Country leaders gathered in Cartagena, Colombia for the Summit of the Americas.
Latin America’s huge available renewable energy resource is appealing for both local and international project developers, but changes in both legislation and regulation are needed to catalyze markets in the region. Keep reading →
IT is poised to revolutionize the energy industry by ceding control of consumption and generation to consumers and lead to an “age of empowerment”, an influential figure in the wholesale power sector said yesterday.
David Crane, the outspoken CEO of NRG Energy, told the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco: “We’ve come a long way from the days of the legendary Henry Ford and his comment that the American consumer can have any color of model T as long as it’s black. Keep reading →
Although solar photovoltaic (PV) panel prices are rapidly dropping, integrating a high quality solar energy into the grid will have added costs, particularly because solar is an intermittent resource with highly variable output and repercussions for transmission grids.
To assess the issue, the US Department of Energy and Nevada’s utility, NV Energy, jointly sponsored a study conducted by Navigant Consulting on what the integration of solar in Nevada will mean for the utility. Download the full study here. Keep reading →
Department of Energy plans to give federal regulators more authority over the siting of electricity transmission lines would delay development, provoke lawsuits, and damage federal-state relations, the utility commissioners’ trade group said.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners blasted the proposal to hand more power to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying it ignores court rulings and the intent of Congress, and would give the industry, rather than the government, control over the approval process. Keep reading →
Investors and players in the energy business often focus on the flashiest technologies, ranging from highly visible solar and wind in the generation sector to next-generation smart meters monitoring usage on the customer level.
Geothermal is often the “forgotten renewable.” While some countries and regions are able to access large-scale geothermal power production, the use of distributed geothermal to regulate temperatures and limit the extremes of air-conditioning or heating use could promote huge efficiencies in energy use across the entire US. Keep reading →
Wind capacity in Maine is picking up steam.
The US Department of Energy announced the completion of a $102 million loan guarantee to Record Hill Wind LLC for its 50.6 MW located near Roxbury, Maine. The Yale University Endowment will provide additional funding for the onshore project that will consist of 22 turbines and an eight mile transmission line. Keep reading →
President Obama launched the SunShot Initiative in his State of the Union Address this year, inspired by President Kennedy’s moonshot program. Its ultimate aim is to drive down the costs of installed solar systems to a dollar a watt.
Ramamoorthy Ramesh is the Director of the US Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative and Solar Energy Technologies Program. He is a self-confessed “tech jock” on a mission to achieve the dollar-a-watt goal, which would mean a 75% reduction from today’s prices. Keep reading →
Germany and the US are about to enter into a fresh period of deeper cooperation on energy and climate policies, said a top environmental minister from Europe’s leading economy.
“Germany and the US are faced with some very similar energy challenges and it’s important to discuss these in a transatlantic setting so we can learn about how best to meet these challenges. Both countries need to modernize their energy systems and make them more efficient,” Katharina Reiche, the parliamentary state secretary at the German environment ministry, said at the Intersolar Conference in San Francisco this week. Keep reading →
