THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for April, 2011

I received this from a friend this week and thought it was worth a share. Interesting information on data centers and, in particular, the data centers of the web’s biggest sites — Facebook, Google, Yahoo, WordPress, Plenty of Fish, and more. Check it out.

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Texas has more wind power than it can use, and that partly explains why NRG Energy, Inc. has backed out of a plan to build two new nuclear reactors in the state. To be clear, the stated motivation for the decision was the nuclear disaster resulting from last month’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which among other things has affected the regulatory landscape here in the U.S. However, it’s also clear that rapid growth in the alternative energy field is rapidly chipping away at nuclear power, helped along by new grid and energy storage technologies. This triple threat is undermining the foundational reason for investing in nuclear power, which is (or should be) to get the most abundant and reliable energy bang for the buck.

Renewable Energy Beating Nuclear

On a global scale, energy capacity from renewable sources passed up nuclear for the first time last year, which was long before the tsunami damaged Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant. The problem, of course, is to get energy from renewable-rich areas to those without. That’s a problem that certainly hasn’t stopped the fossil fuel industry, given the shipment of coal and petroleum around the world. For renewable energy, massive transmission projects like DESERTEC are at hand. The future could also bring advanced energy storage technologies that would enable renewable energy to be shipped in battery-type devices (reusable or recyclable ones, of course).

Wind Surplus in Texas

The wind surplus in Texas could have a ripple effect on energy investments in other states in the U.S., even without the development of new smart grid technology. One example is Pattern Energy, which has proposed building a 400-mile line connecting wind power from Texas to existing transmission lines that serve Alabama and several other southern states. Unlike the decades-long process involved in siting and building new nuclear facilities, the company anticipates a permitting and construction process of about five years. Also slated for Texas is a gigantic new wind power storage facility, which other states are already eyeballing for the Pacific Northwest renewable energy infrastructure.

NRG Backs out of Texas Nuclear Plants

Rebecca Smith of the Wall Street Journal notes a number of issues that factor into NRG’s decision. The primary reason is a months-long safety review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission following the tsunami in Japan, which could jack up the cost of the project due to design changes and other factors. Smith also lists uncertainty over financing, which was supposed to come from Fukushima’s owner Tokyo Electric Power. More to the point, in Texas there is no regulatory structure that would basically guarantee NRG a captive audience for its product. The two new reactors would have to compete on price along with every other form of available power.

Renewable Energy vs. High Risk Energy

For all its advantages, nuclear energy is a high risk endeavor.  Those risks are becoming increasingly untenable – and incredibly expensive – as existing plants get older. New York’s aging Indian Point nuclear facility has started to raise alarm bells, for example, partly due to the virtual impossibility of safely evacuating nearby communities in case of an emergency. For that matter, another facility in New York, the Shoreham nuclear power plant, had to be decommissioned before it ever went online, partly because planners failed to account for population growth in nearby suburbs. Ratepayers were stuck with the tab and the facility still sits there, sucking up valuable real estate.

It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

Apparently, NRG’s partner Toshiba is still intending to move ahead with the permitting process.  Toshiba signed onto the project just two years ago in 2009, which is pretty much a blip on the screen in nuclear construction terms, so it’s no surprise that the company hasn’t thrown in the towel yet. However, given that wind power is set to take off not only in western U.S. states but all up and down the East Coast as well, the prospects for nuclear look pretty dim.

Image: Texas wind turbines by the russians are here on flickr.com.

Related articles

• Renewable Energy Passed Up Nuclear in 2010 (cleantechnica.com)
• China to Cut Nuclear & Increase Solar Power Goals after Japan Crisis (cleantechnica.com)

Researchers at the University of Michigan have taken a second look at a long-overlooked rule of physics, and the results could send shock waves through the solar power industry. The team found that a magnetic field could harvest solar energy directly, without the absorption mechanism required by conventional photovoltaic cells. Instead of semiconductors, the magnetic solar cell would consist simply of a long magnetic field contained in a fiber, with a focusing lens to get the right intensity of light.

Magnets and Renewable Energy

The latest breakthroughs in photovoltaic materials, biofuels, wind turbines and geothermal power have been grabbing a lot of headlines lately, but magnetic energy has been quietly emerging as the workhorse of the clean energy world. Magnetic energy can combine with motion to recharge batteries for handheld gadgets, it can eliminate the need for lubricating oil in the design of high tech flywheels, and it can stand in for solder to make a more energy efficient computer chip. The U.S. Navy is also experimenting with a new system that uses magnetic power to recover waste energy from lighting.

Magnetic Solar Power Cell from the University of Michigan

The Michigan research paper is a mouthful — “Optically-induced Charge Separation and Terahertz Emission in Unbiased Dielectrics” — but the basic idea is simple. Given light at the right intensity, you can create a magnetic effect that is as strong as electricity. To collect solar power, this energy would be stored in the “magnetic moment” instead of being absorbed by a material to create heat. The effect, called optical rectification, was previously known to exist only in a far weaker form, in certain crystalline materials.

Better, Cheaper Solar Cells

According to the Michigan team, a magnetic solar battery would involve far less engineering than conventional semiconductor-based solar cells require. The materials would also be relatively cheap, because the focusing lens could be made of glass or transparent ceramic. The leap from research paper to your neighborhood home improvement store is likely to be  many years in the future, but there’s no need to wait around for cheap solar energy. The solar power industry is breaking one energy efficiency barrier after another, and cheap solar materials like aluminum are already in use. Even if the Michigan breakthrough never achieves commercial development, the price of solar energy is already competitive with natural gas and coal in some areas, so it looks like the era of fossil fuels is rapidly drawing to a close.

Image: Magnets by TheodoreWLee on flickr.com.

Related articles

• Solar-Thermal Innovations at Wake Forest (cleantechnica.com)

When it comes to passing laws to promote the switch to clean energy to prevent climate change, President Obama may have constitutionally limited powers, but one power he does have is the power to issue an executive order controlling the actions of all of our federal agencies – like the Departments of Defense, Energy, Justice, Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

And he used it. In 2009, he issued Executive Order number 13514 – that requires all of them to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2020, from a 2008 baseline. The federal government is the single largest user of energy in the US, accounting for $24 billion in energy use.

Last year, the agencies lobbied him for an easier target, and Obama agreed to reduce the average percentage to 28 percent, between all the agencies. To meet the greenhouse gas reduction requirement, agencies from the department of corrections to the military have been moving towards using more fossil-free fuels, hybrid vehicles, electric cars, and adding more solar and wind power. The executive order requires them to measure, report, and reduce their GHG emissions.

Some agencies will be able to exceed the target, to balance those that cannot. Our extremely well-funded military for example has a well developed plan to meet a 30 percent target, by switching to new innovative biofuels and other technologies: Tina Casey has covered these successes extensively here.

Yesterday, the EPA reported its completed plans. EPA established a slightly lower than average target among the federal agencies, a 25 percent GHG emission reduction target by fiscal year 2020. To reach this target, the Agency’s primary strategy is to reduce its facility energy intensity by 3 percent annually through fiscal year 2020.

Energy conservation using energy efficiency measures was the method chosen.

Mandatory Commissioning: Since fiscal year 2003, EPA has required mandatory commissioning on all projects that include laboratory mechanical systems. Commissioning is a process to check the proper installation, function, and operation of building systems.

Infrastructure Replacement Projects and Mechanical System Upgrades: EPA is pursuing major mechanical system replacement projects as well as operating efficiency projects at all of its facilities.

Energy Assessments and Re-Commissioning: EPA conducts energy assessments, often at high-energy-intensity and large laboratories, and then conducts re-commissioning at each EPA facility every 4 years as required under Energy Independence and Security Act.

Unlike the military, which is well funded, and likely to remain so, the EPA is subject to defunding. The report pointed out that meeting the requirement will be contingent on the full funding of the plan’s energy efficiency projects. The Republican budget proposed steeper cuts to the EPA than to any federal agency. This may be the reason for its relatively timid plans and lower than average target.

Nevertheless, the EPA’s 25% reduction is still a steep reduction by US standards, and it shows what can be achieved by what presidents can control. By 2020, the success of these federal agencies – which handle a sizable percent of the nation’s GDP – should make it clear that such reductions are in fact possible. Reductions of three percent a year are not that daunting!

Hopefully, as a result, by 2020; their successes would impact climate legislation written by our congress – the legislation that mere presidents cannot control. But I’m not holding my breath.

Image: Wikipedia

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

Google isn’t just continuing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into clean energy projects; it’s also continuing to commit to buying up the clean power itself. On Thursday morning, Google announced it has made its second deal via its subsidiary Google Energy, and the search engine giant plans to buy 100 MW of power from a wind farm that’s under construction in Oklahoma.

Like Google’s previous clean power purchase agreement, the wind farm is being developed by NextEra Energy Resources. Google announced its first deal through Google Energy — its subsidiary which has been approved to buy and sell electricity on federally-regulated wholesale markets — in summer 2010, and that wind power purchase agreement was for a wind farm in Iowa, also owned by NextEra Energy Resources.

Google has also made investments through Google corporate in recent weeks in both solar farms and wind farms. The deal announced this morning is different in that it’s through Google Energy and is also a contract to buy the clean power itself over a 20-year period at a fixed rate (as opposed to buying equity in a clean power project).

Google’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl, who will discuss the news in depth at our Green:Net event on Thursday, told me in an interview on Wednesday that the 100.8 MW wind farm in Oklahoma will be built over the next six to nine months and Google has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to buy the power. NextEra Energy Resources was looking for an anchor tenant to buy the power, and often, developers can use an anchor tenant to get a better financing rate.

Google wouldn’t disclose other financial terms of the deal, but Weihl said over the long term, he expects Google to make a decent amount of money on the deal. Wind power purchase agreements (wind is the cheapest utility-scale clean power out there) can set wind power rates around six cents a kilowatt hour for a 20-year contract, depending on location.

Google will buy the clean power from the Oklahoma wind farm, then sell it to the wholesale energy markets, given, for regulatory reasons, it can’t directly use the power for its own purposes. Weihl told me that in contrast to offsets that other companies commonly use to reduce their carbon footprint, Google is adding actual clean power to the grid, which both helps with Google’s carbon footprint and could make Google money.

However, it gets “interesting,” “subtle,” and “nuanced” when Google starts thinking about how it could use clean power for its data centers, as Weihl put it. It all seems like a grand experiment right now, but one day, perhaps, Google could build a data center near one of its clean power assets and tap renewable energy to power its servers. It’s still a confusing subject (did I lose you yet?) and Google has also released a white paper on the subject on its blog.

Tune into the live video feed of Green:Net to watch Weihl’s remarks at 1:30 p.m. PDT.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• The Real Reason Google Is Buying Wind Power
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