Floating nuclear power plants | RIA Novosti
Desalination and power generation all in one? Where do I sign?
Solar panels are great, but they’ve got one huge problem. On average, they only catch about 15% of the sun’s rays and scientists are scrambling to find a way to increase that efficiency — using mirrors and even the shaping them like origami. Well, RoseStreet Labs might just have a solution – they’ve created a thin film solar panel that integrates three separate layers of PV cells into one panel. Each layer captures a different part of the sun’s spectrum bringing the total efficiency above 35%.
Decoupled Utility PG&E Invests in Californians’ Solar Roofs With SunRun (and Texans’ Too)
California’s PG&E has just invested $100 million in SunRun, which offers solar power purchase agreements, (in addition to its earlier $61 million investment in Solar City’s solar lease), through its investment arm, Pacific Energy Capital. Some of the California utility investment will help homeowners in other states, like Texas, get $0 down solar.
PG&E’s profits are “decoupled” from electricity sales, in accordance with California state mandates. As a decoupled utility, it earns more by saving electricity than by selling more. When a utility’s profits depend on its customers buying less energy, not more, the motivation is created to help customers shed electrons, or even better, actually send power to the grid. Then PG&E doesn’t have to build as many new gas-fired electric power plants.
U.S. Utility Industry Gets Serious about Solar Energy
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) represents about 90% of the electricity generated in the U.S., so it was a significant move when this nonprofit research organization entered a partnership with the Solar Technology Acceleration Center in May. Well, they certainly haven’t let any grass grow under their feet. This week, EPRI announced that it will install a 187-kilowattphotovoltaic research system on a roof in its headquarters. The project is scheduled to be completed within two months, and it will be the second largest in EPRI’s home city of Palo Alto, California.
An executive from SolarCity, the solar system installer, says that the company’s goal “is to make solar a more widely used source of U.S. electricity generation.” The partnership with EPRI will go a long way to fulfilling that goal. Aside from offsetting a little over 10% of the institutes’s power usage, the installation will perform real-time data collection to help assess the impact of weather variations on a solar array, and to assess their effect on the distribution grid. But wait, there’s more…
Steel Workers See Green Jobs in Wind Power
In a partnership that illustrates the powerful currents at work in today’s environmental movement, the United Steel Workers labor union has joined with the American Wind Energy Association and BlueGreen Alliance, an organization that includes other labor unions, the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council, to produce a blueprint for new green jobs in the wind power industry.
In pushing hard for green jobs, this diverse labor-industry-environmental group puts itself squarely on the side of the U.S. military’s push for alternative energy in the interests of a strong national defense. It also joins a growing number of leading U.S companies calling for national climate legislation and green jobs, in yet another sign that the dominance of fossil fuels is rapidly coming to a close.
ITER (originally the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international tokamak (magnetic confinement fusion) research/engineering project that could help to make the transition from today’s studies of plasma physics to future electricity-producing fusion power plants.
The LIFE Project to Create a Mini Star on Earth with 192 Lasers
This is fusion by lasers. It takes laser beams multiplies them and ignites a small fuel pellet which will then create fusion.
Well, this is crazy. The LIFE project at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has plans to create a mini sun in the lab, one that could create more energy than it takes to create. Yes, we’re talking about fusion here. By focusing 192 huge laser beams at one 2mm ball of frozen hydrogen gas, they hope to create nearly limitless free energy. Oh, and it gets better: In addition, the LIFE engine design can be “charged” with fission fuel. The resulting fission reactions will produce additional energy that can be harvested for electricity production. Moreover, by using depleted uranium or spent nuclear fuel from existing nuclear power plants in the blanket, a LIFE engine will be capable of burning the by-products of the current nuclear fuel cycle. Because the fusion neutrons are produced independently of the fission process, the fission fuel could be used without reprocessing. In this way, LIFE may be able to consume nuclear waste as fuel, mitigate against further nuclear proliferation, and provide long-term sustainability of carbon-free energy. A LIFE engine, via pure fusion or through the combination of fusion and fission, will generate the steady heat required to drive turbines for generating from 1,000 to 2,500 MW of safe, environmentally attractive electric power 24 hours a day for decades. So wait, not only will it create free, limitless energy, but it will also do so while getting rid of harmful nuclear waste? OK, I guess I’m on board. [The LIFE Project via Kottke]
A Traditional Terracotta Roof That Happens to Harness the Sun
There are plenty of technical hurdles keeping the masses from decking out their roofs withsolar panels, but their general ugliness doesn’t help much either. Tegolasolare puts their photovoltaic panels second to the surrounding architecture, not the other way around. The Italian company’s red clay roof tiles look just like traditional terracotta and incorporatephotovoltaic panels, as opposed to merely accommodating them. It’s a perfect example of how forward-looking, sustainable technology can exist in harmony with traditional architecture.
I have to say, I didn’t know there was a “SolarDay” until recently, but I guess that is partly because it wasn’t founded until 2009. Nonetheless, it has already grown into a worldwide event. SolarDay is celebrated on a weekend day before the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year), which will be Saturday, June 19th, this year. Last year, more than 700 media stories were written about SolarDay. I imagine there will be more than that this year.
