Panasonic aims for 70% CO2 cut with 'smart' town
The Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (SST) is aimed at reducing CO2 emissions by 70 percent compared with 1990 levels. The completely networked town will be a 19-hectacre subdivision built on a former Panasonic plant site some 30 miles southwest of Tokyo. It will house about 3,000 people whose lives will revolve around being energy conscious: the 1,000 homes and other buildings will have solar panels to generate electricity and smart appliances, as well as home fuel cells. The batteries might include the fridge-sized Ene-Farm developed by Panasonic and Tokyo Gas. They say the Ene-Farm can reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 35 and 48 percent, respectively, from typical Japanese household usage and can help lower home utility costs by up to $740 annually. Plans for the SST call for features such as EV recharging stations, LED lighting, surveillance cameras, and "wind paths" to accommodate wind patterns in Fujisawa, a city of 400,000 on Sagami Bay. There will be plenty of trees, too. The project will cost some $739 million, and all homes are expected to be occupied by 2018. I wouldn't be surprised if SST gets way too many applicants. Fujisawa has beaches, a surfing culture, and plenty of sunshine, so it's an ideal location for this experiment. If it's successful, it could become a model for future green communities.
2011 AWEA WindPower Conference & Exhibition Report
The AltEnergyMag team had the opportunity to walk the expo floor and visit with companies from across the industry for a peak at some of the new products that will be showcased this year. Below is a compilation of some great new products that should be an interest to you.
Biomass Exchange - A Plug in the Missing Link
In India alone, one can observe several cases where bio-energy projects of the scale greater than 5 MW are on sale already, even with their power purchase agreements still in place. Such events necessitate the need to have a mechanism in place which would further seek the promotion of such technologies.
Does the Public Sector already hold the key to delivering energy efficiency?
So implementing energy efficiency measures sounds like a good idea in principle, but how can local authorities or municipalities balance the equation of technology costs and fund the capital expenditure? Put simply, some of the measures that can be implemented deliver savings immediately with payback periods that are very short - in some instances only 6 months. However; to address a set of larger scale measures, the answer comprises 3 elements: i) scale of project, ii) guaranteeing savings through energy performance contracting and iii) access to competitive (low interest rate) finance.
AWEA 2011- Special News Report
News announcements from AWEA 2011
Solar Cogeneration - The highest utilization of the sun's resources
Solar cogeneration combines proven photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal technologies to maximize total collected energy and optimize economic benefits for institutional, commercial and industrial customers. Using up to 80 percent of the sun's delivered energy
Key Issues In the Clean Tech Industry: The Role Of Public Relations
Once of the greatest barriers to the adoption of new clean technologies is the upfront cost, with the resulting sticker shock sending consumers running. Many clean tech firms offer attractive financing packages, but fall down on marketing them effectively, or -- on an even more basic level -- adequately explaining them.
U.S. wind growing again, but business still choppy
The U.S. wind industry is growing again after taking a big step backward last year. Yet turbine makers and wind farm developers are finding few reasons to celebrate as the clean energy source struggles to secure long-term government support while facing stiff competition from cheap natural gas. Once the world's top wind market, the United States ceded that mantle to China last year as a weak economy halted its growth and cut new installations to half of the 10,000 megawatts of capacity built in 2009. Since then, business has picked up, but not for the reasons the industry would like. Energy demand is still tepid due to a gurgling economic recovery, and the low cost of natural gas is keeping power prices low. Pricing in long-term power sales contracts signed by wind developers has fallen 30 percent in the last two years and will fall further this year, according to IHS Emerging Energy Research. Currently, the market is being shepherded by developers who are scrambling to put turbines in the ground ahead of a 2013 expiration of lucrative federal tax credits for wind. Beyond that date, the industry's fortunes are hazy.
U.S. gets World's Largest Wind-Blade Testing Facility
Boston, Massachusetts (USA) saw the opening of the world's largest large-scale wind turbine blade testing facility this week. The Wind Technology Testing Center—in partnership with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory—can test blades up to 90 meters long, which is expected to be the industry's largest blade size in coming years. Prior to the facility's opening, domestically produced large-scale wind turbine blades had to be shipped outside of the U.S., usually to Europe, to be tested. The largest predecessors in the U.S. to the Wind Technology Testing Center could only support turbine blades no longer than 50 meters. The facility has the capacity to test up to three blades simultaneously. Standard tests measure fatigue through a four-month endurance process. Two-week-long static strength and resonance testing are also commonplace. The Wind Technology Testing Center itself took roughly two years to build at a cost of just under $40 million. $25 million was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. $13.2 million in additional funds was provided through loans and grants furnished by the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust.
AltEnergyMag.com brings you all the news and information from AWEA WindPower 2011
AWEAWINDPOWER 2011 Conference & Exhibition will be held May 22 — 25, 2011 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The WINDPOWER Conference & Exhibition is produced by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) to provide a venue for the wind industry to network, do business, and solve problems. Recognized as one of the fastest-growing trade shows in the U.S, WINDPOWER includes Nearly 1,400 exhibiting companies, thousands of qualified wind energy professionals, engaging educational information and unmatched networking opportunities and special events.
As a media partner AltEnergyMag.com is hosting a Special AWEA newspage sponsored by KRWind. We invite all exhibitors and attendees to check out and submit all your Conference news here.
Also, stay tuned for our WindPower Conference report which will go online following the show.
Landis+Gyr at Any Price? Smart Meters' Second Act
Landis+Gyr is said to be on the auction block — and big smart grid suitors have come to bid. Reuters has reported that General Electric was offering $2 billion for the Swiss-based smart metering giant, an offer that was followed by Toshiba's 200 billion yen ($2.48 billion) counter-offer, and entry by strategic bidders including Honeywell and ABB. And while some reports say GE had withdrawn its bid, I've heard that GE is very much still in the running. Landis+Gyr earned about $200 million on about $1.5 billion in annual revenues in the last year, Reuters' anonymous sources report. That puts a $2 billion-plus price firmly in the realm of long-term investment. But strategic buyers could squeeze a lot more value out of L+G by integrating its existing technologies and utility projects into their own lines of business.
For example, GE's smart meter business relies on a host of partners for communications and networking, while L+G has its own 900-megahertz communications system, as well as back-end software to manage it all. With L+G, GE could stop just churning out smart meters like widgets, and start supplying a more holistic offering to utilities.
Chevy Volt to be assembled at solar-powered plant
In its first year the Chevrolet Volt has garnered several awards, including 2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year, Green Car Journal's 2011 Green Car of the Year, and Automobile's 2011 Automobile of the Year. And now the electric car with extended range is going to be built in a solar-powered facility. General Motors announced it is building the photovoltaic solar array, the largest in Southeast Michigan, at the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. Sunlight will help to create the $41,000 Volt. Once it's completed, the 516-kilowatt project built by GM and DTE Energy will generate 54,750 volts. Plus, the 6-acre land tract will generate 15 megawatts of electricity throughout Southeast Michigan. According to GM, the U.S. automaker will save about $15,000 a year over 20 years with the 264,000-square-foot array. DTE is investing $3 million into the project.
DOE Wrapping Up Renewable-Energy Project Loan Guarantee Program
The U.S. Department of Energy said Tuesday that it has stopped accepting applications for loan guarantees to help finance new solar, wind or other renewable energy facilities and suggested there would be winners and losers among companies that have applications pending. The loan guarantee program for renewable energy generation projects, called "Section 1705," after the portion of the 2009 Recovery Act that supports it, expires Sept. 30 and only projects that can start construction and close their loan guarantees by that date will be considered for a guarantee, Jonathan Silver, the head of the agency's loan programs office, wrote in a blog post on the DOE web site. The agency has issued roughly $1.6 billion in loan guarantees for 19 renewable energy projects to date. Loan guarantees for roughly $800 million in remaining funds will be issued to companies that have already applied, whose applications are "farthest along in the process," and whose projects are most likely to meet the Sept. 30 construction deadline, Silver wrote. "Not all these projects will succeed by September 30th," he wrote. The DOE placed another group of applications "on hold" after determining that the projects were unlikely to meet the Sept. 30 deadline, Silver wrote. He added that if the program received more funding in the future, those applications could be revived. The DOE notified companies on Tuesday whether their applications would proceed or not, Silver wrote.
SB X 1-2 and California's New Energy Future
This law, called the California Renewable Energy Resources Act, obligates all California electricity providers to obtain at least 33% of their energy from renewable resources by the year 2020. This requirement constitutes the most aggressive renewable portfolio standard in the country.
Mechanical ventilation and heat recovery System with integral heat pump
This article explains: some background to our bungalow design, why we had the original mechanical ventilation and heat recovery system installed; why we chose the latest system and our experience with both systems.
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