A lot of energy innovations have a “back to the future” feel about them, in which new methods of using traditional mechanisms are leveraged to make simple changes that result in significant gains.
Data centers consume as much as 3% of often-strained US power generation, the vast majority of it in keeping the huge buildings where servers are stored cooled with air conditioning to prevent the servers from overheating. Keep reading →
Brown may be the new green.
Dominion Virgina Power wants to expanding its efforts to swap coal for biomass, animal and plant waste matter. Keep reading →
Fermentation is one of mankind’s oldest technological innovations, but it is also potentially the key to solving the evolving response to potential fossil fuel shortages.
A key “yeast technology” is at the heart of a takeover deal announced today by Dutch firm Royal DSM for fellow Dutch firm C5 Yeast BV from agricultural processing giant Royal Cosun. The C5 Yeast unit was part of Royal Nedalco, an alcohol unit divested by Cosun earlier this year. Keep reading →
Chesapeake CEO McClendon fires back at NYT story critical of #shale gas well performance in email to employees: http://bit.ly/kXoYrN @yayenergy
It looks like a window, but this conference room is actually coated in solar panels.
Pythagoras Solar, whose conference room is shown above, was one of five Innovation Award winners last week in GE’s ecomagination contest. The California-based firm has developed a unique transparent photo-voltaic (PV) panel that acts as both a window and an electrical generator. In addition, the panel provides a thermal shading barrier that keep the sun’s heat out of buildings, ideally allowing them to use less energy for cooling during the summer. Keep reading →
Building for speed as well as a reliability is a perennial challenge for the energy industry. Keep reading →
The big news of the week for solar was the US Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee for 733 MW of distributed rooftop solar projects. In case you missed the nuance, NRG, Prologis and Bank of America (BOA) are taking the first steps towards solar project securitization of rooftop installations. A few weeks ago NRG had announced they would be entering the rooftop solar sector and look at securitization as possible funding strategy.
This week’s news lifts the veil on the big plans that BOA, NRG and Prologis have hatched. We’ve been advocates of a securitization solution (see ASF Journal, Winter Edition 2011, “Securitization’s renewable opportunity,” by John Joshi) for solar leases and power purchase agreements for some time now and the recent news only confirms that it’s going to happen a lot faster than we expected. Keep reading →
Wind turbines cost more to operate and maintain than planned, often have poor reliability, and place costly strains on other generators warns one early wind adopter, but so far the public is willing to bear the costs.
Kevin Gaden, wholesale power director for the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN) and NMPP Energy, a public power consortium covering parts of Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming and Colorado, detailed his members’ experiences at the American Public Power Association conference in Washington last week. Keep reading →
There is nothing quite like a face-to-face meeting.
With the Breaking Energy launch party, the Renewable Energy Finance Forum-Wall Street, the American Public Power Association annual conference in Washington, DC, and a GE Innovation Award celebration event this week was chock-full of opportunities for interaction. Keep reading →
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