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Entries Tagged as 'Renewable Power'

China’s Huge Self-Sustaining Solar LED Wall

May 6th, 2008 · 3 Comments

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It’s called the GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall, and with 2,292 individual color LEDs, comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. monitor screen, it’s said to be the largest color LED display in the world. The wall is solar-powered too — photovoltaics are integrated into the wall’s glass curtain, and it harvests power during the day, to illuminate the display at night. (more…)

Tags: Architecture and Building · LEDs · Renewable Power


Airship Wind Turbine Tested

May 5th, 2008 · 2 Comments

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Magenn Power has been testing its airship-based wind turbines— the company hopes to prove that its “air rotor system” will work. The Canadian startup has named the system MARS. It consists of a blimp that is tethered to the ground, and rotates horizontally in the wind, generating electricity. According to Greentech Media, the blimp is designed to float between 600 and 1000 feet above the ground, and its intended to produce power capacities ranging from 10 kilowatts to several megawatts. (more…)

Tags: Renewable Power


eSolar Gets $130 Million From Google and Others

April 21st, 2008 · 2 Comments

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eSolar employees put the final touches on the mirrors used to focus sunlight.

eSolar is a startup company which is in the process of building solar thermal power plants. It was one of the first startups to earn financial support from Google. This morning it received $130 millions dollars in funding from Google.Org, Bill Gross’ Idealab, Oak Investment Partners, and other smaller investors. The company says it will have a power plant up and running later this year in southern California. (more…)

Tags: Renewable Power


Rock Port: First U.S. City To Run On 100% Wind Power

April 21st, 2008 · 3 Comments

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Officials at Rock Port, Missouri, christened a four-turbine wind farm this week, making Rock Port the first U.S. city to get 100% of its electricity from wind power. (more…)

Tags: Renewable Power


Wind Turbines Now Spinning On Bahrain World Trade Center

April 10th, 2008 · 6 Comments

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This is a quick post to let you know that the Bahrain World Trade Center has turned on all three of its huge wind turbines simultaneously. For a glimpse of the turbines in action, check out the video over the fold: (more…)

Tags: Architecture and Building · Renewable Power


Costa Rica Is 99% Powered By Renewable Energy

April 8th, 2008 · 8 Comments

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Costa Rica is a country rich with renewable energy. In fact, it gets about 99% of all its electrical energy from clean sources, and it’s aiming to be the first country to become carbon neutral (more about that below). Some of Costa Rica’s energy sources include geothermal energy, the burning of sugarcane waste and other biomass, solar and wind energy. However, the largest source of energy is hydroelectricity — its hydroelectric dams provide more than 82% of the country’s electricity. (more…)

Tags: Renewable Power


World’s Largest Tidal Turbine Successfully Installed

April 7th, 2008 · 3 Comments

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The world’s largest tidal turbine, weighing 1000 tonnes, has been installed in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough. The tidal turbine is rated at 1.2 megawatts, which is enough to power a thousand local homes. It was built by Marine Current Turbines, and it will be the first commercial tidal turbine to produce energy, when it begins operation later this year. (more…)

Tags: News · Renewable Power


$3 Billion Solar Power Deal Signed By California Utility

April 3rd, 2008 · 4 Comments

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Pacific Gas & Electric today will announce a deal to buy as much as 900 megawatts of electricity. It will be enough to power 540,000 California homes each year, and involve the construction of five solar power plants during the next decade. The company to build the solar-thermal power plants in the Mojave Desert is BrightSource Energy. (more…)

Tags: News · Renewable Power


65 Million Square Feet of Solar Rooftops: Powering 162,000 Homes

March 29th, 2008 · 3 Comments

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In an ambitious move, a Californian utility plans to create a massive, distributed “powerplant” by installing a total of 2 square miles of solar cells on the roofs of businesses. Southern California Edison plans to install 250 megawatts’ worth of solar power, generating enough electricity to power 162,000 homes. (more…)

Tags: Renewable Power


Danish Drivers To Fill Their Tanks With Wind Power

March 27th, 2008 · 4 Comments

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Denmark has a problem — it’s generating too much power from the wind. Currently, Denmark gets about 20% of its total electrical power from wind. On windy days, that percentage can double. The ups and downs of wind power can strain an electricity grid. In western Denmark, the price of electricity can drop to zero on a windy day, leaving utilities scrambling to offload excess power or take a financial hit. To solve this problem, the Danish utility company Dong Energy plans to build a nationwide system to charge electric cars with the surplus wind power. (more…)

Tags: Cars · Renewable Power · Transportation


German Parliment To Use 100% Renewable Power

March 25th, 2008 · 1 Comment

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The German Reichstag is expected to become the greenest parliament building in the world, thanks to a decision to rely solely on renewable energy. From late summer the building is due to swap to green power sources such as water, wind and solar energy, replacing the conventional power that it has largely relied upon until now. (more…)

Tags: News · Renewable Power


New Record: Wind Powers 40% Of Spain

March 25th, 2008 · 2 Comments

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Wind power is breaking new records in Spain, accounting for just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed during a brief period last weekend. As heavy winds lashed Spain on Saturday evening wind parks generated 9,862 megawatts of power which translated to 40.8 percent of total consumption. Between Friday and Sunday wind power accounted for an average of 28 percent of all electricity demand in Spain. Spain’s wind power generation equaled that of hydropower for the first time in 2007. (more…)

Tags: News · Renewable Power


Stunning Solar Building Will Generate More Power Than It Needs

March 14th, 2008 · 22 Comments

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The Masdar Headquarters building will produce more power than it needs (an energy positive building). In fact, the solar roof (one of the largest in the world) will be constructed first, and it will power the construction of the rest of the building. The video link on this page has a great view of the sun-infused interior. (more…)

Tags: Architecture and Building · Renewable Power


Wind Turbines On Galapagos Islands Reduce Diesel By 50%

February 24th, 2008 · 3 Comments

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Three huge wind turbines have been installed on the Galapagos Islands. They will generate a total of 2.4 megawatts for the 30,000 residents of the Galapagos archipelago’s five inhabited islands. The system will meet 60 to 80 percent of electrical demand during the windy months of October, November and December. The turbines will halve the island’s diesel fuel imports, and pave the way for further renewable energy development.

(more…)

Tags: Renewable Power


Solar Balloons Get $21 Million In Funding

February 19th, 2008 · 4 Comments

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They look like foil party balloons, but they are actually very efficient solar concentrators. These solar “balloons” were developed by a company called Cool Earth, based in California, and it has just received $21 million dollars in investor funding. The company is now planning to build a 10-megawatt plant of solar balloons in the next couple years. This power plant would be comprised of 10,000 balloons, and cover roughly 80 acres! (more…)

Tags: News · Renewable Power


New World Record Set For Solar Efficiency: 31.25%

February 13th, 2008 · 3 Comments

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On a perfect New Mexico winter day — with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual — Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled Jan. 31 on SES’s “Serial #3” solar dish Stirling system at Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility. (more…)

Tags: News · Renewable Power


Infinia’s Modular Solar Dish Gets Funding

February 12th, 2008 · 5 Comments

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Infinia is a company with a modular product: a mirrored solar dish that looks like a home satellite receiver, and produces 3.5 kilowatts of energy. Infinia announced Monday that it had received $50 million in investment. The dish focuses the sun’s rays on to a Stirling engine (a 17th century invention), this heats a gas inside that drives pistons to generate electricity (see the engine in action here). The free-moving piston requires no lubricants, and thus no maintenance.

It is also designed to be assembled with common mass-produced parts that an auto-parts supplier could manufacture. Getting the cost down is the key to creating a technology that is competitive with other forms of energy.

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Tags: Renewable Power


Windspire: Propeller-Free Household Turbine Gets Approval

February 9th, 2008 · 41 Comments

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We just featured the largest wind turbine in the world, now here’s something at the opposite end of the spectrum: a household wind turbine. In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of mini-wind turbines that haven’t turned out to be very useful. But the Windspire turbine from Mariah Power sounds interesting. The Windspire has a propeller-free vertical-axis design, and is expected to produce about 1800 kilowatt hours per year in 11 mph average wind conditions. That amount of wind power is roughly 25% of a typical household’s energy (or much more if you are particularly energy efficient). (more…)

Tags: Renewable Power


New Record: World’s Largest Wind Turbine (7+ Megawatts)

February 3rd, 2008 · 35 Comments

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The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade length of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. A quick US calculation would be 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.

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Tags: News · Renewable Power


Solar and Wind Powered StreetLights In Tokyo

January 30th, 2008 · 2 Comments

We just wrote about the new LED streelights in Ann Arbor. Now we find these self-contained streetlights that generate 100% of their power from the sun and the wind. During the day, solar power is stored in a battery at the base of the light pole. At night, they illuminate while continuing to generate power via a small vertical-axis wind turbine. The streetlights, dubbed “seagulls”, were spotted in Tokyo outside the Panasonic Center by Hyperexperience. Here’s a video clip of the wind turbine in action:

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Tags: Lighting · Renewable Power