GE announces world’s most efficient wind turbine for low wind sites
by anupam jolly

As we all know that the amount of energy generated by a wind turbine is directly proportional to the wind speed. The higher the wind speed the more energy is generated by the turbine. While wind energy is essential for a clean energy economy, the output of wind turbines installed at low-wind sites is debatable. As an answer to the present condition, General Electric has announced the development of 2.5-120 – the world’s most efficient high-output and first “brilliant” wind turbine.

The turbine is designed to rest on a taller tower, which has a maximum hub height of 139 meters, making it ideal for heavily forested areas in places like Europe and Canada.

The company has stated that the first prototype of the 2.5-120 will be installed in the Netherlands this month.

Details Here

first published week of:   02/04/2013

GE opens its GIS walled garden to Google (and why utilities should care)

For many years, GE has operated with its own proprietary GIS system called Smallworld. Now, as GE reorients itself as an Internet of Things software company<, it is providing a bridge between Smallworld and Google Maps. For users, it means simpler ways to visualize data with Google's (relatively) easy to use tools and its ability to display maps on computers, tablets and smart phones. For GE, it means a foray outside its own walled garden to the open world of the Internet.

“If GE can combine its powerful solutions and deep domain expertise with the ease and accessibility of the open world, it should be able to shed its old-school image and establish itself as one of the new-school leaders.”

GE is bringing Google Maps data into its Smallworld electrical, telecommunications and gas applications. While GE now provides geospatial analytical tools, the agreement with Google will yield a combined solution that enhances existing network visualization capabilities.

Details Here

first published week of:   02/25/2013

German student creates electromagnetic harvester that gathers free electricity from thin air
by 

A German student has built an electromagnetic harvester that recharges an AA battery by soaking up ambient, environmental radiation. These harvesters can gather free electricity from just about anything, including overhead power lines, coffee machines, refrigerators, or even the emissions from your WiFi router or smartphone.

This might sound a bit like hocus-pocus pseudoscience, but the underlying science is actually surprisingly sound. We are, after all, just talking about wireless power transfer — just like the smartphones that are starting to ship with wireless charging tech, and the accompanying charging pads.

Dennis Siegel, of the University of Arts Bremen, does away with the charging pad, but the underlying tech is fundamentally the same. We don’t have the exact details — either because he doesn’t know (he may have worked with an electrical engineer), or because he wants to patent the idea first — but his basic description of “coils and high frequency diodes” tallies with how wireless power transfer works. In essence, every electrical device gives off electromagnetic radiation — and if that radiation passes across a coil of wire, an electrical current is produced. Siegel says he has produced two versions of the harvester: One for very low frequencies, such as the 50/60Hz signals from mains power — and another for megahertz (radio, GSM) and gigahertz (Bluetooth/WiFi) radiation.

Details Here

first published week of:   02/18/2013

Giant Solar Project comes to an end in California
by ucilia wang

The developer of a proposed, high-profile solar power plant in California has given up the project’s license  after going through a prolonged period to try to modify the project and ease criticism of its environmental impact.

K Road Power told the California Energy Commission in a letter that it no longer wanted to pursue the project “due to changed market conditions.”

The decision ended a torturous journey for a solar project that languished for some time before it lined up some development money and gained the energy commission’s approval in 2010. Its previous owner sold Calico to K Road shortly after. The Southern California Edison Edison had signed a contract in 2005 to buy the electricity from Calico, but it canceled that contract just days before K Road announced it had bought Calico.

California has been a magnet for solar energy development because it requires utilities to get 33% their power supplies from renewable sources by 2020. Wind energy has been a popular choice, but solar has become more desirable as the cost of equipment, especially photovoltaic panels, has fallen significantly in recent years. Photovoltaic panels use solar cells to convert sunlight into electricity.

The amount of photovoltaic energy projects built to serve the utilities grew nearly seven folds nationwide from 2010 to 2012, according to GTM Research. In 2012, 1769 megawatts of these utility-scale projects, which was 59% more than the cumulative solar generation from previous years, started to feed power into the grid.

It’s not clear what K Road meant by “changed market conditions” in its letter to the energy commission. Before K Road bought Calico, the project was supposed to use a type of solar energy equipment called stirling engines.  continued…

first published week of:   07/01/2013

Goldfish Prank Prompts Investigation at Perry Nuclear Plant
by nuclear street news team

Someone managed to sneak two goldfish into a secure area of the Perry Nuclear Plant, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Thursday, but neither FirstEnergy nor the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found it very funny.

Crews working in a steam tunnel connecting the reactor to the turbine building found the fish swimming in a pitcher. A plant spokeswoman told the paper that chemists found just-detectable levels of radiation in the water. continued…

first published week of:   05/13/2013

Google Invests $103 Million in California Solar Project
by  ehren goossens

Google Inc., invested $103 million in a solar project under construction in Southern California.

The 265.7-megawatt Imperial Valley Solar 1, being developed by co-owner Silver Ridge Power LLC, will sell its power to Sempra Energy (SRE)’s San Diego Gas & Electric Co. when completed next year, Mountain View, California-based Google said today in a statement. continued…

first published week of:   10/14/2013

Growing Demand for Demand Response Programs
by rasika athawale, founder, mindcrunch

In a world of hurricanes and super storms people are increasingly becoming aware of the need for a collective action towards a sustainable and clean future. Electricity generation (and consumption) is one of the major causes of greenhouse gas emissions and provides immense opportunities for innovation and improvements. One might wonder of the options that an electricity customer can have in order to contribute towards reduction of carbon footprint. It is here that 'Demand Response' comes into play.

Demand Response basically means alteration in the usage of electricity which is caused either voluntarily or in order to gain certain agreed benefits. The Federal Electricity Regulatory Commission (FERC) 2012 Survey on Demand Response in the United States, defines DR as - "Changes in electric use by demand-side resources from their normal consumption patterns in response to changes in the price of electricity, or to incentive payments designed to induce lower electricity use at times of high wholesale market prices or when system reliability is jeopardized." continued…

first published week of:   04/08/2013

Hawaiian Electric Company Dreaming on Big Renewables Plan
by davis swan

On June 28, 2013 the Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) released its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) which outlines how it will meet electricity demand over the next five years and how it will achieve the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) which require that 25% of generation be from renewables by 2020 and 40% by 2030.

This 775 page document consists of hundreds of graphs and tables from different runs of a computer modeling tool called the "Strategist". There are also some very superficial statements about the potential for Demand Response, conservation, integration of more renewable generation and inter-island cable connections.

After our initial meeting with the client, which involved about 15 people for the whole day, our sales guy was ecstatic because we had accomplished two things; we agreed upon a name for the engagement (which he had proposed to the group in the first 5 minutes of the meeting) and we agreed upon a two sentence mission statement.

That incredibly "productive" meeting sealed the deal for an equally "productive" sale of 30,000 hours of consulting to the client with no deliverables, no schedule, and no guarantee as to the quality or qualifications of the consultants they would get.

What I find conspicuously absent from the HECO IRP is something called common sense.  continued…

first published week of:   09/09/2013

House Cuts Clean Energy Funding, Dragging Down An Entire Community Of American Innovators
by david wogan

In my last post, I discussed a House subcommittee’s shortsighted vote to slash funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) innovative Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). I’m sorry to report that the rest of the House has now followed suit, passing a $30 billion energy spending bill that cuts a huge chunk out of clean energy programs.

Not only does the bill contain the subcommittee’s 81 percent cut to ARPA-E, it also guts energy efficiency programs and even rolls back progress in energy efficient lighting. The House’s embargo on funding for clean energy doesn’t just hurt our footing in the international race towards a new energy economy, it also drags down an entire community of American innovators working to achieve a sustainable future.

We deserve more than political posturing and moves as antiquated as the incandescent bulb. Right now, a convergence of environmental, economic and technological forces is transforming the global energy landscape. Just last month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projected that renewable energy sources would eclipse nuclear and gas generation by 2016, and provide a quarter of the world’s energy supply by 2018. Renewable energy is unequivocally a major component of the energy landscape. continued…

first published week of:   07/22/2013

How Much Energy Does Your iPhone (And Other Gear) Really Use?
by christopher helman

We all get anxious when the battery levels on our phones and laptops and iPads get low. Dead batteries can lead to depression and withdrawal symptoms. The longest seconds are those that pass between the time I plug in my iPhone charger and when the white Apple AAPL +0.61% icon finally appears on the screen as the device starts to boot up.

You shouldn’t.

Pop quiz: how much electricity (to the closest 10 kilowatt-hour) does it take to power your iPhone or Android for a year? 1 kWh? 10 kWh? Or 100 kwh? The answer: 1 kWh.

This is the amount of electricity you’d need to power ten 100-watt incandescent lightbulbs for an hour. Far from anything worth being sheepish over, 1 kwh costs about 12 cents.

To be specific, your iPhone battery holds a charge of 1,440 mAh, or about 5.45 watt hours. If you fully drained and recharged your phone everyday, then over the course of a year you would have to feed it about 2,000 watt hours, or 2kWh. At an average price of 12  continued…

first published week of:   09/09/2013