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AGA Lauds House Subcommittee for Preserving Important LIHEAP Funding
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Posted: September 01, 2010 |
Washington, DC — The American Gas Association (AGA) today commended Chairman David Obey (D-WI) and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS and Education for maintaining $5.1 billion in FY11 funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) during its Appropriations markup on Thursday, July 15, 2010.
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LIHEAP Action Day Press Conference
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Posted: September 01, 2010 |
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Washington, DC — As record high temperatures continue to plague the country, the American Gas Association (AGA) in conjunction with the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and National Fuel Funds Network (NFFN), will host a press conference with members of Congress on Wednesday, July 28. Participants will call for full funding of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the immediate release of the remaining 2010 LIHEAP contingency resources to help vulnerable Americans who cannot afford to cool their homes during these blazing summer months.
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Exxon, Statoil and ANGA join Chesapeake as sponsors of World Shale Gas Conference and Exhibition
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Posted: September 01, 2010 |
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London, UK — The World Shale Gas Conference & Exhibition, 3-5 November 2010 in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, is making massive progress with new sponsors, speakers, exhibitors and supporting companies now confirmed. With industry leaders such as Exxon and Statoil joining Chesapeake as key sponsors, delegate registration numbers are hitting record levels and new exhibiting companies have confirmed their participation.
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Good-Bye John Deere Renewables
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Posted: August 31, 2010 |
 Back in the early days of the modern wind industry, farm equipment manufacturers in Denmark played a key role in developing the sturdy large-scale machines installed in the 1980s. Maybe that's why wind seemed like such a good fit for a company like John Deere, the world's largest farm machinery manufacturer.
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Biofuel Co-Production: Will it Scale Quickly?
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Posted: August 31, 2010 |
 We've heard many promises about large-scale facilities for cellulosic ethanol and diesel, but so far we haven't seen many promising results. This week, Honeywell and Rentech said they'll be working together to build a co-production facility that will produce high amounts of fuel and electricity by 2012.
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CSP cooling options: Workarounds for water scarcity
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Posted: August 31, 2010 |
 CSP Today speaks to Babul Patel, senior consultant at Nexant Inc., about the cost implication of plant cooling options and how to operate plants effectively under increasingly stringent water restrictions.
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Innovation for Biogas in France
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Posted: August 31, 2010 |
 Whilst its European neighbours are forging ahead, France is today beginning to realise the potential of this highly versatile and renewable energy form. With its vast and well structured agriculture and agro-alimentary sector, France in reality has an outstanding potential to become a leading European player in biogas.
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Solar Home Design Manual for Cool Climates
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Posted: August 31, 2010 |
 A house is the biggest single investment most of us will make in our lives - the way it is built and how it operates can reflect a long term investment in both the building and the planet.
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The Facts About Wind Energy and Emissions
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Posted: August 31, 2010 |
 Recent data and analyses have made it clear that the emissions savings from adding wind energy to the grid are even larger than had been commonly thought. In addition to each kilowatt-hour (kWh) of wind energy directly offsetting a kWh that would have been produced by a fossil-fired power plant, new analyses show that wind plants further reduce emissions by forcing the most polluting and inflexible power plants offline and causing them to be replaced by more efficient and flexible types of generation.
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SkyFuel's Parabolic Troughs Are 73% Efficient
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 Utility scale parabolic trough solar concentrators harness the sun's energy to make steam for electricity generation. The more efficiently that a trough can harness the sun's energy and convert it to steam, the more electricity it will be able to make.
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Pike Research: Grid Energy Storage a $35B Market by 2020
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
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Coming on the heels of yesterday's announcement that California is moving closer to setting grid energy storage mandates for utilities in the state, today Pike Research released a new report that says the grid energy storage market could reach as much as $35 billion by 2020.
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The Solar Power Optimization Boom
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 The era of the "smart" solar panel is here. As more companies develop new power optimization and data tracking technologies for solar systems, the market has exploded.
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Skyline Installs CPV System in Hawaii
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
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Two months after installing an 80-kW concentrating photovoltaics unit in California, Skyline Solar has put another 22-kW project in the ground in Hawaii.
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Why Conservatives Are Bad on Energy
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
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Conservatives, let's talk about energy. And why so many conservatives are so wrong -- so liberal, even -- on wind and solar energy.
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The Best Peak Oil Investments: Why Invest for Peak Oil?
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 The purpose of this series on peak oil investments has been to highlight companies outside the oil sector that are likely to benefit from increasing oil prices. This article explains why we should expect oil prices to rise. (Note: scroll to the end of this article to find a link to all the articles in this series.)
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Renewable Portfolio Standards Work, But at What Cost?
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 As policymakers consider energy and environmental goals, renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are one popular tool to encourage the development of renewable power resources. These regulations, also called renewable electricity standards, typically require utilities to source a specified percentage of their power from qualified renewable sources. States adopt RPS programs to incentivize the development of new capacity, reduce their carbon footprints and mitigate volatility in fossil fuel prices. While such regulations do have cost impacts to ratepayers, proponents argue that their benefits exceed their costs.
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Standard Solar Ranks in Top 100 of the 2010 Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Private Company in America List
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 Standard Solar, Inc., a premier full-service developer, integrator and installer of solar electric systems for commercial, government and residential customers, today announced that the company was named to the prestigious Inc. magazine Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies in America list, a compendium of the most entrepreneurial and fastest growing companies in America. Standard Solar ranked 73rd out of 500 and was the highest ranking renewable energy company on the list.
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Cape Wind: When Can We Start?
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 The developers of the embattled Cape Wind project got another piece of good news today, moving the nation's first federally-approved offshore wind farm closer to construction.
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SMA Becomes the First Manufacturer Worldwide to Receive UL Certification for Its Transformerless Inverters
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 SMA Solar Technology AG continues to expand its technological lead over the competition, and has set the course for the increased use of transformerless solar inverters in the United States. The leading manufacturer of solar inverters has become the first company in the world to receive certification from Underwriters Laboratories® (UL) for transformerless inverters. The certification applies to SMA transformerless Sunny Boy 8000TL-US, Sunny Boy 9000TL-US, and Sunny Boy 10000TL-US inverters and was granted as a result of complying with "UL Standard 1741 for PV and Battery-Powered Inverters," which, for the first time includes requirements on transformerless inverters.
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Mitsubishi Electric PV modules chosen for landmark solar project at Butte College
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Posted: August 30, 2010 |
 Using solar energy, Butte College in Oroville, Calif., plans to be one of the first colleges in the U.S. to produce more energy than it consumes. While the college has been using solar energy for three years, the board of trustees approved its Phase III solar project which is expected to be completed by May 2011. Butte College will install more than 14,000 Mitsubishi Electric solar modules capable of producing 3,481,920 kWh of clean energy per year. This 2.7 MW DC installation is an addition to the 10,000 solar panels the college already has, making the total system size 4.55 MW DC.
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Italian Solar Market Has 42 MW of Mecasolar Trackers
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Posted: August 29, 2010 |
 Spanish company Grupo OPDE's subsidiary Mecasolar, which designs, manufactures and installs solar trackers and other equipment for solar power plants in Europe and elsewhere, announced that by the end of 2010, it expects to have installed globally more than 22,000 solar trackers with a total power of 282 MW.
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MiaSole Signs 600 MW Supply Agreement
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Posted: August 29, 2010 |
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Shortly after the CIGS thin-film producer MiaSolé signed an agreement with German developer Juwi Solar for 7.5 MW of panels, the two companies announced a much larger supply deal for 600 MW. The move is a positive one for MiaSolé, which has faced delays in scaling up operations.
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National Semiconductor's WEBENCH LED Architect Simplifies and Speeds Lighting Design
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Posted: August 29, 2010 |
 National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:NSM) today announced the addition of WEBENCH LED Architect to its award-winning portfolio of online WEBENCH® Designer tools. The first of its kind, WEBENCH LED Architect enables both novice and expert designers to perform real-time comparisons and optimize complex lighting systems for performance, size and cost in minutes.
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Help Wanted: Government Incentives for PV and CSP
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Posted: August 29, 2010 |
 Even though solar is currently in the middle of a slow down when it comes to the manufacturing and the purchasing of panels and arrays, it still has the chance to become a big player in powering the world. Solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar power (CSP) developments are already making great strides in powering parts of Europe and Asia. But the U.S. is lagging noticeably behind and will need a little push from the government to get things started, namely in financial incentives and a firm piece of climate legislation signed into law.
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Solar Array Design: Parallel Wiring Opens New Doors
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Posted: August 29, 2010 |
 For decades, designers of solar power systems have faced a knotty set of interlocking challenges. Solar panels produce DC at relatively low voltages, but inverters require a relatively high input voltage to be able to convert the power to AC and send it to the grid. Solar panels can be wired in series to sum their voltages, but their combined output fluctuates with even small mismatches among panels on a string.
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Chile Becoming a Hot Geothermal Market
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Posted: August 29, 2010 |
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The Chilean government is getting serious about geothermal. Last week, the country's energy minister said that Chile will support over $200 million in geothermal investments over the next two years.
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AGA Recognizes Awards of Merit Recipients
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Posted: August 28, 2010 |
Washington, DC — The American Gas Association (AGA) recently honored 59 member company recipients with the prestigious Awards of Merit. The Awards of Merit, based on a cumulative point system, are awarded to individuals for their active and continuous service to the AGA Operating Section through participation on technical committees, as well as participation in AGA events.
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World's Largest Solar Cell Manufacturing Plant Underway
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Posted: August 26, 2010 |
 Two years ago, GW-scale production facilities were considered a big deal. With more companies reaching the GW range, the next step is to get to multi-GW capacities. That's exactly what Neo Solar Power Corp. is doing in Taiwan.
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250 MW CSP Project Approved in California
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Posted: August 26, 2010 |
 The energy developer and project owner NextEra Energy Resources got the green light from the California Energy Commission (CEC) this week to build a $1 billion, 250 MW concentrating solar power plant in the state. It's the first time in 20 years that a project of its kind has gotten approval.
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GEOTHERMAL ENERGY IN ARGENTINA
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Posted: August 26, 2010 |
 The Government of the province of Neuquén, Argentina, through its Agency for Investment Promotion and Development (Agencia de Promocion y Desarrollo de Inversiones – ADI-Nqn), has launched a Public Call to Investors interested in developing proposals for the award of an exploration contract to discover and produce endogenous steam in the areas of "MARIA VICTORIA" and "MAITENA" mines in Domuyo, both of which are property of the Agency.
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What is the future for utility scale solar? According to recent reports and commitment from utilities in the Southwest and East coast USA, the future is optimistic. SEIA recently announced that utilities' solar megawatts added to the grid grew from 169 MW in 2008 to 279 in 2009, a growth of 66 percent in a year when electricity demand as a whole declined as the result of an economic downturn. 
Wednesday 8 September 2010 17:00 (UK time – GMT +1), 12:00 (EDT), 9:00 (PDT) 
GreenRay Inc., developers of the first safety certified AC Module, announced today that the company's SunSine™200 AC Module has completed its safety certification and is now listed by Intertek to the UL 1741 standard. 
