Innovation

CES Show Gets Green Energy

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The International CES features cutting-edge technologies for an influential audience, so it makes sense that it would also feature some of the most aggressive energy efficiency and cleantech investing for an event of its scale in the US.

Smart grid and smart meter products that leverage the power of the internet to automate energy efficiency on devices and in buildings is the logical next step of communications technology, AlertMe CEO Mary Turner told Breaking Energy from the floor of the CES this week. The link between communications technology developments and energy research continues to grow stronger, and the efforts of CES organizers to demonstrate their energy efficiency and cleantech credentials further underlines the trend. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 13, 2012 at 3:30 PM

New Focus For Ocean Power Following Eco Wave Kiev Tests

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Trying to find the silver bullet in energy is not an easy task. Developing a power source that is clean and widely available, yet also cheaper and more reliable than fossil fuels or intermittent wind and solar has led to a great deal of expensive research but few commercially successful technologies.

Proponents of ocean power, in which converters capture the power of the constant energy provided by high and low waves and tide flows, believe they have the answer – but pricing, infrastructure prejudiced to existing generation types and lack of data all form robust challenges for the still-small sector. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 10, 2012 at 10:30 AM

A Greener Alternative To Conventional Solar Backsheets

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As the solar market continues its dramatic growth, the future outlook for manufacturers is changing. While US photovoltaic module manufacturers were working on technology development and manufacturing strategies, their competition, mainly in Asia, was able to line up financing and build new factories more rapidly. The Chinese government also has been developing a set of subsidies to boost solar energy production in-country.

As a result, a great deal of industry buzz has been generated by the precipitous slide in solar module prices, which dropped approximately 40 percent from 2007 to 2010 and by another 40 percent in 2011. Most industry experts predict that solar module price will eventually bounce back from its lowest level of 2011 once demand catches up with supply as evidenced by steadily growing solar energy demand in the future. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 10, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Energy Innovation A Focus For New Federal Government Panel

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NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), plus the State Department, NIKE, Inc. and other private-sector partners, have been collaborating on a unique venture that identifies and provides support for innovative ideas and technologies dealing with such global challenges as water resources, clean air, health care and energy. Led by Diane Powell of NASA, the program known as LAUNCH brings scientists, entrepreneurs and inventors to the Kennedy Space Center for intensive two-to-three-day forums to focus attention on their innovations and to help them accelerate the adoption of their breakthrough ideas.

 /  Published January 9, 2012 at 10:00 AM

Four New Ways To Solve The Energy Challenge

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In labs around the globe, scientists are working on radical technologies, from 500-mile car batteries to solar space farms. The holy grail in the electric-car world is beating range anxiety: the fear you’ll run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. Today’s electrics, like the Nissan Leaf, have a range of about 100 miles, but scientists at IBM are in hot pursuit of a better technology. In the 1990s researchers hypothesized that they could create energy by combining lithium with oxygen, making what is now referred to as a lithium-air battery. Today IBM and some 50 other labs globally are working on versions that would let an electric car go 500 miles a charge — a potential game changer for models like BMW’s i3 concept vehicle. This article is a linkout.

 /  Published January 5, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Bringing The Light Of Learning To The Lighting Sector

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The world’s first major light bulb maker is building on its nearly century-old mission to teach industrial and commercial users of lighting how the accelerating technology advances of the past decade can save them money, make them safer and accent their appeal.

With the US customer still largely in the dark about the details of the upcoming lighting standards set to go into effect at the start of 2012, GE Lighting is teaching students at its Cleveland, Ohio GE Lighting Institute that although the savings are compelling on their own, the advantages of new LED lighting technology go far beyond mere efficiency advances. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 23, 2011 at 6:00 AM

John Krenicki Powers Up GE

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(Fortune Magazine) I’m on a reporting trip in Angola, a place where the State Department advises travelers to “never touch anything that resembles a mine or unexploded ordnance.” I have brought a guidebook. It says Angola is “not a holiday destination for beginners.” I am traveling with a team of GE executives led by John Krenicki, CEO of the company’s energy unit. We’ve sat through a lecture on an especially virulent strain of malaria in the region. We’ve had two days of back-to-back meetings, visited a power station floating on a barge, and toured a liquefied natural gas plant on the banks of a tributary of the Congo River, downstream from Livingstone Falls, named for the explorer who died of dysentery. We’d had to leave behind two members of the team whose visas to Angola hadn’t come through. And now we’re in a chartered jet, homeward bound, getting ready for takeoff. A crew member comes into the cabin with an announcement. The flight will be delayed. There are wild dogs on the runway.

 /  Published December 20, 2011 at 6:00 AM

Energy Politics Supercycle Falters: AOL Energy Comment

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Markets run in cycles; we are all at the mercy of ups and downs in the macro and micro. Commodities markets, including those for energy, are often held to the dictates of “supercycles.” Infrastructure for commodities is so expensive, development timelines are so lengthy and the underlying shifts in demand and supply occur over such long phases that energy prices and resulting investments rise and fall over decades, not months.

The modern energy economy was born in one great supercycle around the middle of the twentieth century, and we are still its heirs. In the wake of a privately-sponsored boom in energy technology development and deployment in the 1920s, the US government responded to the inequities of the Great Depression of the 1930s by investing in huge electrification projects, choosing technologies, firms and energy types by fiat as it went. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 9, 2011 at 2:15 PM

The Five Reasons Federal Government Energy Research Has Led Innovation

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Governments play an important role in innovation, says David Sandalow.

The role of the federal government is up for question, Sandalow, Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the Department of Energy, acknowledges. But failures in promoting innovation through basic research should not force a change of direction, and the government must keep its resolve despite challenging times. Sandalow does not mention Solyndra by name in this video shot at the US Association for Energy Economics Summit in Washington, DC, but the solar company’s high-profile collapse has weighed on the entire energy sector and cast a long shadow over both the summit and this address. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 3, 2011 at 10:30 AM

Controlling For Cost In Solar Efficiency Race

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Although the Solyndra bankruptcy caused many to doubt the viability of US solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing, some companies have not missed a beat in the race to develop a cheaper more efficient model that will prove profitable.

Last week, Silicon Valley-based thin film PV solar manufacturing company MiaSole announced it had successfully produced a copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) model that was 13% more efficient than panels released just this year. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 1, 2011 at 1:30 PM
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