of PV installers in the U.S. offer storage solutions to customers, with those reluctant to do so citing cost concerns. However, 26% that currently do not offer storage hope to include it in their portfolios this year.
For all the glitzy product launches by the likes of Tesla and Sonnen, the solar+storage landscape of the U.S. is still largely shaped by what leading installers are – or aren’t – prepared to offer to customers, and a recent survey has found that around two-thirds do not currently include storage technology in their product portfolio.
EuPD Research’s latest PV Installer Survey USA 2015/16 revealed that only one-third of installers already offer energy storage to homeowners or businesses in the U.S. looking to adopt solar power. Of the two-thirds that do not, 38% said that current pricing of batteries impedes demand, meaning margins are too low for installers and the "technological maturity" of the systems on the market is not currently convincing.
However, the mood does appear to be shifting in favor of storage, with 26% of survey participants saying they hope to add storage products to their portfolio at some stage in 2016. Cont'd...
Is the U.S. Still Addicted to Oil?
Universal access to renewably-generated electricity could be within the foreseeable future, with cleaner air and water as the side effects. Better public transportation systems will make life more enjoyable for commuters all over the country, as will a self-sustaining energy economy.
This Device Could Provide a Third of America's Power
Sam Grobart for Bloomberg: There are 332,519,000 cubic miles of water on the planet. That's 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons just sloshing around out there.
Anyone who's ridden or been tossed by a wave has a sense of the kinetic energy contained in our perpetually moving oceans. If we could harness it, it could provide a clean, renewable source of energy. But efforts to turn our oceans into power generators—often in the form of "aqua-mills," windmill technology adapted to water—have foundered on the complexity of their many moving parts in the corrosive and remote environs of the sea.
A new approach, developed by a company called Oscilla Power, applies all that kinetic energy to a solid piece of metal instead of using it to turn the blades of an impeller. That creates an alternating magnetic polarity in the metal that can be converted into electrical current.
Oscilla's technology, which is nearly solid-state, may prove far more durable than any other ocean-power project, increasing the chance to draw power from our oceans cleanly, meaningfully, and endlessly. View video here:
Stock Index - Solar Energy
Solar Energy Index Underperforms S&P in Q1 2016
EIA tracks monthly ethanol and biodiesel rail movements
In 2015, the ethanol share of gasoline was 9.9%, and the biodiesel share of distillate was 2.4%.
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