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State regulators have approved a deal for Tropicana Manufacturing Co. to generate renewable energy.
The Public Service Commission gave its approval Tuesday for interconnecting a 1.6 megawatt generating facility at Tropicana's Fort Pierce plant with Florida Power & Light Co.
It will burn renewable landfill gas to power Tropicana's citrus processing plant...
[Click post title to read full article] It is a major concern that electric vehicles are going to put huge demand on the grid that will cause disruption to pre-existing energy requirements. This discussion will provide you with a cross-value chain insight on methods and systems to currently being implemented and researched to support the grid and ensure supply and demand of energy is balanced.
[Click post title to read full article] Power from solar panels is much closer to price competitiveness with fossil fuel-generated electricity than many policy-makers and investors realize, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Many decision-makers have yet to catch up with the improvements in the economics of solar power from recent reductions in the cost of the technology, a working paper released by the London-based research firm said today...
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The last few years have been somewhat of a blur for most of the people involved in Austin-based Pecan Street Inc. (Pecan Street).
"In 2008, this was an idea on a napkin in a coffee shop," says Brewster McCracken, the holder of the napkin and now executive director of Pecan Street. "In 2010 we secured funding to launch a smart grid demonstration project. In 2011 we established the most robust collection of consumer energy use data on the planet. We want to see how people interact with new technology options. What works, what people like, what impact it has on their energy use and the grid itself."
The organization strives to ‘re-imagine’ how we make, move and use energy on our existing system rather than reinvent the system itself. It has been tagged by the smart grid industry press as one of the hottest efforts in the country.
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The perception that the American public is adamantly opposed to higher energy costs is at the root of most political opposition to policies favoring the adoption of renewable energy. But a new study of public opinion finds that people are in fact willing to pay to move to cleaner energy.
That willingness is fairly modest, to be sure. Analyzing a survey they conducted in 2011, researchers at Harvard and Yale found that the average United States citizen was willing to pay $162 a year more to support a national policy requiring 80 percent “clean” energy by 2035. Nationwide, that would represent a 13 percent increase in electric bills.
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GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk...
[Click post title to read full article] Transmission system operator EirGrid has announced a $314 million program to upgrade Western Ireland's network with the aim of exporting "green" energy.
EirGrid Chief Executive Dermot Byrne introduced the project Friday in Castlebar, County Mayo, in an event attended by Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Minister for Energy Pat Rabbitte and other political leaders, who talked up the potential of exporting wind, wave and tidal energy to Britain...
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President Barack Obama says the amount of money poured into fighting the scientific consensus on climate change will push the issue into the presidential campaign.
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BMW has taken another step in what is shaping up to be a multifaceted electric vehicle initiative that focuses on spurring infrastructure and lifestyle changes among consumers, as much as touting the vehicles themselves.
A new partnership between BMW and Real Goods Solar, a Louisville, Colo.-based provider of residential and commercial solar technology, will allow owners of current BMW ActiveE experimental electric vehicles and future buyers of the i3, BMW’s first full-production EV scheduled to launch in 2013, to buy solar panels for their homes at up to a 35% discount...
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Plug-in charging stations and smart grids seem like something still far off in the future, but by 2020, the auto industry will look very different from today’s field of troubled auto giants. In High Voltage (Rodale Books, 2011), Jim Motavalli captures this period of unprecedented change, documenting the evolution from internal combustion engines to electric power. The following is excerpted from the beginning of Chapter 6, “The Smart Grid.”
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Zipcar, the biggest car-sharing company in North-America, is partnering with Honda to include more models of greener cars in its fleet. Car-sharing is already better than owning a car for those who want to drive as little as possible but aren't quite ready (or it's not possible where they are) to reducing driving to zero. But it's even better if the car-sharing fleet offers many fuel-efficient - or even better: fully electric - options.
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Ford Motor Co will partner with Yahoo Inc on a reality show this spring to promote its first electric passenger car, a move that comes as the auto industry is growing more pessimistic about the prospects for these kinds of vehicles.
The show, called "Plugged In," will be broadcast on Yahoo's streaming video site starting in May, Ford said in a news release on Tuesday. Three two-person teams will travel to 10 major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and New York, and compete in a scavenger hunt while driving the Focus Electric.
The show is intended to help Ford (F.N) reach the electric car's target group - residents of major U.S. cities, particularly along the East and West coasts, where gasoline prices are higher than the national average. So far this year, Americans have been clamouring for more fuel-efficient vehicles as prices at the pump near $4 a gallon.
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Social media has officially come to energy efficiency.
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The energy marketplace is dynamic, being continuously influenced by economic conditions, technological developments, regulatory requirements and, of great importance, customer expectations and behaviors. What are businesses thinking and doing about energy consumption as the U.S. economy shows signs of stabilizing? Is corporate progress on energy management likely to continue as the easier tactics are implemented and greater investment is required? To what degree are consumers actually interested in purchasing energy-related products and services, including emerging technologies?
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The Institute for Electric Efficiency (IEE) has updated its smart meter research, revealing that nearly one in three U.S. households have a smart meter already. That's up from one in four households in September of 2011.
IEE projects one half of all U.S. households will be equipped with smart meters by 2015. But what is still unknown - and the subject of much worry by smart meter vendors - is how quickly the other half of the country will get upgraded.
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To be sure, the U.S. clean energy industry has been in a period of rapid growth, largely due to historic federal investments in the research, development, deployment, and manufacture of clean technologies. From 2009 through 2014, the federal government will invest a total of $150 billion, or the equivalent in magnitude to government support for past national challenges like putting a human on the moon (~$170 billion in 2005 dollars over 10 years, pg. 25).
Yet clean energy continues to face a fundamental problem: it’s not cost and performance competitive with fossil fuels without government support outside of niche markets. In the short-term clean tech projects are propped up by government support (or regulatory requirements) and in the mid-term the industry requires significant innovations to become subsidy independent and competitive. As such two distinct policy issues are set to thwart industry growth: the looming decline in overall federal support for clean tech after 2014 and the continuing deficit in government support for clean energy R&D and innovation. Letting both policy issues linger unresolved could very well be the death knell for clean energy...
[Click post title to read full article] U.S. Coal Generation Drops 19 Percent In One Year, Leaving Coal With 36 Percent Share Of Electricity
Power generation from coal is falling quickly. According to new figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 36 percent of U.S. electricity in the first quarter of 2012 — down from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
That stunning drop, which represented almost a 20 percent decline in coal generation over the last year, was primarily due to low natural gas prices. As EIA explains, natural gas generation will climb steadily this year, while coal will see a double-digit drop by the end of 2012...
[Click post title to read full article] In October, Chairman Bingaman asked the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to study the factors that underlie energy security within the U.S. economy. Bingaman also asked CBO to highlight the types of policies that might be undertaken to reduce the U.S.’s vulnerability to energy market disruptions.
CBO released this study today. The report examines the various commodities used to generate energy in the United States, focusing on the two largest energy-consuming sectors of the U.S. economy – electricity and transportation...
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If fast charging and build out of a charging network are important to mass adoption of electric vehicles – then several announcements this week suggest progress...
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If you thought the solar industry was dead in the water, think again. A fairly new concept is catching fire, and it's attracting moneyed investors: leasing residential solar energy systems to homeowners who pay a monthly fee to enjoy clean energy, without the up-front costs...
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Electric car advocates, gathering this week in Los Angeles for a forward-looking industry event, seem to be trying to solve two problems that may not exist. The main focus of this year's 26th annual Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS26) is on charging and chargers—who needs them and where to put them.
The mantra surrounding electric cars for the past few years has been, "We've gotta get some infrastructure out there!" Well, yes and no...
[Click post title to read full article] Climate change has had a direct effect on national security, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this week.
Panetta told an audience at the Environmental Defense Fund that climate change has raised the need for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, hitting national security in the process...
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General Electric Co Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said people "may be disappointed in the adoption of the electric vehicle" but his company will continue investing in battery technology to reflect its confidence in an eventual uptick.
Speaking during an automotive conference in Detroit on Tuesday, Immelt -- whose company is a key supplier to automakers producing electric cars -- said GE is "committed to long-term development" of alternative-fuel vehicles. The executive shrugged off the perception that electric cars are just novelties and said the industry needs to find solutions to cost and infrastructure challenges.
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“We must cultivate our garden,” Voltaire famously wrote at the end of “Candide,” but even he could not have imagined this: a towering arch of 50,000 plants rising over a traffic-clogged avenue in a metropolis once called “Mexsicko City” because of its pollution.
The vertical garden aims to scrub away both the filth and the image. One of three eco-sculptures installed across the city by a nonprofit called VerdMX, the arch is both art and oxygenator. It catches the eye. And it also helps clean the air.
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The State Grid Corporation of China's (SGCC) plans to install over 300 million smart meters by the end of 2015 will make the country an important market for these types of technologies, according to a report from research firm Zpryme.
SGCC supplies power to 88% of China and serves an area populated by over 1 billion people. The company has the advantage of being able to leverage its huge size and ability to start building smart grid technology into its transmission infrastructure from scratch, rather than retrofitting an antiquated system.
According to the SGCC, 36 million smart meters have been installed as of 2011, but the company says it plans to deploy over 300 million smart meters by the end of 2015. SGCC expects to invest just over $400 billion in power grid construction, of which about $100 billion will be directed toward smart grid technologies, and about one-sixth of the capital will be spent on developing a transmission network across China, according to the report.
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