What's Next Low cost wind turbines for the developing world

As we know it

In the present era, the renewable energy realm has a share of about 19 percent in worldwide electricity generation. Now, for the uninitiated, this may seem to be a paltry figure, but if we go by statistical expansion, the ongoing phase is certainly propitious for sustainable output. As a matter of fact, total power capacity from renewable sources momentously exceeded the world capacity of nuclear power for the first time in 2011. In this regard, the major progression was actually witnessed in the case of wind power, with a whopping increment from 6.1 GW in 1996 to more than 200 GW by 2011.

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The WindFlip Barge Concept Installs Offshore Wind Turbines Inexpensively and With Ease

The WindFlip barge concept was designed to simplify the installation of offshore wind turbines and in the process has managed to be a solution that also cuts cost. Installing offshore wind turbines can be an expensive task — the process requires skilled technicians to assemble turbines at sea, and to anchor them at great depths. Alternatively, the WindFlip barge allows turbines to be assembled completely on shore, towed to their location, and then simply tipped into place — thus minimizing the need for expensive work at sea. Check out a video of the WindFlip in action after the jump.

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UK green energy projects fall by wayside in dash for gas

The construction of new renewable energy generation capacity has fallen dramatically, as the big six energy suppliers pursue a “dash for gas” policy that could put the UK’s climate change targets out of reach and leave households with higher bills.

The number of new wind turbines built this year is down by half on last year. To date, 540MW worth of new turbines, on land and offshore, have been built this year – 200 onshore and 50 offshore turbines. Across the UK last year, 1,192MW of wind capacity was added.

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Solar power is being used at oil wells to power drilling operations these days. Apparently, it is also being used at nuclear power plants, ironically.

“In an order valued at nearly $400,000 USD, a large US power utility in the Southwestern United States has selected the EverGEN 1530 solar LED outdoor lighting system for the second installment in a perimeter fence security lighting project,” Carmanah, the developer of the solar LED outdoor lighting system reports.

As noted in the title, the reason for going solar is “to increase the security… by providing backup safety lighting in the unlikely event of power failure, allowing the facility to maintain critical security functions that are mandated by Homeland Security”

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This was supposed to be a big year for energy-related technology.

It was supposed to mark the ascendance of the electric car as the first full year of sales for GM’s Volt and Nissan’s Leaf, which represent the leading edge of electric vehicles planned by major automakers. But GM fell far short of its sales goals for the year, no doubt plagued by high costs due to expensive batteries. And the company ended the year under a cloud of smoke as the Volt’s battery pack caught on fire after safety testing.

It was the year by which advanced-biofuels companies were supposed to be producing 250 million gallons of fuels from grass and wood chips to meet a U.S. federal mandate. But the EPA had to waive the mandate, decreasing the goal to just 6.6 million gallons, because no large advanced-biofuels plants were up and running. The year ended with the demise of one of the first advanced-biofuels companies, Range Fuels, which shut down operations and was forced to auction off assets.

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Nuclear power is expensive, and the costs always seem to go up. And not just because of environmental catastrophes. The latest nuclear news out of the UK backs this statement up yet again.

“The taxpayer will have to stump up almost £250m more to bail out the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the next financial year after falling asset sales and rising expenditure cut its income by 17.5%,” The Guardian notes.

“The shortfall is revealed in the NDA’s just-published draft business plan for 2012-15, which shows the impact of being unable to offload land to the private sector for new nuclear plants and the end of the contracts to supply Japan with mixed-oxide fuel.”

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Germany Uses More Renewable Energy Than Ever Before, Surpassing Nuclear

Among the world’s most developed countries, Germany seems to be on the right track concerning renewable energy production. The country’s renewable resources have been used more than the classic ones this year, reports BDEW, Germany’s Federal Association of Energy.

Therefore, nuclear power dropped to 17.4 percent after Chancellor Angela Merkel had decided to show down the oldest eight reactors, as a reaction to the disaster at Fukushima, Japan. Plans are that by 2022 they’ll have phased out all of the nuclear power plants today in function.

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Gates-backed TerraPower pitches new nuclear tech

To leap to the next generation of nuclear power technology, Bill Gates-backed start-up TerraPower is approaching countries rather than individual utilities or financiers.

Gates last week disclosed that he brought up TerraPower’s fourth-generation nuclear power technology with government officials at the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology during a visit to China. “TerrPower is having very good discussions with [China National Nuclear Corporation] and various people in the Chinese government,” Gates told the Associated Press.

Bellevue, Wash.-based TerraPower then said that the company has visited energy experts in the U.S. France, India, Japan, Korea and Russia, but that “there were no deals to at this time.”

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While Germany and Japan are backing away from nuclear power, the United Kingdom is looking in completely the opposite direction – 8 new nuclear plants are scheduled to be built. As a close neighbor, Germany has a number of words on the topic (all of them polite, but not particularly flattering).

Germany’s announcement of zero nuclear was prompted by the Sendai quake and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown last spring, as Clean Technica readers may remember, but those phase-out plans were already in place. The announcement gave rise to fears of insufficient power feeding into the grid anyway. However, Jochen Flasbarth, president of Germany’s EPA, pretty much thinks the entire idea is ridiculous, and furthermore that nuclear power is not the answer to a stable power supply:

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