Some other top cleantech posts from the past couple weeks or so: Wind Power 1. Vestas published an interesting video on the chemistry of wind turbine blades (above) — interesting. 2. “A consortium led by GICON Grossmann Ingenieur Consult GmbH has developed a floating platform designed to be used for offshore … [continued]
A new report released yesterday by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research shows that Minnesota can meet 100% of its electricity needs with in-state wind and solar power, and (with ample energy efficiency investments) at a comparable cost to its existing electricity supply. The notion that solar and … [continued]
Energy storage is always an issue, whether it’s storing enough power to run an electric car or storing enough solar-generated electricity to supply power while the sun isn’t shining. KEMA, a global energy consultancy company headquartered in the Netherlands, recently released a report analyzing U.S. energy storage over the … [continued]
While technology has helped change the economics of electricity production (in favor of renewables and distributed generation), this new dynamic can as easily be controlled by the incumbent utilities as the old paradigm of centralized fossil fuel power generation.
In Electricity Energy Storage Technology Options – A White Paper Primer on Applications, Costs and Benefits – a white paper by EPRI; the Electric Power Research Institute finds that if regions in need of energy storage can defer transmission investments by investing in energy storage instead, then it can pay to invest in storage instead, depending on the costs.
If you’ve ever blown up a balloon and let it go flying across the room, you’ve got the basic idea behind a new technology for storing energy from wind power: use compressed air. ARPA-E, the federal agency charged with providing seed money for transformative energy technology, is so impressed with … [continued]
Yesterday Attorney General Jerry Brown announced a completely new kind of renewable energy legislation, introduced by State Assembly member Nancy Skinner (D) – designed to add more renewable energy storage to the grid. [social_buttons] You’ve heard of Renewable Energy Standards. These are (state level only, so far) rules that require … [continued]
A once-in-a-generation shift in U.S. science is being spurred by the Obama administration’s push to solve the nation’s energy problems, in a massive federal program that rivals the Manhattan Project. [social_buttons] This summary comes, not from just another renewable energy blogger like myself, overwhelmed by the gushing hose of news … [continued]
Pacific Gas & Electricity has won one of the Obama Administration’s 16 advanced grid awards totaling $620 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds, aimed at making more renewable energy available to the grid. PG&E’s $25 million award will fund initial work to see if California can store … [continued]
Storage is needed to harvest the full yield available from intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar. One of the options is compressed-air storage; till now only possible in underground caverns. But SustainX Energy Solutions; a Dartmouth College start-up that got $4 million in VC funding from Polaris Venture … [continued]
