Energy

Germany’s Sustainable Energy Grid Keeps Improving

- Adam Clare

In May, Germany was able to supply 50% of their national energy consumption using renewable power sources. That was remarkable in itself given the size of Germany in both industrial and population size.

Now, it’s been announced that for the first half 2012 Germany produced 67.9 billion kilowatt hours of renewable energy which makes up a quarter of all energy production this far into the year.

Biomass, or material acquired from living organisms, accounted for 5.7 percent and solar technology for 5.3 percent.

Solar energy saw the biggest increase, up 47 percent from the previous year. Germany is the world’s top market for power converted from solar radiation and its installed capacity accounts for more than a third of the global total.

Germany aims to derive 35 percent of its total energy needs from renewable sources by 2035.

Link for more info.

Thanks to Reddit, here’s a website that tracks energy production by type.

Homeowners Can Earn Cash From Solar Roofs

- Adam Clare

Energy is still delivered via large power stations which can fail and leave entire regions without electricity. The future requires a more distributed energy grid that is a combination of large and small electricity generators, doing so will ensure electricity is not so heavily impacted by a rise in the cost of single fuel source.

Light provides us with infinitely free energy, all we need is a way to capture it and year-over-year it’s getting easier to do so. Combing solar power and a distributed power grid opens up new opportunities and an enterprising company from always cloudy Vancouver have stepped up.

Gridbid will turn a homeowner’s roof into a power source and provide an ongoing revenue for the owner while making our energy source a little better.

Gridbid, allows homeowners to auction the solar installation rights to their roofs online. The company says solar installers can save as much as 80% of what they normally spend to find roof-top space, while the average residential utility bill drops between 10 and 35%.
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He and his partners knew getting into solar was next. Proving the importance of engaging in customer discovery conversations, they talked to over 150 different people in the solar market to identify the key problems. The problems were roof acquisition and financing for projects. Thomas shared what’s driving him and his team, “we are going to learn faster than anyone, and ultimately build a very large solar auction and financing platform that will make going solar painless for any person, or organization who owns a roof.”

Read more here.

A Stove That Uses Fire to Charge Electronics

- Adam Clare

BioLite is a company that focuses on creating clean-burning stoves. We’ve looked at stoves before and why it’s important to create efficient stoves for a better planet and healthier people.

Recently, an employee of BioLite gave a presentation at TEDx Montreal about the importance of clean stoves.

The company has tied their business model of selling camping stoves to improving home stoves in a smart way, here’s an advertisement about their camping stove:

BioLite CampStove Demo & Story from BioLite on Vimeo.

Ice Can Help Power Grids During Peak Use

- Adam Clare

Air conditioners use a ton of energy and when everyone has their’s running the load on the power grid can be pushed to the limit. At night, when it’s generally cooler, the power grid isn’t being used nearly as much. A company called Ice Energy is using that extra night time capacity to make ice, which is then used to cool buildings as a compliment to exiting AC setups.

The building owner gets cheaper power, and the utility gets a solution to its peak power problems, said Mike Hopkins, executive vice president of corporate development. That all comes at a cost of roughly $2,200 per kilowatt of installed capacity, a figure that’s quite competitive with other forms of distributed energy storage, he said.

It’s a growing business. Ice Energy is now roughly halfway through fulfilling the 53 megawatts of Ice Bear units it has contracted to provide its biggest customer, the Southern California Public Power Authority, which buys power for municipal utilities around the SoCal region. That relationship also led the company to relocate from Windsor, Colo. to Glendale, Calif. last month, and to decide to focus on California as its key market, Hopkins said.

Read more.

Quiz: How Much do You Know About Fuel Subsidies?

- Adam Clare

I had no idea that global government subsidies for fossil fuels were at least $409 billion (USD) in 2010 compared to $66 billion for renewable energy!

You can test your knowledge of how subsidized the fossil fuel industry is at National Geographic’s fuel subsidy quiz.

I guarantee you’ll learn something new and informative about energy consumption.

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