power

29% Growth in Wind Power during 2008

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

The Worldwatch Institute has completed a study of wind power in 2008 and concluded that wind power generation increased by 29%!

Europe now generates 65,946 MW of wind power, or 55 percent of global capacity.

Germany still leads the region, generating 23,903 MW of wind power, but it saw new installations drop slightly in 2008.

In Asia, China ranked second globally in new capacity last year, adding some 6,300 MW to bring its total to over 12,200 MW.

The Chinese government has now surpassed its 2010 goal of 10,000 megawatts of installed wind power and a senior energy official said in April the country will have 100,000 MW in place by 2020.

Human Powered Airship

- Adam Clare

Airships are really neat, and so is going places under human energy (like bikes!). Combining two neat things can equal something awesome – a human powered airship!

airship or airHIP

Setting the bar pretty high for airship design is this one from Christopher Ottersbach: Called the Aeolus Airship (named after Aeolus, the Greek wind god) it is designed to be aerodynamic than conventional airship designs, and stay aloft for up to two weeks on a supply of helium and, furthermore, is pedal-powered by the crew of 2-4 people. That’s about all the tech detail I’ve come across; it’s certainly made the rounds in the past couple of days but no specific website or contact info seems forthcoming. Christopher, I’d love to talk to you if you come across this.

More Wave Power

- Adam Clare

A new way to catch wave power is really neat: it’s wave power through vortexes.

A bane of Big Oil’s offshore rigs could become a boon for renewable energy.
By tapping the natural motion of slow-moving water, a new hydrokinetic generator could open vast new swaths of the ocean for energy production.
When ocean currents flow over any kind of cylinder, like the long cables that hold drilling platforms in place, small vortices are created. They eventually spin away, or shed, causing vibrations that over time can destroy an oil rig’s moorings.
Now, a University of Michigan engineer who long worked on suppressing this phenomenon, has developed a prototype energy-harvester that can capture the mechanical energy it creates.

Carbon Monitoring for Action

- Adam Clare

CARMA
CARMA is an organization that monitors carbon produced by power plants around the world. They have an interactive map to visualize what parts of the world are the worst offenders, you can also see which companies are the worst polluters. It’s great to see a site that puts all of this information into one place for activists and researchers to access easily.

The objective of CARMA.org is to equip individuals with the information they need to forge a cleaner, low-carbon future. By providing complete information for both clean and dirty power producers, CARMA hopes to influence the opinions and decisions of consumers, investors, shareholders, managers, workers, activists, and policymakers. CARMA builds on experience with public information disclosure techniques that have proven successful in reducing traditional pollutants.

For several thousand power plants within the U.S., CARMA relies upon data reported to the Environmental Protection Agency by the plant operators themselves as required by the Clean Air Act. CARMA also includes many official emissions reports for plants in Canada, the European Union, and India. For non-reporting plants, CARMA estimates emissions using a statistical model that has been fitted to data for thousands of reporting plants in the U.S., Canada, the EU, and India. The model utilizes detailed data on plant-level engineering and fuel specifications. CARMA reports emissions for the year 2000, the current year, and the future (based on published plans).

Tidal Power for San Francisco

- Adam Clare

Golden gate
Readers of this site may remember that San Francisco spent some money investigating the feasibility of tidal power for the city last September. Well, things are definitely going good with that study has it’s entered a new phase. The San Francisco, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Golden Gate Energy Co. have agreed to further the study and invest $1.8 million into it. If this next phase goes well it may open up more opportunities for tidal power generation as the San Francisco project will have to take into consideration many factors that may deter other cities from trying such an initiative.

The $1.8 million study would seek to determine how much electricity could be generated, what kind of technology would work best and whether the project makes sense economically. It would also examine the project’s possible impacts on marine life and the environment.

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