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Global Solar and Wind Energy Production Continues to Grow

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

The sustainable energy market consistently needs to prove its worth despite the obvious benefits, whats worse is that the industry as a whole is up against the subsidized fossil fuel industry. Despite the artificially lowered fossil fuel prices sustainable energy solutions continue to prove their economic worth.

Global solar and wind energy capacities continued to grow even though new investments in these energy sources declined during 2012. Global investment in solar energy in 2012 was $140.4 billion, an 11 percent decline from 2011, and wind investment was down 10 percent, to $80.3 billion.But due to lower costs for both technologies, total installed capacities grew sharply.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) installed capacity grew by 41 percent in 2012, reaching 100 gigawatts (GW). Over the past five years alone, installed PV capacity grew by 900 percent from 10 GW in 2007. The countries with the most installed PV capacity today are Germany (32.4 GW), Italy (16.4 GW), the United States (7.2 GW), and China (7.0 GW).

Europe remains dominant in solar, accounting for 76 percent of global solar power use in 2012. Germany alone accounted for 30 percent of the world’s solar power consumption, and Italy added the third most capacity of any country in 2012 (3.4 GW). Spain added the most concentrating solar thermal power capacity (950 MW) in 2012 as well. However, Italy reached the subsidy cap for its feed-in tariff (FIT) program in June 2013 while Spain recently made a retroactive change in its FIT policies, meaning growth in solar energy will likely slow in these countries in the near future.

Read more at WorldWatch

New Homes in Lancaster, California Required to Produce Solar Energy

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Lancaster, California has nearly half a million citizens and they want to reduce their carbon footprint. Their most recent step to being a green city is a world’s first as far as I know: every new residential development in the city is required to produce energy using the sun.

“However, to truly establish ourselves as the Alternative Energy Capital of the World, we must continue to take a progressive approach. I would like to commend our Planning Commission for this innovative revision of the Residential Zones, which will rapidly advance us towards becoming a net-zero City in record time.”

Read more at Solar Tribune.

A Solar Structure That Cools in the Sun

- Adam Clare

Keeping buildings cool in the summer is hard enough as it is and we have access to air conditioning technologies. Now, there’s a better way to keep buildings, cars, and whatnot thanks to some research out of Stanford University. Their new approach to cooling entire structures doesn’t require electricity and means that air conditioners won’t be needed and thus a huge decrease in energy consumption can be achieved.

A team of researchers at Stanford has designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining. Such a structure could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into the chilly vacuum of space.
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“We’ve taken a very different approach compared to previous efforts in this field,” said Aaswath Raman, a doctoral candidate in Fan’s lab and a co-first-author of the paper. “We combine the thermal emitter and solar reflector into one device, making it both higher performance and much more robust and practically relevant. In particular, we’re very excited because this design makes viable both industrial-scale and off-grid applications.”

Read more from the press release.

Burning in the Sun: The Small Solar Industry in Africa

- Adam Clare

A few years ago in Mali some filmmakers went to chronicle what’s going on in the country and ended up making a documentary about solar energy. Daniel Dembele is an entrepreneur who brought solar power to the people by starting a company and bringing photovoltaic panels to rural Mali. This looks like a good doc!

Founding a small business is something that is deeply embedded in American and European culture. But most have never seen this universal kind of effort take place in Africa, traditionally portrayed by mainstream media as a land of the starving and war ravaged. In our portrayal of Daniel, who undertakes a familiar effort in an unfamiliar environment, we attempt to open the door to on what is viewed as possible in Africa, and update Western cultural awareness with a profound dose of optimism. Daniel’s work shatters notions of the need for African dependence on outside aid and embraces the view that ultimately it is Africans who will develop Africa in their own way.

Now more than ever, people around the world see green-collar jobs as a necessity for survival in our rapidly changing economies and environments. Daniel’s daring, charisma and intelligence remind us of the leadership required to encourage this level of transformative change, anywhere in the world. We showcased Daniel as an African leader, as well as a global trendsetter. We think this allows viewers to understand the kind of micro business development that makes sense for Africa, while also hopefully stirring a profound inspiration to take action in their own communities.

Find out more at the movie’s website.

A Solar Powered Combustion Engine May Be in Your Future

- Adam Clare

This may sound counter-intutitive, but researches have begun a project to build an internal combustion engine (a common car engine) that runs off of solar power. Instead of using gas to ignite everything they want to heat water, add a dash of oil, to create a replacement to the overused pollution producing machine that is one of the leading causes of global warming.

To begin, mirrored parabolic solar collectors would be used to heat oil to a temperature of at least 400 to 700ºF (204 to 371ºC). This hot oil would then be injected into the cylinder chamber of the engine, just like gasoline ordinarily is. A few microdroplets of water would then also be introduced, which would turn to steam immediately upon contact with the hot oil.

The rapidly-expanding steam would serve the same purpose as exploding gas, driving the piston downward and turning the driveshaft. As the piston reached the bottom of its stroke, the spent steam and oil would exit the cylinder and be run through an oil/steam separator. They could then each be returned to their respective reservoirs, for re-use within the closed-loop system.

Read more at gizmag.

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