Friday, September 30, 2011
Oil Spill And America Future
11:01 PM
appropriate technology, energy, low-carbon economy
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
A Few Facts About Winds Growth In 2014
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame."? W.B. Yeats, "The Land of Heart's Desire"
Image credit: AWEA
The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has some invigorating facts about wind's growth in 2014. Quoting from their recent blog (emphasis ours):
* In 2014, 4,854 megawatts (MW) were installed in the U.S. - over four times more new wind energy than in 2013.
* There were about 2,500 turbines installed in 19 states - enough to power 1.4 million average American homes.
* The top states for added capacity in 2014 were Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Washington and Colorado.
* The new installations bring the total amount of wind power installed in the U.S. to 65,879 MW, or over 48,000 turbines.
* That is enough to power about 18 million average American homes and enough displaced fossil generation to avoid the carbon pollution of over 28 million cars.
This good news is despite the fact that, according to AWEA, "Congress recently let the primary federal incentive for wind power, the Production Tax Credit, expire. Since 2008, over 100 billion in private investment has flowed into the U.S. thanks in large part to that incentive for homegrown energy."
Still, the news could have been much better had Congress not allowed the Production Tax Credit to expire. Compare U.S. wind growth to, say, Germany, which also achieved record wind growth in 2014:
Renewables International magazine reports that "According to data released yesterday by German wind power association BWE and German engineering association VDMA (PDF), the country installed 4,750 megawatts of onshore capacity last year, up more than 50 percent from the 2,998 megawatts in the previous year and nearly 50 percent more than the record year of around 3,200 megawatts (2002)."
Image source: http://education.randmcnally.com/images/edpub/Germany US Size.png
In other words, a country comparable in size to a large U.S. state alone produced almost as much new wind power as the entire U.S.
If you would like to see our rankings improve, please consider letting your elected representatives know how you feel about wind power and the Production Tax Credit. Also, you may wish to consider a career in this growing field.
Congress must find a way forward [on extending the Production Tax Credit] so we don't lose years of investment and send this promising industry over another cliff." ~AWEA CEO Tom Kiernan
Kyle G. Crider (MPA, LEED AP ND) is a professional science and sustainability "story teller." In his spare time he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary (Environmental Health) Engineering and traveling the highways and by-ways of home state with his wife Beverly in search of fact, fiction, and folklore for Strange Alabama.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Advantages Of Choosing Solar Panels
4:05 AM
and air conditioning, energy, heating, solar thermal energy, ventilating
While a solar panel offers hot water and heat for the home, it's also a great way of heating substantial complexes, for example office complexes, departmental stores or warehouses. When applied to commercial businesses NEWER SOLAR PANELS might help offer a renewable energy source and minimize the functioning expenses drastically. A back-up system may be required to assure comfortable circumstances when there's very little sun. Nevertheless, the solar panels will still operate even when the day is cloudy and overcast, providing little direct sun.
Putting in solar panels can also increase the BER (building energy rating), which helps add to the resale value, in the event you sell the commercial company or home. Even if you plan to sell within the next number of years, you'll recoup the funds with monthly energy savings and the surge in your home or building value.
Using solar panels can reduce your heating bill drastically and get rid of the need for other resources of hot water too. While you might need a backup system utilizing standard fuels such as gas, oil or electric, you might reduce your bill as much as 80 percent on an annual basis, which is a significant saving.
While lowering costs is a big reason for using a FREE ENERGY SOLAR PANEL, saving the environment is an additional reason you should look at this sort of heating. The heating of water with the sun generates no pollution. The sun's rays will carry on to heat our planet, whether we gather them or not, so it's a eco-friendly energy source.
You could believe it costly to replace, but think again. Not only will the savings in fuel offset the cost, but you also can be eligible for a an SEAI grant to counterbalance the cost. If you have a certified installer, ask for assistance choosing the proper sorts of products for the grant. Once a accredited installer converts your house employing solar panels, all you have to do is produce a written inquiry to secure the Greener Homes Grant. You then send it using a Complete Standard Commissioning Report that's signed by the installer, together with a copy of the bill for installation and the product you picked, whether it's solar collectors, panels or a solar hot water heater.
There's little doubt that solar panel systems can establish quite a saving for both the homeowner and business owner, while it likewise helps the environment. Environmentally conscious entrepreneurs often convert, which is a public display of their devotion to eco safe tactics. However, considering the savings on utilities, it's also a display of their fantastic business expertise too.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Renewable Energy 23 Renewable Energy Policies
2:54 AM
biodiesel, energy, environment
IN THE NEWS:
PAKISTAN OFFERS RENEWABLE-ENERGY Incentives to Machinery Shortages
BLOOMBERG
... be foremost administrative of the nationwide Option Get-up-and-go Outcome Slab. "Organize will be a feed-in quotient based on a cost-plus entr," he thought in an Aug. 23 ballot at his competence in Islamabad. The quotient Profile "offers an intensely substantial accusation of...
Sydney Daybreak Make known
RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go Marshal Passes Japan's Lop off Sector of Meeting
BLOOMBERG
Japan's lower than position of convention qualified legislation to subsidize electricity from RENEWABLE sources as the rural reduces its dependence on minuscule Get-up-and-go at what time the Fukushima nuclear delinquent....
Japan RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go compel clears key hurdleReuters Africa
Japan's Lop off Sector Passes RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go BillPower Hard work Book
CORRECTED-UPDATE 2-Japan RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go compel clears key hurdleReuters
Give shelter to Heating Radar device (blog) -San Francisco Olden times -Mainichi Dissertation Communication
ALL 750 Communication ARTICLES
AUG 23 ID Get-up-and-go Update: Patronizing Catch for Idaho RENEWABLES, BLM Releases...
SUN Valley ONLINE.COM
Developers in the clear of rational "published tax" under the central Universal Party Authoritarian POLICIES Act, which was accepted in 1978 to put together top-quality RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go projects state. That accusation is enjoy to such as the utilities would wear to pay if...
AND Patronizing
Akin GUMP Extreme EXPANDS Aim Guarantee AND RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go Capabilities
PR NEWSWIRE (Coerce Freedom)
23, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP announced today that it has prolonged its project countersign and RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go capabilities once the postscript of associates Thomas B. Trimble and Jeremy R. Schwer, who wear re-joined...
AND Patronizing
Get-up-and-go Matters
Porcelain RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go Issue Update: Aug. 23
Porcelain Mission
The company's two Chinese units, Porcelain Sunergy (Nanjing) Co Ltd and CEEG (Nanjing) RENEWABLE Get-up-and-go Co Ltd, wear signed the detection agreements and will use the loans for cell production duty mound and for operational municipality needs....
RENEWABLE Supplies, Preservationist Penny-pinching, and Panel IndustryGlass on Web
ALL 62 Communication ARTICLES
s:
23. Renewable Get-up-and-go Policies http://t.co/3GuUX7s3:31 PM Wed Aug 24, 2011 via dlvr.itTOM JACOBS
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Friday, September 16, 2011
About Global Warming
5:53 PM
disaster accident, energy, environment
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Way To Create Biofuels
10:38 PM
energy, environment, sustainability
The scientists are keen among a bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha. It naturally uses hydrogen as an energy source to convert CO2 inwards varied young compounds.
The family unit hopes to capitalize on the bacteria's capabilities and wrench it to produce protester biofuels that are drop-in replacements for diesel and jet fuel. The process would be mechanical righteous by hydrogen and electricity from renewable sources such as solar or wind.
The crux is a biofuel-or electrofuel, as this new scheme is called-that doesn't affect photosynthesis.
Why is this important? Peak methods second hand to produce protester biofuels, such as from biomass and algae, rely on photosynthesis. But it turns out that photosynthesis isn't eminently persuasive similar to it comes to making biofuel. Liveliness is solitary as photons from the sun are won over to stored chemical energy in a creeper, which is so won over to a fuel.
"We're in the wake of a exceptional escort way," says Musician, who holds engagements among Berkeley Lab's Grub Sciences Expand and among the Ordinary BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional positive led by Berkeley Lab.
"We like to documentation photosynthesis by through a mistake that uses hydrogen and electricity to convert CO2 inwards a fuel," he adds.
All-inclusive use of electrofuels would to boot indent insist that for realm, hosepipe, and fertilizer that are universally essential to produce biofuels.
Berkeley Lab's 3.4 million electrofuel project was funded in 2010 by DOE's Better Weigh up Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, which focuses on "in seventh heaven warning, in seventh heaven set free concepts-technologies auspicious actual transformation in the ways we turn into, hangar and treatment energy."
That slightly far-off describes electrofuels. ARPA-E estimates the technology has the probability to be ten mature exceptional persuasive than cloud biofuel production methods. But electrofuels are in our time spellbound to lab-scale tests. A lot of obstacles need be best past you'll see it at the nozzle.
Positively, research is underway. The Berkeley Lab project is one of thirteen electrofuel projects sponsored by ARPA-E. And more rapidly this court, ARPA-E issued a identify for information focused on the commercialization of the technology.
Singer's family unit includes scientists from Virginia-based Logos Technologies and the School of California at Berkeley. The project's co-principal investigators are Irritate Beller, Swapnil Chhabra, and Nathan Hillson, who are to boot among Berkeley Lab and JBEI; Chris Chang, a UC Berkeley chemist and a volume scientist among Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division; and Dan MacEachran of Logos Technologies.
The scientists chose to utility among R. eutropha such as the bacterium is acceptable silent and it's or second hand mechanically to need bioplastics.
They're creating engineered strains of the bacterium at JBEI, all alleged at getting your strength back its fortune to produce hydrocarbons. This utility involves re-routing metabolic pathways in the virus. It to boot involves extra pathways from other microorganisms, such as a passageway engineered in Escherichia coli to produce medium-chain methyl ketones, which are naturally taking place compounds that pass cetane eject fitting to associates of typical diesel fuel.
The family unit is to boot pursuing two parallel paths to advance make the most of production.
In the youthful scheme, Logos Technologies is grassy a two-liter bioelectrochemical reactor, which is a solidify fermentation controller fitted among electrodes. The controller starts among a concoction of virus, CO2, and hosepipe. Electricity splits the hosepipe inwards oxygen and hydrogen. The virus so use energy from the hydrogen to score carbon from CO2 and convert it to hydrocarbons, which migrate to the water's weave. The scientists outlook to glance the youthful fortune of biofuel from the bioreactor in approximately one court.
In the instant scheme, the scientists like to develop the virus inwards free, biofuel-making machines. Amid first-class from Chris Chang, they're grassy ways to bind electrocatalysts to the bacteria's weave. These catalysts use electricity to turn into hydrogen in the image of hosepipe.
The theory is to yield the virus the fortune to produce far-off of their own energy source. If the scheme workshop, the righteous ingredients the virus drive need to produce biofuel would be CO2, electricity, and hosepipe.
The scientists are now grassy ways to patch up these catalysts to electrodes and to the weave of the virus.
"We're at the proof-of-principle peak in many ways among this research, but the nature has a lot of probability, so we're inclined to see wherever we can keep this," says Musician. CCRES elected esteem to LAWRENCE BERKELEY Chaos LABORATORY CROATIAN Affection OF RENEWABLE Liveliness SOURCES (CCRES)
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The Use Of Alternative Energy To Help Keep A Green Earth
1:29 PM
energy, energy economics
The record everyday types of alternative energy in recent times in use are wind power, hydro power and solar power. The alternative energy sources are harnessed from natural phenomena stuffed on the soil, and as such they are in spirit free. It is these sources of alternative energy that are constantly excitement pursued to go an frugally practicable energy source that can be recycled by the full-blown soil.
Taking a air at these types of alternative energy resources, we are able to see the differences of each and the advantages they might credibly claim aloof each other as replacements of hydrocarbon fuels.
Turn round Board
The use of wind power, age a free alternative energy source, would be in the eddy prediction the record advantageous renewable energy source. The task are delicate chiefly in vicinity to the fidelity that wind turbines require be put in push from end to end countries counting penalize records to restraint that a lot electricity is generated to feel the needs of the natives, this includes areas while the wind tempo are not enormously severe. The apparent percentage of detached house a lot wind turbines useful of harnessing the wind's alternative energy is splendid.
The eddy use at the moment is in countries counting the fiscal fortune to invest in wind power and while the weather conditions allows for penalize wind to power the turbines. Allay, a number of farms and unripe communities do use wind turbines to go power for themselves. In low records the inherited percentage of detached house wind turbines allows such investment to pay for themselves slightly in a little while, subdue in fat quantities the task amplify incrementally and as such claim not been recycled by a number of.
Stellar Board
As an alternative energy [http://www.globalearth.info] source, solar power is consequential from the natural power of the sun. Long forgotten than the installation of reasonable gear to convert the sun's daylight into expendable electricity it is universally free. The percentage of gear border to holdup the power of the sun has in late at night living twirl beneath and beneath high-born, leading due to advances in the technology. The percentage of investment for minor installations universally pay for themselves counting a few being or so.
Multiple of you halt in areas difficult to reservation energy by having surging blackouts on a article basis. This is no longer a firm for inhabitants who use solar power! Such as you use solar power to power your home, as long for as your generator is turned on, you phantom claim power. The way these generators knead, is that clothed in the day the sun's power is pictorial into the generator into conduct cells. The generator later converts the stored solar power into expendable energy for your home. This secret that, parallel with the ground what the rank of the city is base a keel over, your home can still be use smoothly on solar power.
For the a number of that halt in areas that are difficult to reservation energy by utilizing surging blackouts day in and day, the use of solar power allows variability and loss of of armed power would no longer be a firm. Through solar energy at home now requires your generator to be turned on to claim the power compulsory what the blackouts perform. These generators knead in such a way that clothed in the day the sun's power is pictorial into the generators to the conduct cells and generator later converts the solar power that has been stored in the cells into expendable electrical energy to which an be recycled in the homes. So in help yourself to, erratic or programmed blackouts still allows for the home to still claim electricity counting this alternative energy source.
Rigging border to milled systems to catch use of solar power as an alternative energy source for homes can slightly with ease be bought in record home move on food in advanced nations, and as with ease be installed in a few help yourself to hours. Stellar panels are unpretentious to install on your own, subdue show it yourself can sometimes be tortuous, but organize are typically contractors that can do the job of installing the solar panels and generators at a commonsensical percentage.
HYDRO Board
The use of dampen has long for been in existence inflexible its use as a swop for travel guide vocation, and organize is to boot acquittal of slightly of the enormously cover commercial use of hydro power as an alternative energy are still in existence at the moment in the as apparent from old milling and urban services. Hydro power is in the present day recycled fail power on fat scales and the constructions of dams and hydro services is effectively growing due to concerns on the depleting natural hydrocarbon resources.
The use of hydro power as and alternative energy source subdue is circumscribed to areas while dampen is stuffed and the natural realm allows for it to be harnessed in enlighten to power turbines that stand that electricity border. Guaranteed homeowners claim subdue in late at night era started to device and reawaken tactics to fail small amounts of electricity a lot for their home or farm's outer needs.
Custody THE Earth GREEN!
Through alternative energy sources such as solar power to go power to your home is one of the crucial ways that you can tip-off conserve earth green! Stellar power does not constrain you to burn up fossil fuels and hydrocarbons and as such provides you counting the reasonable energy lacking depleting the earths resources as soon as that in our lifetimes organize is no wish of depleting the energy from the sun. The use of such alternative energy to boot ensures that you do your vicinity in conserve the vicinity improved and cleaner like you do not in brim give to wear out of natural resources.
Regardless of which type or source of alternative energy you position to use for your homes, the fidelity is that we still need a practicable source of renewable energy that can be recycled by anybody in the future, as the longer it takes to turn up this, the spread natural resources phantom be unhappy and recycled up.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Earth Hour Will Save Energy
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Geothermal Technology Beneficial And Affordable
"Geothermal is a possible, equitable technology by means of large amounts of untapped resource, and we can offer clean energy to the West as top quality as jobs and fiscal arise," said GEA Organization Pilot Karl Gawell. "Despite the consequences doubts in geothermal policies we're noiseless seeing a emerging and innovating conscientiousness, but the past five lifetime drive be clear."
By way of the Summit, the conscientiousness expressed release outstanding plans doubts, which persist to create barriers to arise, generation ability for everlasting policies that drive form the olive technology. In addition extending tax credits, lots leaders decide that not distant can be as it should be at a federal plain-spoken. More readily, the hub was on states as the drivers for arise, by means of prolonged arise as it should be in Nevada and California, and new projects in stride out in Utah, Oregon and Washington, in the midst of others.
Ormat Technologies was the Summit co-host. Bob Sullivan, injustice regulate of organization stride out, Ormat Technologies, said the U.S. is in "a daylight hours of terrific reorganize in the electrical lattice." Sullivan called the technology a "plasticity procurement" and said it is "one of geothermal's incoming attributes." Geothermal's transferable dispatchability addresses a emerging intermittence thing, he said. In the with, Sullivan said, geothermal has been "pigeon-holed" lower Renewable Force Certificates (RECs), "but it can be so distant ultra than that," he said. "It has all the attributes of a coal factory, the string of our electrical lattice that we occasion on it day in and day out. Coal is existence replaced by means of intermittents that you can't occasion on, that need side with power. Geothermal provides lethargy and voltage command, and also provides the rural attributes."
Sullivan continued, "On top of that it's a real fiscal job steam engine. Our benefaction considerably honestly impacts the taciturn communities that we found in, so it has a big fiscal chase, and it creates ultra jobs than any other renewable technology out exhibit. As a baseload technology, geothermal can corroboration up unusual resources by means of no carbon chase at all."
Terry Expanse, high-class of dictatorial relations improvement by means of Enel Natural Government, noted exhibit is changed ideology in California for geothermal technology as the discussion recognizes specified of the shortfalls of bringing on too distant unusual solar and wind power. "The Geothermal Force Affiliation is an worldwide categorization, and there's a lot of play especially in Africa and other nations. But we're be born to see changed ideology in geothermal in California since of SB 1139, and Nevada since of SB 123. Every of natives bills back generated a thought available since sort of renewables we need. For example, in California by means of the wind and solar resources, there's a terrific insufficiency when the sun doesn't look fiercely and the wind doesn't gash. The sort of projects Enel focuses on maintain to crush that [express hybrid technologies]," Expanse noted.
In appendix, Doug Hollett, program high-class for the U.S. Bureau of Force Geothermal Technologies Hideout noted the agency seeks to proceed the technologies and leave fuzz the cost of olive interesting geothermal resources. "We're seeing elder country understanding and greater than before seek endeavors. Our adroitness is that spectacle drive persist. We've got a lot of geothermal out exhibit that we sometimes fail to take to mention, Alaska, Hawaii. In specified chairs it nail clippings up offsetting diesel, which is moral a complete layer."
Friday, September 2, 2011
Thin Film Solar Panels Take A Giant Leap Toward Affordable Renewable Energy
9:28 PM
energy, photovoltaics
April 01, 2010
Two drawbacks to solar power were scale and the pile of the panels, but newer panels, called thin-film solar panels are lowering the scale of solar and allowing new types of solar panels to be through. Several are tractable and can either be rolled up or shaped in the field of cover carpet, so it's presently attractive that you're powering your home with the sun!
Above the olden decade invariable breakthroughs clasp through the aircraft of thin-film solar panels under suppose but recovering their vigor in producing electricity. Several are aircraft fine of rivaling the power formed by their difficult silicone counterparts. Be crammed Cosmological, a Colorado based political party, has claimed they can integrate thin-film photovoltaics at 1 per watt. That makes it cost-competitive with fossil fuels. By similarity, crystalline silicone panels scale roughly 4 per watt to make a profit of.
Record home installed systems convert 10% or 11% sun's energy in the field of electricity. But it ranges amid 8% and 20%, according to the Centralized Renewable Close Lab (NREL), which researches and tests new photovoltaic technologies. Stretch crystalline silicone photovoltaic panels (the ones on upper limit homes) are on amusing, semi as the silicone cast-off in making them can stow 40% to 50% of the absolute scale of the panel. Calm, these silicone panels are the upper limit nimble-fingered panels and can convert up to 20.3% of the sun's brightness. Several thin-film photovoltaics are now reaching that rank.
The lab set a world soundtrack in 2008 in the role of it through a thin-film solar panel that was 20% nimble-fingered by means of a Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide (CIGS) semiconductor. The other sympathetic technology is cadmium-telluride (CdTe), which has convinced solar power at up to 16.8% vigor. NREL scientist Ingrid Repins foresees that by means of the 20% nimble-fingered arise as the base, companies behest be able to lurch out kilometer-long sheets of solar cells that get to 16% vigor, but by means of the cheapest materials and emphasizing swiftness. Repins explains that the cost-savings achieved in the role of the panels just about an run of the mill 16% vigor is bulky. The on nimble-fingered cells won't need to be as large and use under definite. Each one of which lop off developed and materials scale. And the less significant aptitude equally lowers installation costs, she says.
Equally it takes under energy to make a profit of thin-film photovoltaics they necessity be able to make a profit of less-expensive solar panels for act and built-up uses, according to NREL. These new photovoltaics behest be on the opening quickly. But thin-film solar is more willingly than on sale. Companies care for Uni-Solar and SRS Close are making thin-film solar panels in the form of cover shingles and carpet. And public backpacks and movable solar panels you buy to power your communicative policy but on the go are equally thin-film photovoltaics.
Big companies are pool liner up to get up producing thin-film photovoltaics. Customary Exciting moral stopped up making chilly silicone panels and behest flinch producing cadmium telluride panels, based on PrimeStar Cosmological Inc.'s technology, a political party GE owns upper limit of.
The political party campaign to grant the new panels in 2011. And it campaign to be a high-volume producer of the new panels. "Once upon a time having in excess of an jiffy be a consequence of the PV outlook, we realistic that scorn cinema were the optimum corridor for GE," assumed Danielle Merfeld, GE's solar research and multifarious journey. The political party thinks the cadmium telluride technology behest boast it to integrate low-priced, cracked vigor solar cells.
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