Yieldco: A Financial Catalyst for Creating New Solar Parks
A yieldco is a publicly-traded company which aims to create growing dividends. More yieldcos are entering the renewable energy market, and the existing ones have grown quite fast in the last year.
Interview with Andreas Karelas of RE-volv: Why Don't More Environmental Nonprofits Go Solar
RE-volv is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower people and communities to invest collectively in renewable energy. RE-volv finances solar energy projects for nonprofits and worker-owned cooperatives that serve their community through a 20 year solar lease agreement.
"Designer carbon" boosts battery performance
Mark Shwartz, Stanford Univ.: Stanford Univ. scientists have created a new carbon material that significantly boosts the performance of energy-storage technologies. Their results are featured in ACS Central Science.
"We have developed a 'designer carbon' that is both versatile and controllable," said Zhenan Bao, the senior author of the study and a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford. "Our study shows that this material has exceptional energy-storage capacity, enabling unprecedented performance in lithium-sulfur batteries and supercapacitors."
According to Bao, the new designer carbon represents a dramatic improvement over conventional activated carbon, an inexpensive material widely used in products ranging from water filters and air deodorizers to energy-storage devices.
"A lot of cheap activated carbon is made from coconut shells," Bao said. "To activate the carbon, manufacturers burn the coconut at high temperatures and then chemically treat it."
The activation process creates nanosized holes, or pores, that increase the surface area of the carbon, allowing it to catalyze more chemical reactions and store more electrical charges.
Are Wood Skyscrapers the Future Building Trend?
Concrete or wood skyscrapers? Wood, you ask? Can you even build tall buildings out of wood? There has been a movement for wood-based, eco-friendly architecture for years. Some architects believe that when harvested responsibly, wood is one of the best materials architects and engineers have for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and storing carbon in our buildings.
Talking Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) with Rachel Dahl and James Faulds
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected a site near Fallon for its Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE), and $2 million in federal funds to launch the ground-breaking research project.
Berkeley lab unveils new solar energy center aimed at producing fuel from sunlight
Jeremy Thomas for Inside Bay Area News: In a christening hailed as a key moment in the effort to harness the sun's energy to create fuel, Lawrence Berkeley Lab officials on Tuesday unveiled a $59 million Solar Energy Research Center.
Named after former Energy Department Secretary and Lab Director Steven Chu, the 40,000-square-foot Chu Hall will be a place of world-changing research in producing cheaper, more efficient renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, said Chu, who was honored for inspiring the mission.
"This is one of the most important problems that science, technology and innovation really need to solve," Chu said. "It's a very big deal. ... We simply need to save the world, and it's going to be science that's going to be at the heart of that solution."
The facility will be home to the Berkeley hub of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, a Department of Energy-funded collaboration led by the California Institute of Technology that is attempting to create solar fuel as plants do by using sunlight and other catalysts to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas and convert carbon dioxide into liquid fuels such as methanol and ethanol. The byproduct of producing such a fuel would be oxygen.
Biogas: Big Opportunities, But Beware the Risks
Today, there are more than 191 biogas sites already operating on farms and about 1,500 more at wastewater treatment plants, but there is tremendous opportunity for more growth in biogas systems.
Why one company sees great potential in the U.S. offshore wind market
By Jaclyn Brandt for FierceEnergy: In April, DONG Energy signed an agreement to take over RES Americas Developments Inc.'s (RES) more than 1,000-megawatt (MW) development project rights off the coast of Massachusetts. RES had secured the rights to two leases from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in January.
"The U.S. is an interesting market for offshore wind with the potential to become a significant area for future development," said Samuel Leupold, executive vice president of Wind Power with DONG Energy, said at the announcement in April. "We already have a number of post-2020 projects in our pipeline in North-Western Europe that we will continue to develop. With the takeover of the offshore wind development project in the US, we will broaden our geographical scope and follow the market potential outside of our current footprint."
Leupold continued, "The site conditions are quite similar to those we currently work with in North-Western Europe which means that the project could be developed using well-known technology and logistics."
Although the offshore wind market in the United States has many regulatory obstacles, Brostrøm said that there is also a lot of potential off the East Coast -- including good wind speeds and water depths. He also cited the efforts by BOEM to encourage wind development.
The Road to Change: Electric Vehicles Power the Future for Everyone
The EV industry is on the precipice of a significant growth spurt. AltEnergyMag.com talks with Principal Solar about this and the their now available White Paper "The Road To Change: Electric Vehicles Power the Future for Everyone".
Biomass Power Generation - A solution to Aggressive Green Power Strategies
A confluence of industry drivers such as regulatory framework and government support, long-term supply of low cost feedstock, and FITs and tax incentives for biomass energy use are anticipated to propel the use of biomass for energy generation.
This cloudy-day black silicon solar cell can hit a record 22.1% efficiency
Researchers at Finland’s Aalto University have achieved a record-breaking 22.1% efficiency for a nanostructured silicon, or black, solar cell. They accomplished this by overlaying a thin, passivating film on the nanostructures by a process known as atomic layer deposition, and by integrating all of the metal contacts on the cell’s back side.
Perhaps the best part: Black solar cells work really well on cloudy days. “This is an advantage particularly in the north, where the sun shines from a low angle for a large part of the year,” said professor Hele Savin from Aalto University, who coordinated the study, in a statement. “We have demonstrated that in winter Helsinki, black cells generate considerably more electricity than traditional cells, even though both cells have identical efficiency values.”
Using the aforementioned process, the team managed to beat their previous record by almost 4%, which is a stunning achievement. The new cells have a certified external quantum efficiency of 96% at 300nm wavelengths, which the team said shows that charged carrier surface recombination is no longer a problem — and that for the first time, the black silicon isn’t limiting energy conversion efficiency. And thanks to the inherent properties of black solar cells, they can capture solar radiation at low angles, generating more electricity over the full duration of a day as compared with traditional cells.
The Thermal Energy Storage Techniques & Projects - Potential To Store Energy For At Least 7 Hours
Thermal energy storage (TES) is a load management technology with a significant potential to shift load from peak to off-peak demand hours.
The Thin Film Solar Cell Industry In Transition: Knockout Phase Is Over - Profitability And Vertical Integration Next
The implementation of PV into buildings should not be considered an added novelty product supplementing current construction materials, but rather be seen as an integrated part of roofing and facade material that could add substantial value to building material suppliers range.
A highlight of WINDPOWER 2015
U.S. energy secretary, Dr Ernest Moniz, spoke at the Opening General Session at AWEA’s WINDPOWER 2015 event today in Orlando, Florida. Moniz stressed that wind power is an important and necessary part of the solution to climate change. Wind could provide five times what it provides today, he said, with a goal of one trillion kilowatt-hours per year in America.
To get there, new technologies are needed to boost the industry is areas where it is not yet cost-effective or as profitable as other energy sources. Moniz mentioned better siting methods, improved drivetrains, and longer blades. On the show floor, companies are certainly bringing some new and improved technologies to the wind market. Click here for the full Summary from WindPower Engineering.
Using Aerial Image Technology is Paying Off for this Solar Company
Giannoumis has found that using PictometryOnline™, with access to high-resolution aerial imagery and analytical tools, combined with solar roof reports and CAD-compatible .dxf files provided by EagleView Technologies, is the key to maintaining productivity. This technology is also offering the company a new level of profitability and accuracy throughout the system design process.
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