CleanTechnica

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Aesthetic. Original. Functional. Who knew solar panels could make a statement?

Apparently Peter Richardson knew when he submitted a winning solar design to the International Design Awards. His idea is to turn disused water ways into functional space by populating them with solar panels shaped like water lilies. Aiming to increase quality of life, while generating energy, the lilies so impressed the Glasgow City Council that they expressed interest in developing a pilot project.

The technology itself is easily within reach:

“They can be moved and dismantled and are simply tethered to the river bed, integrated motors can rotate the discs so their orientation to the sun is maximised throughout the day.” (Project Description)

In other words, no new technology required, just some clever design. My concern would be recreational or commercial river traffic (how “disused”must the waterway be?). Would waves from wake disrupt the solar lilies? What about an impact on wildlife or wildlife’s impact on the panels? What if the river ices over in the winter? One hopes a pilot project would figure out the kinks.

What do readers think - would a product like this in your local water way make an impact on your community? (More images here) Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who are bettin’ folks, traders on the Chicago Climate Exchange view the Democrats as more bullish on cap-and-trade systems. So if you’re betting on a Democratic victory, you’ll want to buy those contracts now, in anticipation of a price spike on Nov. 5 (Politico).

Toyota Prius sales have topped 1 million and dealers in most markets simply can’t keep them on the shelves. Toyota says domestic inventory is limited by production capacity in Japan, which is shared by the Asian and European markets. The U.S. supply is at its lowest level in two years (Wired).

Imagine a high-speed train that could get you from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours forty minutes. Well, that dream is now one step closer to reality as the California High Speed Rail Authority has cleared environmental impact assessments and is beginning construction of what will be the most substantial high-speed rail network in the U.S. But don’t make travel arrangements just yet. The project is not scheduled to be completed until 2030 (gas 2.0).

A joint biofuel effort was announced Thursday involving Air Bus, JetBlue, Honeywell, and Aero Engines that plans to study ways to make commercial aviation fuels out of second-generation feedstocks such as algae (Green Tech Blog).

A new wave of nuclear power plants in the U.S. is likely to cost $5 billion to $12 billion a plant, two to four times previous estimates, driving up electricity bills for consumers and inevitably reigniting public concerns about the costs and benefits of nuclear power (The Wall St. Journal).      

Photo credits:

Karl Gunnarrsson via flickr Creative Commons License

compicpie via flickr Creative Commons License

Bistrosavage via flickr Creative Comons License

Xtreme Concentrated Solar Power: if a magnifying glass is like lightning to ants, this would be their atomic bomb.

We already know that concentrated solar power (CSP) is shaking things up in the solar industry. A subset within the industry is turning up the heat. “Extreme” Concentrated solar magnifies intense sunlight onto a solar cell, at temperatures that could melt it, to boost efficiency for less money.

The holy grail of renewable energy is not just efficiency but competitive pricing. Most consumers don’t want to wait 5-10+ years to earn back their investment in energy savings, assuming that they can afford solar. Never mind the added value of generating some of your own energy. Utility-scale facilities hinge not only on cost, but infrastructure. If you build your solar/wind farm in the desert, transmission lines may not come out to meet you. So when someone claims to have a cheap, efficient solar technology, people pay attention.

Extreme Concentrated Solar stands out because it claims to be affordable and very efficient. Unlike solar-thermal (CSP), which utilizes the heat of the sun, this technology still converts light into power (photo voltaic). So many solar companies have attempted to reduce cost by rising to industrial scale, but this method takes the opposite approach. XCPV (extreme concentrated photo voltaic) uses very small solar panels combined into a module design, and modules are infinitely scalable. Read the rest of this entry »

Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems (VWS:DC) had a big week. First, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer announced that they would be building a tower manufacturing plant in Colorado. Second, Vestas reported a 94 percent jump in earnings in the first quarter of 2008, as compared to the same period last year.

Although they have yet to disclose the location of the new tower manufacturing facility, it would be situated to complement the company’s fist North American blade manufacturing plant, which recently opened its doors in Windsor, Colorado.

For the tower plant, the company will need a large parcel of land served by freight rail, a combination that Northern Colorado can provide at several locations, including the Windsor location, where construction proceeds on phase two of the blade plant. According to the Northern Colorado Business Review, more than 1,000 new jobs could result from further expansion of Vestas’ manufacturing presence. Read the rest of this entry »

300 garbage collection trucks in California will soon be fueled by the same trash that they haul. Landfill gas will be purified and liquefied, producing up to 13,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) daily.

This facility at Waste Management’s (WMI: NYSE) Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California will begin operation in 2009. It comes with a price tag of $15.5 million, with grants providing $1.4 million.

Cleaner Fuel

Waste Management is the largest waste management company in North America and operates the largest US fleet of heavy-duty collection trucks. The company has a goal to reduce fleet emissions by 15% by 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

Rock Port, Missouri is the first 100% wind powered city in the US. Loess Hill Wind Farm, with four 1.25 MW wind turbines is estimated to generate 16 gigawatt hours (16 million kilowatt hours) of electricity annually. 13 gigawatts hours of electricity have historically been consumed annually by the residents and businesses of this town of 1,400 people.

The local electric company, Missouri Public Utility Alliance, will purchase excess electricity when available. They will then supply power when there is not enough wind energy available. Excess wind energy will not be stored but rather fed into the city’s high voltage line, making it an intermittent source of power.

Several factors made this smaller scale project possible. The city has a bluff within the city limits with good resources, John Deere’s Wind Energy financing the project, and proximity to the power grid.

Related Posts on Renewable Energy:

What’s Holding Wind Power Back?

Solar Thermal Electricity: Can it Replace Coal, Gas, and Oil?

The Unlimited Potential of American Wind Power: AWEA

Planetthoughts: First Town in the US to be 100% Wind Powered

Offshore Wind: How Europe Plans to Meet Clean Energy Goals

There are a lot of cool gadgets out there, but there’s a fine line between what’s cool and what’s useful. This is a green list of gadgets that are useful, but boast the extra-cool factor of using renewable energy. No batteries required!

10. The Ship has Landed

The lightship is a solar-powered LED mounted on suction cups. Result: a portable, hands-free, solar light. It’s even weather proof and weighs a slim 8oz. For under $15, this is the best 8 hours of clean light I can think of, and I might just get one for my car/camping trips/travels.

9. High-tech pool toy? Read the rest of this entry »

Tesla Would Be Proud

A few years back, Marin Soljačić was driven from bed by the insistent beeping of his mobile phone. But it wasn’t beeping for him to answer it, it was beeping for him to plug it in. Since that night, the assistant professor of physics at MIT, has been thinking about ways to start his phone charging as soon as he enters his home - without the need for plugs or wires.

Jennifer Chu at Technology Review writes that Soljačić considered using radio waves, but found that most of their energy would be lost in transmission. Targeted methods like lasers require a clear line-of-sight and could be dangerous for anything in their way. According to Chu, he eventually settled on a phenomenon called magnetic resonance coupling, in which two objects tuned to the same frequency exchange energy strongly but interact only weakly with other objects. Read the rest of this entry »

After a cold winter and rising fuel prices, Vermont and other Northeastern states are warming to the idea of using local biomass to heat their homes. According to Renewable Energy World, pellet stoves, which burn pellets made from wood shavings and sawdust and whose emissions are nearly zero, are becoming more attractive heating options. One of the most efficient use of the stoves is as a heating supplement.

“In New Hampshire, New England Wood Pellet has been expanding its operations and has built a manufacturing facility in New York in order to keep up with the demand for pellet fuels. According to Steve Walker, CEO of New England Wood Pellet, bioheating and pellet fuels in particular are primed to take up a bigger share of the market in the coming years because consumers may be starting to realize that oil prices are going to remain high into the foreseeable future. He points at the cost to energy production ratio as the one of the most important reasons the pellet market will continue to grow.”

Shown here is the Harman Advance model.

With dwindling fossil fuel supplies, coal has been viewed as the energy source of last resort. This outlook is changing as estimated global coal supplies seem to have been severely inflated. Is coal’s future in doubt?

Many experts are saying yes. Professor David Rutledge of CalTech believes that world coal reserves are grossly overstated and could be substantially exhausted this century. This is in stark contrast to earlier forecasts.

Coal Reserves Inflated

In the last 20 years, official coal reserves have fallen by 170 billion tons. To put this number in perspective, global coal consumption in 2007 was 6 billion tons. Reserves figures are dropping far more quickly than actual extraction.

Read the rest of this entry »