wind

World’s Largest Wind Farm Starts Sprouting

- Adam Clare

Britain has started construction on the world’s largest wind power generating installation. This will be a massive increase in renewable energy hitting the power grid in the UK – and a benefit for all thanks to less pollution.

Check out the video on the project:

The 100 turbines, each measuring more than 300ft, will power more than 200,000 homes. It will increase the amount of energy generated from offshore wind in the UK by a third to 1,314MW, compared to 1,100MW in the whole of the rest of the world.

Mr Huhne said the UK is leading the world in an exciting new technology that will cut carbon emissions and boost green jobs.

Read more at The Telegraph

Sustainable Power in Southern Mexico

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Here’s an informative short video on energy entrepreneurs in a poor part of southern Mexico the provide sustainable electricity to locals. The generators are built locally and are designed to allow almost anyone build a generator. This is really good to see happening.

New Jersey Wants Wind

- Adam Clare

New Jersey is trying to get the the USA’s first offshore wind farm by providing incentives to company to setup wind turbines. It is good to see American politicians encouraging growth in sustainable energy.

Part of the law ensures $100 million in tax credits to offshore wind energy developers which want to build off of New Jersey’s shores. In addition, the law is expected to guarantee the companies which choose to build in New Jersey an income from the offshore wind farms. The potential draw to companies wanting to build offshore wind farms in New Jersey is expected to increase drastically due to the law.

Part of the reason for the creation of the law is to increase the amount of renewable energy in the state of New Jersey. Officials wish to see 1,100 megawatts of energy in the state coming from offshore wind energy projects. A greater goal by the state is to have 3,000 megawatts of energy coming from offshore wind energy by the year 2020.

Green Jobs in Spain Reversed Economic Downturn

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

The Republican party in the USA has been trying to defend the drilling of oil despite an ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, nothing new there. They have also been arguing against progressive economic reforms to make the American economy more efficient and powered by renewable sources.

Thanks to the Republican incompetence I have stumbled across good news from Spain. They tried citing a report that they thought was against green reforms, turns out those reforms have turned a region of Spain from a place of economic misery to a haven of productivity.

Sixty-five percent of the electricity used in Navarra comes from renewable sources — primarily wind — built over the last twenty years. Over those years, the region went from having the highest unemployment rate in Spain to having the lowest rate, today.

“Under President Obama’s leadership,” the report concludes, “the United States’ decisive support of renewable energies…will aid in rapidly overcoming the current economic crisis…”

Read more about Spain’s success

These Batteries Rock

- Adam Clare

Wind and solar energy generation is criticized for not being always-on, so people have been looking to batteries to steady the flow of energy. Over at Cambridge, there are some people who think that a new type of battery made out of gravel could help with the full adoption of sustainable energy.

Isentopic claims its gravel-based battery would be able to store equivalent amounts of energy but use less space and be cheaper to set up. Its system consists of two silos filled with a pulverised rock such as gravel. Electricity would be used to heat and pressurise argon gas that is then fed into one of the silos. By the time the gas leaves the chamber, it has cooled to ambient temperature but the gravel itself is heated to 500C.

After leaving the silo, the argon is then fed into the second silo, where it expands back to normal atmospheric pressure. This process acts like a giant refrigerator, causing the gas (and rock) temperature inside the second chamber to drop to -160C. The electrical energy generated originally by the wind turbines originally is stored as a temperature difference between the two rock-filled silos. To release the energy, the cycle is reversed, and as the energy passes from cold to hot it powers a generator that makes electricity.

Isentropic claims a round-trip energy efficiency of up to 80% and, because gravel is cheap, the cost of a system per kilowatt-hour of storage would be between $10 and $55.

Keep reading at The Guardian.

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