30Jan

Solar powered homes that will compete in Solar Decathlon Europe 2012

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Solar powered homes that will compete in Solar Decathlon Europe 2012

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Environmentally friendly homes can reduce inhabitants’ carbon footprints, save resources and lead the way for others to live the same way. Most of us, however, have been living in homes that are pretty standard, in that they don’t help us reduce our carbon footprints. The US Department of Energy has been trying to further green living in terms of homes and has been organizing the Solar Decathlon for a while now. The international competition is a biennial event that challenges 20 college teams to come up with conceptual homes that utilize solar energy. The teams get to work on site, detailing their prefabricated houses for 10 days in a bid to take home the Solar Decathlon title. 2012’s competition is set to begin and we’re eager to see who wins the coveted prize.

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25Jan

Italy/France’s 100 percent solar home entry for the 2012 Solar Decathlon

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Italy France's 100 percent solar home entry for the 2012 Solar Decathlon

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Italy and France have joined forces to create the “Astonyshine” 100 percent solar home concept as part of the 2012 Solar Decathlon Europe. The international competition is open to universities from around the globe and promotes research into the development of efficient housing. Astonyshine is a modern reinterpretation of the classic Mediterranean villa, and is the result of the combined efforts from Polytechnic of Bari (Italy), University of Ferrara (Italy), Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais (France) and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech (France).

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29Dec

Large-Scale Solar Continues to Proliferate. 10 Major Announcements Last Week.

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I posted just now on a significant solar project at Palau International Airport, but it was just one of many featured in Cleantechnica’s latest weekly roundup of big solar news. From 200MW in Rajastan to 60MW projects in France and Germany, the future of solar is looking decidedly global if this week’s list is anything to go by. Given all the doom-and-gloom over solar that was spouted in the last few months of 2011, it’s good to see that capacity keeps building and interest keeps building. No wonder Warren Buffet is buying up large solar farms and Google continues its solar surge.

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17Nov

Siemens Boosts Its Stake in Tidal Power

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Siemens Boosts Its Stake in Tidal Power

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Marine energy has long looked to be a niche area, capable of meeting just a few percent of global power demand. But this seemingly limited energy source is drawing some big players, the latest being Siemens. The German engineering giant boosted its stake this month in Bristol, U.K.-based tidal energy developer Marine Current Turbines from under 10 percent to 45 percent. The attraction, according to Michael Axmann, chief financial officer for Siemens’s solar and hydro division, is the predictability of marine power.

Solar and wind farm operators struggle to predict tomorrow’s output, and bad forecasts can wreak havoc with power transmission planning and market prices. In contrast, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun that controls tidal cycles provides a sure means of anticipating the output from tidal generating stations. “Power output of the systems could be calculated for centuries in advance,” says Axmann.

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15Nov

World’s Largest Tidal Power Array — Off French Coast

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Tidal array off the coast of France will be world’s largest when complete in 2012.

A reader actually shared news about this project with me over 2 months ago, but due to the steady stream of so many interesting cleantech stories, other responsibilities, and the fact that the shared page was in French and I had to learn French first (ok, just used Google Translate), it took me a while to get to it. The project is a “gigantic” (for tidal power) project off the coast of Paimpol-Bréhat in Brittany, France. It is a project of Irish tidal technology specialist OpenHydro and the large French utility company EDF.

The project will eventually include four 2-MW tital turbines from OpenHydro. The turbines are being installed 35 meters (115 feet) deep. They are 22 meters (72 feet) high and weigh 850 tonnes.

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12Nov

Thorium: The Nuclear Power We’ve Never Known (Video)

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Imagine if nuclear power was safe, terror-proof, and fueled by a plentiful, ubiquitous element. Sound like a pipe dream? Maybe it is. Maybe not.

A couple nights ago, I dropped by the Vice magazine offices in Brooklyn to check out a new documentary on thorium put together by Motherboard.tv. (Full disclosure: the video was produced by Alex Pasternack, a former contributor here at TH.) The film, The Thorium Dream, examines the history of an alternative kind of nuclear power, one tested decades ago but never embraced.

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29Oct

Bavaria to Swap Nuclear for Fossil Energy

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Bavaria to Swap Nuclear for Fossil EnergyNuclear

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Going from sixty-to-zero on nuclear will require significant new fossil generation in the German state. Bavaria is expected to trade out their significant nuclear electricity portfolio for fossil generation in the coming decade, according to new analysis from Der Spiegel. While the contribution of non-hydro renewables is anticipated to increase from 10 to 36 percent of generating capacity, the largest increase comes from natural gas, which will increase its portfolio share from 10 to 46 percent, far more than any other single fuel. Spurred by recent fears following the Fukushima crisis in Japan, Bavaria is just the latest to abandon its nuclear investments in favor of fossil fuels, trading unlikely radiation risks for certain emissions and pollution increases from natural gas combustion.

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19Jul

$14 Billion Giant Wind Project To Be Launched By France

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Last week, the French government announced the launch of a $14.26 billion tender to build five different offshore wind farms. The goal is to reduce the country’s longstanding reliance on atomic power and to boost its renewable-energy industry.

As the French ecology and industry ministries said, the wind farms that have a total of around 1,200 wind turbines off the north and west coasts of France, will be capable to generate 3.5% of the country’s electricity. The wind farms are expected to go online between 2015 and 2020.

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