13Jan

WaveRoller Arrives in Portugal for Long Awaited Tests

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WaveRoller Arrives in Portugal for Long Awaited Tests

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The WaveRoller arrived on January 2nd at Portugal’s Peniche Shipyard for a much anticipated pilot test this summer off the coast of Portugal, one of the best testing sites in Europe for ocean energy. The scaled-up version for the pilot test is to be tested in the same waters near the sea shore of Peniche where its smaller prototype showed promise (Previous: WaveRoller Uses Swinging Door for Underwater Wave Energy.)

Wave energy involves very large machines that must survive harsh underwater conditions. Even this pre-commercial version weighs 280 tons, and the test has been financed by the European Commission.

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11Jan

Germany Installs More Solar Panels in December 2011 Than US Did All Year

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Germany Installs More Solar Panels in December 2011 Than US Did All Year

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Some more astonishing stats on the progress Germany is making on solar power thanks to good, steady and predictable renewable energy policy: Greentech Media shares the astonishing fact that in the month of December alone Germany installed 2 GW of solar PV. For the whole of 2011, Germany installed 7 GW.

The US managed to install 1.7 GW in the same time period—which isn’t to knock US installation rates so much as to further highlight the massive Germany push to install more PV before the feed-in tariff for it drop as planned.

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9Jan

Eco Wave Power developing two new wave-power devices

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Eco Wave Power developing two new wave-power devices

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Israel’s Eco Wave Power is just entering the second phase of proving its new wave energy harvest and conversion system that’s claimed to produce cheaper energy than existing coal-fired power plants. Energy is captured by the influence of rising and falling waves on two proprietary float designs called the Wave Clapper and Power Wing, which are installed on existing, stable structures. The floats are said to be capable of gathering energy from both high and low waves, which is fed through undersea cabling to a land-based power plant for conversion to usable electricity.

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2Dec

Patrick Marold Visualizes the Wind With Thousands of Turbine-Powered LEDs

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Patrick Marold Visualizes the Wind With Thousands of Turbine-Powered LEDs

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Although we can’t normally see the wind, we can feel its presence – however Colorado-based visual artist Patrick Marold has figured out a way to translate the wind’s movement into light. Using LEDs, polycarbonate tubes, and mini wind turbines, Marold has been documenting the shape of the wind through his Windmill Project. His installations involve hundreds of mini wind generators planted in breezy landscapes – as the wind blows across them, the LEDs light up based on the strength of the wind and where it blows. His project draws attention to the use of clean renewable energy and our interaction with the landscape and natural forces.
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30Nov

Stanford Researchers Explore Large-Scale Renewable Energy Storage

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One of the biggest hurdles for integrating renewable energy from solar or wind sources comes from the question of storage – how can power be stored for times when the wind doesn’t blow or the skies are overcast?

Researchers at Stanford University are addressing this headlong and have reported the development of a new high-power electrode that is cheap, durable and efficient. If development continues as hoped, this discovery might potentially foster the manufacture of batteries large enough to provide for economical renewable energy storage on the grid.

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18Oct

Could U.S. Get 20% of Electricity from Solar Under Power Lines?

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What if the U.S. could get 20 percent of its power from solar near transmission lines without covering virgin desert?

It could.  Transmission right-of-way corridors, vast swaths of vegetation-free landscape to protect high-voltage power lines, could provide enough space for over 600,000 megawatts of solar PV.  These arrays could provide enough electricity to meet 20 percent of the country’s electric needs.  (Note: There may not be good interconnection opportunities for solar under these huge towers, so this should be read as a land use discussion rather than technical analysis of interconnection to the grid.)

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11Oct

Tracking the Sun with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

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Last week’s Get Some Sun webinar featured Galen Barbose from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab discussing the results of Tracking the Sun, an assessment of the changing cost of going solar across the U.S. This is the fourth edition of this annual report, and each year we eagerly await its release to see hard data on just what kind of cost reductions the U.S. solar industry has achieved. This edition delivered in a big way . . .

Examining more than 115,000 PV systems installed between 1998 and 2010 across 42 states, the report’s key findings include:

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