WORLD – Page 2 – Solar Magazine

Clean energy can lift African GDP

Solar energy in Africa. Image via busiweek.com

The African continent could generate nearly a quarter of its energy needs using indigenous, clean, renewable energy by 2030.

“Africa holds some of the best renewable energy resources in the world in the form of biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind,” Adnan Z. Amin, the IRENA Director-General recently said.

“This, combined with the precipitous drop of renewable energy technology costs, creates a massive opportunity for African countries to both transform and expand their energy systems while providing a pathway for low-carbon economic growth,” he said.

According to busiweek.com, IRENA offers a comprehensive roadmap for Africa’s energy transition, insisting that a combination of modern renewable technology could realistically meet 22% of Africa’s energy needs by 2030. This is more than a four-fold increase from just five per cent in 2013.

The report also finds that scaling up modern renewables in Africa is an affordable means to help meet fast-growing energy demand while increasing energy access, improving health and achieving sustainability goals.

The report identifies nearly 10 exajoules (the equivalent of more than 341 megatonnes of coal) of options for sustainable development through renewable energy.

Roughly 40% of this energy would be in the power sector. Solar resources are abundant across the continent, while biomass and hydropower potential are more plentiful in the central and southern regions.

Wind resources are strongest in the north, east, and southern regions, and geothermal energy is strong in the Great Rift Valley.

Renewable energy capacity additions could increase the share of modern renewables in the power sector to 50% by 2030, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by more than 310 megatonnes.

Developing these projects is more cost-effective than ever before, with solar and wind projects across Africa now producing record-low electricity prices.

Roughly 50% of the energy from the recommended options would be through biomass-based heat applications. Half of all energy use in Africa today involves traditional biomass consumption.

The report estimates that a shift to modern renewable energy cooking solutions would reduce the use of traditional cook stoves by more than 60%, saving $20 billion to $30 billion annually by 2030 through the reduction of health complications from poor indoor air quality.

“Tapping into renewable energy resources is the only way African nations can fuel economic growth, maximise socio-economic development and enhance energy security with limited environmental impact,” Amin said

“The technologies are available, reliable and increasingly cost-competitive.

“The onus is now on Africa’s governments to create conditions to accelerate deployment, paving the way for Africa’s unfettered, sustainable development,” he said.

The report recommends 14 actions to speed the uptake of renewables on the continent, including enabling policies and a regulatory framework to catalyse investment, adopting investment promotion measures, and off-grid renewable energy solutions to increase energy access and reduce poverty.

California’s plan to gain 50% clean energy by 2030

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed landmark legislation requiring the state to get 50 percent of its energy from renewables by 2030. Image via ww2.kqed.org

California’s Governor, Edmund G. Brown Jr., recently signed an legislation committing the state to generating half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

According to energymatters.com, the bill, SB 350, builds on California’s current 33 percent renewables portfolio standard, which was signed into law by Governor Brown in 2011.

“California has taken groundbreaking steps to increase the efficiency of our cars, buildings and appliances and provide ever more renewable energy,” said Governor Brown. “With SB 350, we deepen our commitment.”

Now known as the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015, the legislation also seeks to double the energy efficiency savings in electricity and natural gas final end uses of retail customers through energy efficiency and conservation.

The Governor had also attempted to implement legislation to enforce a 50% reduction in petroleum use by 2030, but was reportedly defeated by oil interests. California produces around 218 million barrels of crude oil and is the 3rd largest producing state in the U.S. according to the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA).

“What has been the source of our prosperity now becomes the source of our ultimate destruction, if we don’t get off it. And that is so difficult,” Brown said at a signing ceremony at Griffith Observatory. Images captured at the signing clearly show thick haze enshrouding the city of Los Angeles.

Still, Governor Brown sees today’s signing as a major step forward. His efforts and those of Senator Kevin De Leon have been praised by various groups.

“PSR-LA is committed to continue to work with the Governor, the Legislature, and the California Air Resources Board to make sure SB 350 is fully implemented,” said Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles (PSR-LA) Executive Director Martha Dina Argüello.

“By increasing renewable energy production and energy efficiency in buildings we can reduce the terrible health burdens caused by our use of dirty energy and fuels.”

The legislation is good news for the state’s solar industry.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), California installed 4,316 MW of solar electric capacity last year, ranking it 1st in the USA. The state also leads the nation in total installed capacity, with 11.535GW operational.

The SEIA says there is enough solar installed in the state to power 2,891,000 homes.
More than 2,200 solar companies are operating in California; manufacturing products and providing services ranging from solar power system installations to the manufacturing of components used in solar panels.

Germany to fund 125 million euros for renewable energy projects in India

Renewable energy is one of the key areas of Indo-German partnership mentioned in the Joint Statement of Hannover in April 2015. Image via The Financial Express

Germany and India on Tuesday signed two loan agreements worth 125 million Euros for the Green Energy Corridors’ project in Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.

Germany’s development bank, KFW, will fund 57 million Euro for the project at Himachal Pradesh, and 68 million Euro for the Andhra Pradesh project, a press statement from the government said.

According to The Financial Express, the agreements were signed at a time when Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel is on a state visit in India.

Renewable Energy is one of the key areas of India-German partnership. The financing of the transmission infrastructure of renewable energy projects, the Centre and State grids will be strengthened to evacuate more green energy, the statement said.

“With the Green Energy Corridors, the intra-State network will feed the renewable energy to the respective State grids and the high capacity transmission corridors and inter-State network will connect major renewable energy pockets with the national grid,” it added.

Romanian renewable energy companies ask Government to temporarily cut the accreditations for new plants

Renewable energy investors ask Romania’s authorities to close the market for new projects. Image via ecowatch.com

“Renewable energy investors which contributed with 7 billion euros in the Romanian economy were deceived! You should not allow the collapse of renewable energy”, is the message sent by Romanian renewable energy companies.

In the open letter sent to Romania’s Prime Minister, Energy Minister and Energy Authority ANRE, four renewable energy organizations have asked them for urgent measures in order to avoid the industry’s collapse.

They requested the state to increase the share of the renewable energy in the national energy mix. The Government reduced the renewable’s share in the energy mix for captive consumers from 17% to 12.5% in 2014 and has kept it at that level in 2015.

The reduction generated a surplus of green certificates, “which are now papers without value,” according to the producers’ associations.

Romanian authorities avoid doing what all other Governments did in similar situations, which is to suspend the access to the support scheme for the new projects until viable solutions are found, producers say.

Solar-powered racing car launched by CUER student team

Students to launch solar racing car. Image via Engineering and Technology Magazine

The launch of a new solar-powered racing car built by British students aims to highlight the potential of electric vehicles.

According Engineering and Technology Magazine, the 60-strong student organization Cambridge University Eco-Racing Team (CUER) has been designing, building and racing eco-vehicles since 2007 and later today it will unveil its latest creation – a solar-powered car called Evolution.

The vehicle will be entered into the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, an endurance event across the Australian Outback in October – the same event which the team’s last car, Resolution, had to bow out of in 2013 after it crashed during final road testing.

Driver Alan Jamieson, who is studying for a PhD in fluid mechanics at Cambridge, said he was hoping to overcome the previous disappointment and make a splash this year in one of the “toughest” challenges in the world.

He added: “It is 3,000km with dust, fierce cross winds, bush fires and these long road trains of carriages which, as they pass, you can feel the buffeting effect of even in a Land Rover.

“We had beaten all expectations to get our vehicle Resolution to Australia in 2013. We had designed the car from scratch and built it in a year. It was completely different to anything that had gone before; it was smaller, lighter, with an efficient array of solar cells that could position themselves towards the sun.

But a big issue was, unlike the big teams participating, we were trying to study, fund-raise and build the car in our spare time.

Parts were delayed and the car wasn’t completely made when we began test driving. Also, our driving team was relatively ‘young’ in terms of experience: for example, one of our drivers signed up before she even had her driving licence.”

The team is confident the stability issues that plagued the previous iteration of the car have now been resolved and Amy Livingstone, head of the electrical team, said the new car is more powerful and its solar panels have been adjusted to allow it to absorb more solar rays.

By showcasing cutting-edge sustainable engineering, the team hopes to inspire the advent of mainstream electrically powered vehicles. Programme director Aurelia Hibbert says the team also provides valuable hands-on experience for students.

“Working on a practical engineering project is an invaluable experience to students, many of whom, like Alan and Amy, are on theoretical courses,” she said.

“The challenge for CUER has always been maintaining momentum when each year many of our core team graduate and leave the university. We have a strong engineering team, experienced drivers and an exciting and innovative entry for the 2015 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.”

The team is supported by established firms Jaguar Land Rover, Marshall Group, Penso, Timeless Green, TTP and Viridian Sola and recently won the backing of international investor BNY Mellon.

The vehicle will be unveiled at the university’s sports ground later today and the coming months will be spent testing at the Jaguar Land Rover wind tunnel facilities and on the track at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire.

3D printing garbage off the planet

Transforming garbage into products with 3D printing. Photo via wagingnonviolence.org

AlphaPura is a global initiative to fund and develop 3D printers capable of repurposing the bulk of meltable human garbage on Earth into new products, and into global solutions.

The story of AlphaPura began with Frederick Janson, a former research professional at Stanford University School of Medicine, and graduate business professor, who developed a 3D printed water filter, which did not require a filter or electricity to purify water.

According to 3D Printing Progress, Janson envisioned that his product could convert the oceans, seas, and waterways of the world into drinkable water, to serve a hungry and thirsty market of no less than 2 billion people. Though Janson had developed no elaborate marketing campaign for this invention, in a single day it went viral, with thousands of people taking an interest in this global solution to the fresh water crisis and famine crisis.

The problem was that 3D printing building materials were cost prohibitive and did not allow Janson’s invention to compete with substitutes on the market, and so Janson shelved this global solution to develop a global solution to reduce the cost of 3D printing consumables, whereafter he designed the AlphaPura 3D printer, to be able to 3D print using meltable waste, effectively developing an additional global solution, that of reducing human waste materials by transforming human waste into a “free” building material. To summarize, Janson designed a way to repurpose the world’s meltable trash.

To be able to turn these ideas into reality, Janson built the first prototype for these global solutions out of an EV3 robotics set made by Lego. The first design was one that was “off the grid”, such that it could use renewable energy sources and/or non-renewable energy sources to recharge this 3D printer, so that it could be used in emergency situations.

The former design employed a programmable fresnel lens on a robotic arm and tungsten funnel-extruder combination to superheat meltable materials in a controlled manner, by employing a programmable swinging shade between the Sun and the fresnel lens in such a manner as to achieve the optimal melting temperature of most objects.

A more ambitious and future design employs a laser in addition to a fresnel lens (which is ideal for “off-the-grid” usage, but requires sunshine to be able generate energy through a steam engine and to melt materials, and thus is limited as to where it can be used, though other renewable energy technologies could be used here instead of a fresnel lens) to superheat meltable waste into the molten state required to repurpose the waste into a 3D printed object or mold.

The current design and the one currently being proposed for funding simplifies the design by removing the solar panel, external energy inputs and associated renewable energy generators, the rechargeable battery of this device, and the fresnel lens robotic arm with the shading mechanism, which would otherwise swing into the maker space as needed — features they plan to offer in an a-la-carte and customized build-your-own printer in the future, along with other novel swing-in features on robotic arms, including, but not limited to, miniature power tools, and along with different maintenance service plans, training service plans, and do-it-yourself kits, the latter of which will allow users to swap in dedicated tungsten extruder-repurposer “printer heads” for each material type they seek to repurpose, to eliminate the need for cleaning extruders between material types they are repurposing.

Tungsten Design for this Invention

As this technology seeks to repurpose the bulk of human solid waste on Earth, some of the AlphaPura 3D printer needs to be made out of an abundant and inexpensive building material with a melting temperature above that of most solid waste, and such, tungsten has been selected as the primary building material, as it has one of the highest melting temperatures on Earth, 6000+ degrees F, more than a couple of thousand degrees hotter than the temperatures being generated by a fresnel lens, on the order of 3800 degrees F, which is hotter than the melting temperature of most metals, glass, and plastics, whose range is between 150-3000 degrees F, with plastics at the lower end, glass in the middle, and metals at the higher end, with respect to melting temperatures.

The inventors believe they can build, test, and deliver a functional prototype in the next 18 months with financial support. A likely risk is that they won’t be able to configure the 3D printer software to melt down all of the different types of plastic, glass, metal, concrete, and other meltable waste within 18 months, and so are committed to releasing software updates on a continuing basis, until there is a program for every waste material that can be repurposed.

Japan is turning its abandoned golf courses into solar farms

Solar energy plants on abandoned golf courses in Japan

Faced with too many abandoned golf courses, Japan has now turned to transforming them into solar energy plants.

Back in the 1980s, golf courses were huge in Japan. So huge that memberships cost millions of dollars. Not surprisingly, a boom followed in the 1990s and early 2000s, and now…there are just too many of them not being used.

The solution? Well, thanks to Japan’s energy strategy post-Fukushima that now calls for roughly doubling the amount of renewable power sources in the country by 2030, Kyocera and its partners announced they had started construction on a 23-megawatt solar plant project located on an old golf course in the Kyoto area.

According to ecorazzi.com, the project, which is scheduled to be operational in September 2017, will generate a little over 26,000 megawatt hours per year, or enough electricity to power approximately 8,100 typical local households.

And Kyocera is not stopping there. They have plans for a larger project in the Kagoshima area on land that had been designated for a golf course more than 30 years ago but was ultimately abandoned. That project is expected to generate nearly 100,000 megawatt hours per year, or enough to power about 30,500 households.

Apparently Kyocera isn’t alone with this bright idea, and is facing competition from Tokyo-based Pacifico Energy, which is building a 42-megawatt solar plant on an old golf course in Okayama.

But the idea for using solar power plants on abandoned golf courses isn’t remaining in Japan. Plans for similar projects are already underway in the U.S., including New York and Minnesota. And with golf courses already wrecking havoc on the environment, this could very well be their redemption.

Swedish solar energy plants suffering from heatstroke

MVN Luftaufnahme, the largest swiss solar power plant. Image via tritec-energy.com

Switzerland’s solar energy farms are paradoxically suffering from the recent sunny weather, with the heat affecting photovoltaic plants. As a result, power generation has decreased slightly.

Although photovoltaic plants depend on a lot of sun, heat can impair energy production, according to Patrick Schaub, an energy analyst from SIG, a utility provider for canton Geneva.

“The cells’ efficiency depends on the temperature,” he explained. “The higher this climbs, the lower the efficiency. With temperatures in recent days seven or eight degrees above the seasonal average, the production of solar energy in canton Geneva has dropped by about 8%.”

The heatwave, which has so far lasted ten days, could reduce SIG’s annual energy production of 27 gigawatt hours by around 0.4%, Schaub said.

According to swissinfo.cf, Geneva saw the mercury rise to 37.1 degrees Celsius on Saturday and temperatures are set to exceed 30 degrees in many parts of the country this week. People in the capital Bern are bracing themselves for 37 degrees Celsius on Tuesday.

Schaub added that in addition to overheated photovoltaic cells, mist in the atmosphere was also causing problems. While the air gets dry at the beginning of a heatwave, evaporation tends to increase in the days that follow, reducing solar radiation. The ideal weather conditions for solar energy are therefore a sunny spring or autumn.

The same problem affects solar panels, which unlike photovoltaics are used not to generate energy but to heat water. These panels also overheat during hot periods.

Solar power provides 1% of Switzerland’s electricity needs. The country was a pioneer in photovoltaic technology 30 years ago, but it has since been overtaken by a number of other European countries in terms of production of solar power. In Germany, per capita production is more than 15 times the Swiss figure, and in the Czech Republic it is four times more.

Iconic London double-deckers go electric

Hybrid double decker bus in London. Image via sciencehistorylover.files.wordpress.com

China-based manufacturer BYD will supply battery-powered buses to Transport for London from October. The number 16 route will be the first to go emission-free.

According to PV Magazine, passengers travelling from the Edgware Road to Victoria bus station in London will be using zero-emission transport from October onwards, announced Mayor of London Boris Johnson this week.

The Mayor, widely tipped as a future Conservative Party leader, announced at this week’s C40: Clean Bus Summit, Transport for London (TfL) has signed a deal with Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD Company Ltd to supply battery-powered buses, starting with the number 16 route.

BYD says its double-decker buses can drive for 155 miles, even in thick city traffic, on a single charge and their iron-phosphate batteries come with a 12-year warranty.

The news follows a report last week that the Delhi Metro system is considering switching to 100% solar power as public transport organisations the world over begin the migration to clean power sources.

Bus operator First West started running its biomethane-powered ‘poo bus’ between Bristol and Bath, in the west of England at the end of March. The Bio-Bus runs on human and household waste from 32,000 households.

New discovery to make cheaper solar energy storage

This is a photograph of a single-flake-layer WSe2 thin film deposited on flexible Sn:In2O3 (ITO)-coated PET plastic. Credit: Kevin Sivula (EPFL)

Scientists in Switzerland announced a clean-energy breakthrough on Wednesday; a cheaper solar technology that splits water molecules to create clean-burning hydrogen fuel.

According to The Japan Times, the solar panel design will make it cheaper to produce hydrogen, but a simple version won’t be available for average citizens for at least 10 years, scientists said.

Splitting water molecules to create hydrogen allows the sun’s energy to be more easily stored to generate electricity or power clean cars.

The discovery has major implications for climate change, as improved solar energy would reduce fossil fuel dependence.

Previous solar hydrogen technologies are too expensive to commercialize, scientists from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne said in their article appearing in the journal Nature Communications.

“We want to convert solar energy into hydrogen in an economically competitive way,” Kevin Sivula, one of the report’s authors, said.

The technology is “a huge increase (in efficiency) on what’s been done before . . . and it opens new pathways for solar development,” he said.

The new solar panel looks similar to the traditional version mounted on rooftops, except sunlight first passes through a thin layer of water contained inside the device.

Tungsten diselenide, a non-toxic chemical, acts as a photocatalyst and is critical for using the sun’s energy to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Currently, about 1 percent of the energy from the sunlight passing through a panel can be converted into hydrogen energy; efficiency must increase to about 10 percent for the discovery to have mass commercial appeal, Sivula said.

He estimated that when scientists are able to obtain “the same efficiency as traditional solar-to-hydrogen conversion, our cheap device production method would reasonably lead to a price for hydrogen that is five to 10 times less expensive.”

Sivula and his colleagues believe it is only a matter of time and research before the new technology’s efficiency is improved.

The new discovery is part of a larger international push towards improving solar power.

The global solar index tracked by investors has risen 40 percent this year, and investments in solar power are outperforming struggling fossil fuel commodities, such as natural gas or coal.

Oil giant Exxon Mobil expects solar capacity to grow by more than 20-fold between 2010 and 2040.

“At the rate we are using fossil fuels, a solar to hydrogen conversion technology will eventually become economically viable no matter what,” Sivula said.