Wind Power, Tidal Power, Wave Power, Energy Storage, & Consumer Tech News (7 Stories)

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7 more top cleantech stories of the week for your perusing pleasure:

Wind Power

1. Gamesa has agreed to sell 4 U.S. wind farms totaling 480 MW of capacity (!) to Canada’s Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. (Algonquin). The price tag? $900 million. Currently, Gamesa is developing and building these wind farms, which will include  240 of Gamesa’s G9X-2.0 MW turbines and should be ready to roll electricity into the grid by the end of the year. The wind farms are at the following locations: Pocahontas Prairie (80 MW) in Iowa; Sandy Ridge (50 MW) in Pennsylvania; Senate (150 MW) in Texas; and Minonk (200 MW) in Illinois.

Gamesa currently has a U.S. wind power pipeline totaling 3,500 MW. And, as of December 31, 2011, it had a global pipeline of 23,891 MW.

2. Scottish wind farm developer Burcote Wind is supposed to be unveiling a plan today of 10 wind farms across Scotland with total power capacity of nearly 800 MW. “If consented, the projects could produce an annual electricity output of around 2.6 million megawatt-hours (MWh), capable of meeting the energy needs of 554,000 homes and displacing over 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.” Burcote Wind is investing about £1 billion in the projects, in total.

3. Vestas received an 82-MW wind turbine order from my current country of Poland this week. Iberdrola Engineering and Construction Poland ordered the turbines, “22 units of the V80-2.0 MW wind turbine and 19 units of the V90-2.0 MW wind turbine,” for a project in Marszewo, 20 km northwest of Słupsk/Zajaczkowo in Poland (I don’t even know where that is, so don’t expect you do, but for what it’s worth).

Tidal Power

The Deep aquarium in Hull, Yorkshire, England.

The Deep aquarium in Hull, England is getting electricity from a tidal energy turbine as of this week. “The yellow Neptune Proteus device is moored 60 metres offshore with buoyancy tanks sustaining fascinating gadgetry which is explained in detail on Neptune Renewable Energy‘s website. The Deep is the company’s first customer and ideal as for an eye-catching demonstration of how the fledgling system works,” the UK’s Guardian notes.

“Potentially, similar small but efficient units could be sited in areas of regular and reliable tidal streams, generating power as the water flows one way and then the other during the lunar cycle. The north is well-provided with such places, especially in estuaries; although a maritime version of the turbine controversy is easy to imagine if large numbers of them were to appear.”

Wave Power

Eco Wave Power has announced that it is in the “final construction phases of its medium scale wave energy generation system.” and that “the medium scale power plant will be implemented on a pier in the Black sea during the first quarter of 2012, and will produce a minimum of stable 5KW from each floater.” Additionally, “the company has already secured funding for three ocean energy generation systems, the last of which will be a full-size commercial scale power plant, with the ability to supply electricity up to1000 households”

(Note that Josh wrote a story on Eco Wave Power in early January.)

Consumer Technology

CamelBak has started selling its All Clear™ Microbiological UV Water Purifier, a portable water purification system makes water microbiologically safe to drinking in 60 seconds.

All Clear features a high-powered ultraviolet light that neutralizes 99.9999 percent of bacteria, 99.99 percent of viruses and 99.9 percent of protozoa. In three simple steps, users secure the cap, hold the power button down for 2 seconds and rotate the bottle allowing the ultraviolet light technology to destroy and neutralize waterborne viruses and bacteria. An LCD screen reveals when the purification cycle is complete and thus when the water is safe to drink.

All Clear (MSRP $99) is extremely fast, sterilizing 0.75 liters of water in 60 seconds, and the bulb lasts more than 10,000 cycles – the equivalent of purifying 3 liters per day for nearly seven years. It is ideally suited for global adventurers, backcountry enthusiasts, disaster preparedness kits, family camping trips and everyday situations where water quality is questionable.

Energy Storage

UK startup Highview Power Storage is looking to build a 10-megawatt, 40- to 50-megawatt-hour energy storage facility that “uses super-cooled air to store energy at potentially massive scale.”

At that scale, Highview is targeting total costs of about $1,000 per kilowatt, or about $500 per kilowatt-hour of energy stored, he said. That price is lower than most, if not all, of the battery-based grid storage technologies now being deployed for grid-scale storage today.

In fact, it’s cost-competitive with the two most cost-effective energy storage technologies today: compressed air and pumped hydro. But where compressed air requires underground caverns, and pumped hydro requires dams and reservoirs, Highview’s system can scale up at 1 megawatt-hour of energy for every 10 tons of liquid air….

Enjoy your weekend!

Image: The Deep aquarium in Hull, England courtesy shutterstock


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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