Category: Energy Market

400 new green jobs to Arizona

400 new green jobs in Arizona thanks to the giant 290-megawatt Agua Caliente Solar Power Project.

The new facility is sponsored by the solar giant NRG and will use two cutting edge technologies that improve the stability of power supply from the plant to the grid.

The two technologies are new to the solar industry, so their successful application in the Agua Caliente project could make them industry standards throughout the U.S.

The solar-giant NRG recently cancelled two nuclear power plants  planned for Texas, following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

NRG is also the force behind the Department of Energy’s super-ambitious distributed-power solar project, called Project Amp who was announced earlier this summer, involves the installation of $1.4 billion worth of rooftop solar panels on hundreds of buildings, basically doubling U.S. solar capacity over 2010 levels.

24 Hour Solar System

By combining a concentrated solar power system with a molten salt heat storage system, the researchers from the Massachusetts Institute, have discovered how to deliver low cost solar energy at night as well as during the day.

As you know concentrated solar and salt storage are two familiar technologies.

The researchers are focusing their system on bringing down installation, operating and maintenance costs.

This concept could help small towns and communities take themselves off the grid with a reliable, steady stream of clean energy.

Concentrated solar power means using mirrors to focus sunlight on a central tower and when is combined with molten salt in the conventional manner, the salt will be heat with solar energy, then the energy will be transferred to the water which generates steam that turns a turbine to produce electricity.

BMW will convert landfill methane in to hydrogen

BMW is one of the most eco-friendly manufacturers in the world and he make green efforts for the environment conservation.

BMW is all set to research on extracting hydrogen from methane gas found in a specified local landfill.

BMW’s North American plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, currently has a fleet of over 100 material handling vehicles that are powered by hydrogen.

It is one of the very few automobile plants that houses majority of the systems under a single roof.

The automaker hopes to build the infrastructure needed to power the entire fleet from hydrogen.

The plant already has hydrogen storage and a distribution area, which could be integrated into a full-scale version of the new project.

The project will cost a million dollars and will go through multiple phases.

The German automaker had actually saved $5 million per year after the implementation of high efficient technology.

$14.2 billion offshore wind farm in France

The offshore wind farms are located far out into the sea; they trap winds at faster speeds than they would on land, and also, save up a lot of land space.

The French government of Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a €10 billion ($14.26 billion) tender to build about 1,200 wind turbines in 5 different offshore wind farms.

France depends mostly of nuclear energy.

France wants to diversify his energy generation with renewable sources and to have 23% of France’s energy come from renewable sources by 2020.

The offshore wind farms will be located off France’s coast on the North and West and will generate about 3.5% of France’s electricity needs.

Six Slovak solar parks on the grid

Six solar parks were putted on the grid by the german Vario green energy group in the Slovak Republic in May and June 2011.

The project planning, system configuration and the delivery of all the components were done by Vario green energy Concept GmbH from Holzgerlingen near Stuttgart, together with Vario green energy Parks GmbH from Munich.

The six solar photovoltaic power plants in Poltár, Biskupice and Ruminceparks have a power of 1 to 1.2 MW each and a total power of 6.2 MW.

The assembly time was six to eight weeks, but it worth because 70,000 solar modules will feed in an annual 7 million kilowatt hours of electricity into the local grid.

The plant operators will receive a remuneration of 38.23 Eurocents, according to the current Slovak feed-in tariff.

Since 1 July the solar electricity funding will be limited to roof-top plants with a power of 100 kilowatts maximum, but despite the cuts in financial support, Vario will remain active in Slovakia and plans to concentrate only on the roof-top market.

Schneider Electric will supply photovoltaic inverters in North America

Schneider Electric, a specialist in energy management, has been selected by a major global engineering and construction company to supply photovoltaic inverters throughout 2011 in North America.

Schneider will supply an order of 100 MW of capacity, which is the largest order in Schneider Electric’s history in North America and one of the largest ever in the North American market.

“The extensive experience we have in the field, in a broad variety of operating environments, is one of the primary reasons for our company’s continued success and the satisfaction of our customers,” said Rudy Wodrich, Commercial Vice President, Americas.

With this order Schneider proves again his leadership in PV inverters and solutions.

Renewable energy from “Green Power Islands”

Green Power Islands – a great idea to generate and store renewable energy on uninhabited islands around the globe.

The Danish architectural firm Gottlieb Paludan has proposed generating power through wind or solar — depending on the climate — and then using the water surrounding the islands to store the power using pumped hydro technologies.

This new concept for producing and storing renewable energy could even provide all the power for Denmark’s population.

The idea of the architects is to create a “Green Power Island” off the coast of Copenhagen, which would become an “energy super centre” for the country.

The massive island would be accompanied by offshore wind farms, and populated with solar arrays and seawater pumps, and would produce marine biomass for biofuel.

The energy will be stored using pumped hydro facilities.

The architects from Gottlieb Paludan have suggested a few areas around the world where Green Power Islands could be built on existing islands.

These include: the Florida Keys, Jiangsu in China, Manama in Baharain and Tamil Nadu in India.

Egypt has one of the first solar-gas hybrid plants in the world

Iberdrola has started its plans to commission the 150-MW Kuraymat power plant due south of Cairo, which fuses solar energy with a combined cycle gas plant, even in Egypt was a “nightmare”.

The Integrated Solar Combined Cycle (ISCC) facility was opened this month.

The project has a total capacity of 150 megawatts (MW).

This facility incorporates technology that combines the use of gas and solar energy and  is one of the first of its kind in the world.

The power plant is located 95 kilometers south of Cairo, will supply enough power for 200,000 people while saving around 16,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere each year.

At Kuraymat project 1,000 people have worked over the last three years.

The Egyptian plant has been built very close to the River Nile.

The area where the plant is built has become a strategically important region for the generation and distribution of electricity in Egypt.

Having this solar-gas plant, Egypt will save 5,000 tonnes of natural gas every year.

Iberdrola Engineering built and designed this ISCC-type facility to work in two different operational modes, in order to increase efficiency: during the night it operates as a conventional natural gas combined cycle plant, while during the day it operates a normal cycle but with the added energy provided by the sun.

On one side, the Kuraymat plant is fitted with a General Electric model 6FA gas turbine and a Siemens model SST900 steam turbine, while on the other it has a solar field covering 130,800 m2, with 160 parabolic cylinder CSP collectors and 1,900 m2 of mirrors.

Kuraymat is the first solar thermal electric facility in Egypt.

Solar thermal power generation has a new research centre

A new solar research institute was established by the German Aerospace Center.

The German Aerospace Center has more than 30 years experience in solar energy and solar thermal plants.

This technology has become increasingly important during recent years in sunny regions such as Spain and the southeast of the USA.

The Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) uses sunlight to produce steam, and then generates electricity by driving a conventional steam turbine.

The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia will subsidize this new institute with approximately € 27 million in the next few years.

Solar thermal power plants are usually very large projects with long lead times.

Algeria discovered solar thermal just one year ago

Algeria is the fourth biggest exporter of natural gas worldwide, the second biggest producer of liquefied petroleum gas and the tenth biggest producer of mineral oil.

The consequence is clear: renewable energies are not in the focus of the government.

The administration of the country only talks about photovoltaic and wind energy.

During a conference in Algeria in January, the state-owned electricity and gas utility Sonelgaz had 20 minutes to talk about projects in the field of renewable, and the speaker did not once mention the words ‘solar water heating’.

Algeria still remains in a deep slumber when it comes to heating water with the sun.

So far, annual market volume is estimated at around 50 residential systems per year.