###
(1.8.09 - Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday said an economic stimulus package should include building a new electricity “smart grid.
“Smart grid” describes a more efficient, cost-saving method of moving electricity along major long-distance transmission lines to local distribution power lines and disparate end-users in homes, businesses and schools.
The estimated cost of creating a nationwide “smart grid” by investor-owned utilities in the United States is $50 billion over 10 to 20 years, said Ed Legge, an analyst with the Edison Electric Institute, a power industry lobbyist. Adding federally and locally owned utilities, the full cost would be about $65 billion.
Smart grid advocates say utilities and customers will realize cost savings in the long run, despite the high roll-out costs.
In a smart grid, computers and sensors, installed at power plants, substations and along power lines, would signal control centers that would better manage the flow of electricity. For instance, computers would detect transmission bottlenecks and direct power around them.
Power outages are now monitored as customers call local utilities to report them. Smart grid computers would discover outages automatically.
“Smart meters” would be installed to replace conventional electricity meters. These would facilitate communication between utilities and their customers, letting them curb power use when demand peaks and prices are high.
Cutting demand during peak hours would reduce the need for capital spending on more power plants, substations and power lines. Proponents say it also will cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
The meters combined with smart appliances would make it possible to control and regulate appliances remotely.
Proponents say “smart” technology also will help renewable power sources like solar panels and solar power plants and wind farms integrate into the overall transmission system.
Conventional power grids have difficulty with the intermittent nature of solar and wind power.
Smart grid technology is in various forms of planning and implementation depending on the utility or state jurisdiction.
Investor-owned utilities account for about 70 percent of U.S. electricity use. Several utility companies have begun replacing conventional electricity meters with “smart meters” that receive signals from the grid and send signals back to grid operators.
After year-long study of smart grid technologies in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. officials and IBM estimated customers saved 10 percent on monthly power bills and cut power use by 15 percent.
If those figures could be realized nationwide, it could save between $70 billion and $120 billion in spending on new power plants and transmission lines, the study found.
###
PRESS RELEASE
RSi-Solar Unveils the Windows of the Future
World’s First Power Generating Glass Window
Last update: 3:35 p.m. EST Dec. 10, 2008
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Dec 10, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Rainbow Solar Inc. (RSi) announces the world’s first, transparent, photovoltaic-glass window which generates 80 to 250 watts of electricity.
This is the next-generation of BIPV (building integrated photovoltaic), an enclosed super-tempered glass window system, with a patent pending, fully integrated, multi-tier PV and heat insulation technology. Up to 9′ x 9′ size with comprehensive options to meet design, weather, climate, and building code requirements.
The RSi Power Independence Evolution:
Rising energy prices initiated the renewable energy revolution, moving from centralized-grid infrastructure to self-sustaining energy, a Power Independence evolution. Of all the renewable energy solutions, solar is the only affordable solution that can be applied on an individual’s property that is truly self sustaining and low maintenance.
Website: www.solar.tm
SOURCE: Market Watch & RSi Energy Group
StopGlobalWarming.org partner Reverb, worked with Maroon 5 and Counting Crows to “green up” last summers tour and engage fans to join in. Check out a video recap of their efforts.
Amid the pressures of the global financial crisis, some ask how we can afford to tackle climate change. The better question is: Can we afford not to?
Put aside the familiar arguments - that the science is clear, that climate change represents an indisputable existential threat to the planet, and that every day we do not act the problem grows worse. Instead, let us make the case purely on bread-and-butter economics.
At a time when the global economy is sputtering, we need growth. At a time when unemployment in many nations is rising, we need new jobs. At a time when poverty threatens to overtake hundreds of millions of people, especially in the least developed world, we need the promise of prosperity. This possibility is at our fingertips.
Economists at the United Nations call for a Green New Deal - a deliberate echo of the energizing vision of President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Thus the U.N. Environment Programme has launched a plan for reviving the global economy while dealing simultaneously with the defining challenge of our era - climate change. It urges world business and political leaders, including President-elect Barack Obama, to help redirect resources away from the speculative financial engineering at the root of today’s market crisis and into more productive, growth-generating and job-creating investments for the future.
This new “Green Economy Initiative,” backed by Germany, Norway and the European Commission, arises from the insight that the most pressing problems we face are interrelated. Rising energy and commodity prices helped create the global food crisis, which fed the financial crisis. This in turn reflects global economic and population growth, with resulting shortages of critical resources - fuel, food, clean air and water. The commingled problems of climate change, economic growth and the environment suggest their own solution. Only sustainable development - a global embrace of green growth - offers the world, rich nations as well as poor, an enduring prospect of long-term social well-being and prosperity.
The good news is that we are awakening to this reality. We have experienced great economic transformations throughout history: the industrial revolution, the technology revolution, the era of globalization. We’re now on the threshold of another - the age of green economics.
Visiting Silicon Valley last year, I saw how investment has been pouring into new renewable energy and fuel efficiency technologies. The venture capital firm that underwrote Google and Amazon, among other archetypal entrepreneurial successes, directed more than $100 million into new alternative energy companies in 2006 alone.
In China, green capital investment is expected to grow from $170 million in 2005 to more than $720 million in 2008. (In just a few short years, China has become a world leader in wind and solar power, employing more than a million people.) Globally, the U.N. Environment Programme estimates that investment in low-greenhouse energy will reach $1.9 trillion by 2020. The financial crisis may slow this trend. But capital will continue to flow into green ventures despite harder economic times. I think of it as seed money for a wholesale reconfiguration of global industry.
We can already see its practical expression. More than 2 million people in the advanced industrial nations today find work in renewable energy. Brazil’s biofuels sector has been creating nearly a million jobs annually. Economists say that India, Nigeria and Venezuela, among many others, could do much the same. In Germany, environmental technology is expected to quadruple over the coming years, reaching 16 percent of manufacturing output by 2030 and employing more people than the auto industry. Mexico already employs 1.5 million people to plant and manage the nation’s forests.
Governments have a huge role. With the right policies and a global framework, we can generate economic growth and steer it in a low-carbon direction, not unlike Roosevelt’s original New Deal. Handled properly, our efforts to cope with the financial crisis can reinforce our efforts to combat climate change. In today’s crisis lies tomorrow’s opportunity - economic opportunity, measured in jobs and growth. Most global CEOs know this. That’s one reason why businesspeople in so many parts of the world are demanding clear and consistent environmental policies from their leaders. It is also the reason that global companies like General Electric or Siemens are betting their future on green. But it is important that the global public recognizes this fact, perhaps nowhere more so than the United States. When Obama takes office, voters and elected officials alike should be reassured by studies showing the United States can fight climate change by cutting emissions - at low or even no cost, using only existing technologies.
As secretary-general of the United Nations, I have a special duty - shared by all - to give voice to the voiceless, and to defend the defenseless. We know that those most vulnerable to climate change are poorest of the world’s poor. They are also most vulnerable to the shocks of the financial crisis. As world leaders, we are morally bound to ensure that solutions to the global financial crisis protect the interests of all peoples, not just the citizens of wealthier nations.
Those left behind by the previous boom - the so-called “bottom billion,” living on less than $1 a day - must be brought into the next economic era. Again, a solution to poverty is also a solution for climate change: green growth. For the world’s poor, it is a key to sustainable development. For the wealthy, it is the way of the future.
Ban Ki Moon is the secretary-general of the United Nations.
This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle
By Douglas Fischer, Daily Climate
Posted: 11/21/2008 10:47:55 AM PST
There is energy to be harvested in deserts of Southern California, Arizona, Spain and Africa: Sunlight focused so intensely it can melt salt, vaporize water and run air conditioners from Phoenix to Seville long after the sun has set.
This is concentrating solar power, and it represents the best hope for utility-scale power from renewable energy and the surest way to get energy-sucking Sun Belt cities off carbon.
It’s also a technology you’ve likely never heard of, given the attention and credits lavished on rooftop photovoltaic kits.
Concentrating solar power, or solar thermal, is a world apart from photovoltaic solar, the world’s fastest-growing energy technology. Rather than use silicon-based panels to chemically convert sunlight to electricity, solar thermal uses mirrors to focus the sun’s rays on pipes carrying oil or other heat-absorbing fluid. Sunlight heats the oil to 500° C or more; hot oil flashes water to steam; steam spins a turbine; the turbine makes juice.
Simple? That’s the attraction.
“We’re going to see a lot more of these,” said Hanis, the solar association spokeswoman.
###
Tom Siebel, who made a big pile of money in the ’90s by founding Siebel Systems, is trying to squeeze into green.
Siebel is trying to put together a contest that will encourage companies to come up with HVAC systems and other technologies for relatively affordable, zero-energy homes. “They will be grid connected, but after 365 days the meter should read zero,” he said during the Global Technology Leadership Conference taking place at UC Berkeley today.
The contest, which is still under construction, will come with a few rules. For one thing, the homes have to be something the average American would want to live in. “You can’t solve the problem by sitting in the dark and freezing to death,” he said.
Second, they have to be cheap. Green homes now are generally bought by rich people in communities like Woodside, California. “They cost $1,000 a square foot” and are generally huge, he argued. Builders have also been reluctant to get into the market although that has been changing. (In a conference earlier this month, for instance, I learned that Webcor, the largest builder in California, earned more revenue from LEED buildings in its most recent quarter than traditional construction. Imagine that.)
The competition and fight for the strategic control of oil vs. the cooperative and independence inherent in renewable energy is an interesting comparison.
With this in mind… Anne Korin is a conservative worth listening too. She is the Co-Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. She points out a few key questions that are missing from many discussions about climate change, oil, coal, nukes, drilling, etc.
-Does America have the time to wait for the market to provide to solutions for energy independence?
-Are there times when government should intervene, like cap and trade?
-Why are we fighting wars that we are supporting both sides of?
-What real solutions can we do right now?
–Here is part one of seven…
And so…
-Will coal become less attractive because the Supreme Court has agreed CO2 is a pollutant and must be regulated by the EPA to mitigate climate change? Cick Here
-Will government step in with Cap and Trade to give renewable more advantage over fossil fuels?
As Obama has mentioned. Click Here
-Or will new innovations come forward that are more competitive than fossil fuels?
Like this study from Ausra about how Solar thermal power could supply over 90 percent of US Grid Plus new electric vehile auto fleet.
There is a solar energy movement happening that must be shared.
It is in fact much more than solar energy but an empowering paradigm shift in education… allowing individuals to shine as they are. Regardless of poverty, illiteracy, race, language, nationality or gender. Talk about a level playing field. This program is doing such good works.
Please take a moment to review the video. It will inspire you to know that even in the poorest of villages, illiterate barefoot women are studying and becoming solar engineers and then empowering their village with their new skills. Amazing.
Peace,
Bruce
The Barefoot College, in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India, is empowering women to make a difference in their communities that would never have happened by themselves. The Barefoot College is a place of learning and unlearning. It’s a place where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher. It’s a place where NO degrees and certificates are given because in development there are no experts-only resource persons. It’s a place where people are encouraged to make mistakes so that they can learn humility, curiosity, the courage to take risks, to innovate, to improvise and to constantly experiment. It’s a place where all are treated as equals and there is no hierarchy.
“So long as the process leads to the good and welfare of all; so long as problems of discrimination, injustice, exploitation and inequalities are addressed directly or indirectly; so long as the poor, the deprived and the dispossessed feel its a place they can talk, be heard with dignity and respect, be trained and be given the tools and the skills to improve their own lives the immediate relevance of the Barefoot College to the global poor will always be there.”
Here’s the video…
“The rural poor must satisfy basic minimum needs like drinking water health educational employment etc. to improve their quality of life. Billions of dollars are spent every year in the name of the poor to provide these services. Colleges, research institutes, and funding organizations employ urban-trained, paper-qualified professionals to provide these services at tremendous costs. But there will always be a vested interest to keep the rural poor because thousands of jobs are at stake and poverty is big business.
The belief of the Barefoot College is that development programs do NOT need urban-based professionals because para-professionals already exist in the villages whose wisdom, knowledge and skills are neither identified, mobilized nor applied just because they do not have an educational qualification.
This belief was put into practice 33 years ago in all the development program dealing with improving the quality of life.”
Here is the founder of Barefoot College, Bunker Roy…
Skoll Foundation Visit to Barefoot College Tilonia
2:00 p.m. EST Nov. 5, 2008
NORTH EAST, Md., Nov 05, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Blue Square Energy, a developer and manufacturer of low-cost silicon solar cells, today announced that it has produced a 14.6 percent efficient solar cell with its patent-pending Bright Point technology. BSE’s efficiency result is one of the highest in the world on upgraded metallurgical grade (UMG) silicon and has been verified independently by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“What we’ve been able to accomplish is a major milestone towards achieving our goal of creating low-cost solar energy for homes and businesses,” said Joseph Babin, CEO of BSE. “This proves that inexpensive silicon typically considered unsuited for the solar industry can be utilized to create solar energy that is price accessible for most Americans. Solar modules made with our Bright Point technology will soon be the best choice for those who care about our environment and their wallets — and want to save both.”
BSE’s Bright Point technology is unique because of its two part structure: a fine layer of high-grade silicon is placed on top of 4N UMG silicon, which differs significantly from the solar industry’s silicon norm by way of cost and availability. Bright Point technology is possible because of BSE’s proprietary engineering and scientific discoveries.
UMG silicon has drawn a great deal of industry attention as companies seek substitutes to traditional and rare solar grade silicon in the fabrication of their solar cells. However, most UMG technologies being developed focus on blending low percentages of inexpensive UMG silicon with expensive solar grade silicon. This results in a minimal cost reduction. Through Bright Point, Blue Square Energy uses 100 percent 4N UMG silicon, which results in a significant cost reduction relative to other UMG silicon solar cell products.
Creating low-cost solar cells is the first step in BSE’s goal of eventually manufacturing the world’s highest efficiency, lowest cost solar cell. This Bright Point II technology is currently in research and development.
About Blue Square Energy
Blue Square Energy is a developer and manufacturer of high-performance silicon solar cells headquartered in North East, Maryland. Its proprietary Bright Point solar cell technology utilizes upgraded metallurgical grade silicon to produce low-cost solar cells for use in homes and business. More information about Blue Square Energy can be found at http://www.BlueSquareEnergy.com.
SolFocus, a maker of concentrator photovoltaic systems, has signed a $103 million (80 euro) deal with Empe Solar, a Spanish group that promotes solar energy use.
SolFocus panels, made of mostly aluminum and glass, are 95 percent recyclable.
(Credit: SolFocus)
Concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems typically use lenses and mirrors to concentrate light on solar cells to maximize the amount of electricity they can generate.
SolFocus plans to install over 10 megawatts of CPV systems across southern Spain for Empe Solar between now and 2010 as part of the deal.
SolFocus has already completed three utility-scale projects in Spain.
The 10-megawatt installation would collectively generate enough energy to supply a town of 40,000 residents, and eliminate 27,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year if used to replace traditional fossil fuel energy generators.
SolarEnurgy.net is powered completely by solar, wind and renewable energy to the tune of 130% of the data center power consumption, so we're not only neutralizing our carbon footprint, but also pumping an extra 30% of green energy back into the power grid! A light footprint.
Entries (RSS)