What Apple's $848 Million Solar Energy Deal Really Means
From Todd Woody for TakePart: Apple will spend $848 million over 25 years to purchase carbon-free electricity from developer First Solar in the largest commercial solar deal to date. It was widely reported that the energy would power the company’s California operations, including its new spaceship-like Silicon Valley headquarters.
Not quite.
The electricity generated by the project is the equivalent of the energy consumed by Apple’s operations. But that electricity will flow into the power grid and out to millions of Californians’ homes, not directly to the company’s offices, stores, and data centers.
But the solar electricity generated by the power plant will offset any fossil-fuel use by the company—and more important, Apple’s investment most likely guaranteed that the California Flats Solar Project is being built. Such deals by big, private companies have become crucial for the expansion of renewable energy to fight climate change at a time when utilities’ interest has lagged. Cheap natural gas has made solar and wind enegy less attractive to power providers in recent years.
Google, for instance, has poured more than $1.5 billion into solar and wind projects, sometimes inking power-purchase agreements, like Apple has, and sometimes buying a piece of a project as an investment.
Bottom line: That means more clean, green energy for everyone.
Bionic Leaf Uses Bacteria To Convert Solar Energy Into Liquid Fuel
From Science 2.0: Harvesting sunlight is old technology for plants but it's a level of efficiency in solar energy we would love to be within a billion years of - artificial photosynthesis is needed if we want to go beyond the energy density of things like combustion engines.
Solar energy, using electricity from photovoltaic cells to yield hydrogen that can be later used in fuel cells, would be terrific but has technological obstacles. Now scientists have created a system that uses bacteria to convert solar energy into a liquid fuel. Their work integrates an "artificial leaf," which uses a catalyst to make sunlight split water into hydrogen and oxygen, with a bacterium engineered to convert carbon dioxide plus hydrogen into the liquid fuel isopropanol.
Pamela Silver, the Elliott T. and Onie H. Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at HMS and an author of the paper, calls the system a bionic leaf, a nod to the artificial leaf invented by the paper's senior author, Daniel Nocera, the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University.
An Israeli Company is building a 20-hour-per-day solar power plant
Israel's Brenmiller Energy said on Monday it will build a 300 million shekel ($77.27 million) solar power field using an energy storage technology that will generate electricity for about 20 hours a day.
The 10-megawatt field, to be built on about 110 acres (45 hectares) in the desert town of Dimona in southern Israel, will combine existing solar thermal technology with an underground system that stores heat for use at night.
Brenmiller Energy said it hopes to complete the field in early 2017, and will then sell electricity through the grid. During the four hours of the day that solar energy is insufficient, the company said it will use biomass to produce power.
The company already has a working proof-of-concept for the storage system.
A spokesman said Brenmiller Energy will fund the 10-megawatt project itself, in part to help promote the system to clients worldwide.
Apple is building a solar-powered data "command center" in Arizona
From Quartz: Apple’s sapphire plant project in Arizona didn’t work out, so Apple is investing another $2 billion to convert the facility into a massive data center, the Wall Street Journal’s Daisuke Wakabayashi reports:
The company plans to employ 150 full-time Apple staff at the Mesa, Arizona, facility, which will serve as a command center for its global network of data centers. In addition to the investment for the data center, Apple plans to build a solar farm capable of producing 70-megawatts of energy to power the facility.
For context of what a 70-megawatt solar facility entails, one Arizona solar plant, Solana, says its output is 280 megawatts, supplying some 70,000 houses with clean energy. Apple boasts that it is “the only company in our industry whose data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy.”
The announcement comes after Apple’s sapphire partner, GT Advanced Technologies, filed for bankruptcy last year. The facility was to “produce 30 times as much sapphire as any other plant in the world,” Wakabayashi wrote last year. At the time, Apple was already consuming “one-fourth of the world’s supply of sapphire to cover the iPhone’s camera lens and fingerprint reader.”
Canadian Solar to Acquire Recurrent Energy from Sharp Corporation for $265 Million
Canadian Solar Inc. (the “Company”, or “Canadian Solar”) (NASDAQ: CSIQ), one of the world’s largest solar power companies, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Sharp Corporation (TSE: 6753) to acquire Recurrent Energy, LLC (“Recurrent”), a leading North American solar energy developer, for approximately $265 million.
Once completed, the acquisition of Recurrent will increase Canadian Solar’s total solar project pipeline by approximately 4.0 GW to 8.5 GW, and its late-stage project pipeline by approximately 1.0 GW to 2.4 GW. Located in California and Texas, Recurrent’s 1.0 GW late-stage pipeline is one of the largest utility-scale project portfolios scheduled to be built prior to the ITC expiration in 2016, and represents an estimated revenue opportunity of at least $2.3 billion for Canadian Solar under a build and sell business model.
The transaction further expands Canadian Solar’s position as a leading solar energy developer, with a globally diversified project pipeline in low risk geographies. In addition, this transaction broadens Canadian Solar’s project development and financing capabilities, and enhances the Company’s position for creating its own Yield-Co in the quarters ahead.
"The acquisition of Recurrent is an important milestone for us as it significantly expands and strengthens our position in the North American market, and places Canadian Solar firmly among the leading global solar energy companies," said Dr. Shawn Qu, Canadian Solar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "By combining Canadian Solar’s global reach and experience with Recurrent’s proven solar energy development track record in the US and Canada, we are significantly expanding the scale of our solar energy development platform. At the same time, this transaction broadens our strategic options to extend our business model from development and construction into potential ownership and operation of solar power plants as we work to create additional value for our shareholders."
Super Grid - Renewable Energy from Remote Sites to Cities (Projects and Challenges)
Just imagine, a super grid will allow Norway's hydro-power to light up a restaurant in Italy, Belgium's wind farms to provide power to a home in U.K., and Saharan solar power plants to run a factory in Germany.
What is helium-3?
Will China Be The First To Mine Lunar Energy?
Are Solar Highways Coming?
Solar roads would consist of individual panels with three layers. The top layer would consist of a high-strength textured glass that provides traction for vehicles. The second layer would be an array of solar cells for gathering the energy, and on the bottom, a base plate that distributes the collected power.
Solar Energy Stock Index Q4 2014
Solar Energy Index Underperforms S&P in Q4 2014
How Solar Power is Trending Worldwide in 2015
India is a late player but is pushing ahead to include solar power as part of its portfolio of energy sources. China is pushing ahead with ambitious solar plans in a bid to generate more electricity from renewable energy.
Novel Net Meter Solar PV System in Hawaii
The Sunnyside Energy system consists of 90 STION 135W panels mounted in two arrays, each equipped with a 5 kW Solar Edge inverter.
How Clean Energy Can Power Climate Action During Obama's Visit to India
Prioritizing clean energy during the Republic Day visit can provide energy access solutions, create jobs, and open a huge market opportunity to Indian and American companies alike - while taking concrete action on climate change.
Seven Reasons Cheap Oil Can't Stop Renewables Now
Tom Randall for Bloomberg: Oil prices have fallen by more than half since July. Just five years ago, such a plunge in fossil fuels would have put the renewable-energy industry on bankruptcy watch. Today: Meh.
Here are seven reasons why humanity’s transition to cleaner energy won’t be sidetracked by cheap oil.
1. The Sun Doesn't Compete With Oil
Oil is for cars; renewables are for electricity. The two don’t really compete. Oil is just too expensive to power the grid, even with prices well below $50 a barrel.
Instead, solar competes with coal, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear power. Solar, the newest to the mix, makes up less than 1 percent of the electricity market today but will be the world’s biggest single source by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. Demand is so strong that the biggest limit to installations this year may be the availability of panels. Cont'd...
Wind power auction draws limited interest
Boston Globe: Are falling energy prices and the collapse of the Cape Wind project undermining other offshore wind projects?
A federal government auction of four leases to build wind farms off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard drew little interest, selling for a fraction of what previous auctions raised recently.
Just two of 12 qualified bidders participated in the auction Thursday by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to sell wind development rights for a 1,161-square-mile swath of ocean about 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Two of the four leases did not receive any bids.
One of the winning bidders, the renewable energy company RES Americas, paid $281,285 to lease 187,523 acres, while the second, New Jersey-based MW Offshore LLC, paid $166,886 for 166,886 acres.
That works out to just $1.50 and $1 per acre, respectively, for each lease.
In contrast, Deepwater Wind New England LLC paid about $23 an acre in 2013 with its winning bid of $3.8 million for a nearby stretch of ocean closer to Rhode Island. The federal ocean energy bureau has also sold offshore leases off the coasts of Virginia and Maryland.
Despite the poor showing, officials noted the new leases would nearly double the amount of acreage the bureau has leased for offshore wind power through competitive sales.
Foreign funds flow set to skyrocket for renewable energy projects in India
From The Economic Times: Big-ticket announcements involving American loans for renewable energy projects, green bonds, venture capital and pension funds are on the cards after US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to collaborate in the area of clean energy and combat climate change.
Officials at the renewable energy ministry said deals would be negotiated at a high-profile event next month, when Modi will kick off a gathering of industry leaders, bankers, investors and central bank officials from the US, India, Europe and other regions.
A team of senior US officials and executives from funding agencies, ministries and companies will interact with Indian officials from the finance ministry, Reserve Bank of India and other agencies to help India meet its ambitious target of adding 1 lakh megawatt of clean energy, which is 40% of the country's total generation capacity now, at a cost of Rs 6 lakh crore.
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