CleanTechnica

Generating 20 percent of America’s electricity with wind, which is crucial to our future safety, growth and prosperity, would require building up to 22,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines.

But how to get renewable energy from the empty windy plains far from population centers, when nobody ever wants to see any more transmission line built anywhere near anybody? Ever?

Here’s one novel solution. Transmission cables placed out of sight under water provide an apparently uncontroversial way to send renewable electricity from the isolated and desolate areas of the nation that are abundant in wind – to where we live, inside heavy cables down the coasts under the ocean, or  along riverbeds or along the floors of lakes.

To put it another way: “The fish don’t vote,” says Edward M. Stern of PowerBridge, one company that is now laying underwater cable to send power down the Atlantic coast. Read the rest of this entry »

By 2050, 69% of utilities expect that a combination of central power stations in tandem with distributed renewable energy (typically rooftop solar PV and small wind) will supply most of the nation’s electricity, according to a survey by Black and Veatch.

But a surprising 13% of utilities believe that an “Al Gore Electra-net” model of distributed rooftop power will be the dominant way we get our electricity in the US by 2050.

“Most of our respondents (69%) see a hybrid electric utility industry model embracing a combination of both central generation and distributed resources evolving by 2050. Such a system would include both centralized base-load generation and distributed renewable generation made feasible by advanced smart grid technology.”

Imagine if you believed your whole industry would be obsolete by 2050. That’s only forty years from now!

If you believed your industry would be gone in forty years, would you make long term capital investments in electric power generation? I sure wouldn’t. Expect more blackouts on the central grid as we get closer to the half-century!
Read the rest of this entry »

By the end of last year, nine months after passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), $263 billion had been disbursed of the $787 billion available.

While Fox News disagrees, independent economists do agree that 1.5 million to 2 million people are now working as a result of stimulus funds disbursed to businesses and city, county and state governments so far, but the bulk of ARRA funds will be disbursed in 2010. What is less discussed, but important, is: just how much green energy are we getting for our green? When all spent – we will have added 16,000 MW (that’s 16 Gigawatts!) of clean energy  to the grid.

To grow the clean energy economy – $90 billion was set aside, with one third being disbursed by the end of 2009. Of that total, $60 billion will be in direct spending and $29.5 billion ii tax incentives to build renewable energy. How that is allocated is in this graph:
Read the rest of this entry »

This month Europe’s first electricity super-grid dedicated to renewable energy will become a political reality, as part of Europe’s plan to meet its target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Nine countries will draw up formal plans to link up a super-grid of powerful clean energy projects strung out all around the North Sea in order to ship renewable power to the mainland.

The huge new undersea transmission cable will connect up Scotland’s off-shore wind turbines off the coast of Scotland, and solar from Germany, hydro power from Norway and wave power off the coast of Belgium and Denmark.
Read the rest of this entry »

Wave energy seems to be Scotland’s lottery number. Scotland-based energy developer Pelamis just signed a joint venture agreement with the European energy giant Vattenfall for a large, almost $100 million energy project off Scotland’s Shetland Islands. This follows the recent launch of Oyster, reportedly the largest working hydro-electric wave energy device in the world, by the Scottish government and partners.

This new project by Pelamis and Vattenfall is being named Aegir, named after a Norse mythological sea god. It is Scotland’s largest wave power scheme.
Read the rest of this entry »

Moving on from the problems encountered in the Northern California wave energy tests off Mendocino and Humboldt Counties; PG&E has just filed a new preliminary permit application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for another three-year study of a potential wave power site.

Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Santa Barbara County coast is the new host. Like every Federal Agency, the Air Force is now under Executive Order to cut transport carbon emissions 30% and to power buildings with renewable energy, possibly making this location more amenable to tests of a renewable energy source that has the potential to do that.

The WaveConnect permits applied for are just the first step; allowing PG&E to put in the needed infrastructure to conduct tests. A grid extension to the ocean that brings an undersea cable 5 to 10 miles offshore to several WaveConnect “sockets” to plug the tested wave energy devices into, so that PG&E can monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the various wave energy devices they want to test.
Read the rest of this entry »

The largest working hydro-electric wave energy device was launched by Queen’s University Belfast, Aquamarine Power Ltd. and the Scottish government recently, bringing the global wave energy industry one major move forward.

The device is called Oyster. It is the only hydro-electric wave energy device producing power in the world, according to Queens University Belfast.

How does it work?

Read the rest of this entry »

The oceans seem like a great potential source for clean energy. The force of the waves, the constancy, the size of the oceans — it all seems like something that could produce energy for humans without much harm. (I still have some concerns, though it seems like one of the best options these days). Some of the major problems with utilizing the force of the oceans, however, have been how to survive storms, the need to be anchored to the see floor, and efficiency.

Researchers from the US Air Force Academy have a new, outside-the-box idea for dealing with these problems — use an aerospace approach.

This is yet to be developed to full-scale and tested in that form, but early computer and model-scale tests are showing higher efficiencies than wind turbines, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Read the rest of this entry »

The simplest ideas are best at harnessing underwater wave energy. You don’t want lots of parts in the harsh marine environment (for machine parts) under the ocean. Here’s an idea from a diver from Finland who was almost hit in the head by a shipwreck door that inspired this invention: the WaveRoller.

Now the EU is funding the diver; Rauno Koivusaari, with $4.4 million for his company AW-Energy to build the first full scale demo of his invention.

Each one at full size weighs 20 tons and produces 300 KW.
Read the rest of this entry »

Catch the Wind Ltd. of Virginia has just announced that its new Vindicator laser wind sensor has been deployed on a specialized buoy for a field test off Race Rocks Island in British Columbia.   If successful, the laser sensor would be part of the world’s first buoy-based wind power assessment system, which could shave millions off the cost of assessing conditions at potential sites for offshore wind turbines.

Conventional site assessments for large scale wind farms are done through the construction of a permanent offshore tower, which can cost up to $10 million.  Catch the Wind’s movable buoy-based system, called the WindSentinel, could virtually eliminate that expense and help open up sustainable offshore wind power to small communities, military bases, and other modestly scaled projects.

Read the rest of this entry »