Google to invest in German solar power plant

Today, we agreed to make our first clean energy project investment in Europe - a €3.5 million (ca. $ 5 million) investment in a solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant in Germany. The transaction still requires the formal approval of the German competition authorities and is subject to other customary closing conditions.
The recently completed facility is located on 47 hectares (116 acres) in Brandenburg an der Havel, near Berlin. The power plant has a peak capacity of 18.65MWp, which puts it among the largest in Germany.
Google is always looking for new ways to encourage development and deployment of renewable energy across the world. This facility will provide clean energy to more than 5,000 households in the area surrounding Brandenburg. Until the early 90’s, the site was used as a training ground by the Russian military.
We’re glad it has found a new use!

We agreed to jointly invest in this project with the German private equity company Capital Stage, which brings strong experience in the German photovoltaic and renewable energy market. Germany has a strong framework for renewable energy and is home to many leading-edge technology companies in the sector. More than 70% of the solar modules installed in Brandenburg are provided by German manufacturers.
After investing in clean energy projects in the U.S., we’re excited about making our first investment outside of the U.S. in Germany, a country that has long been a global leader in clean energy development.
Source: googlepolicyeurope

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Quantum Dots as Solar Cells

The key to using silicon in electronic devices such as transistors and solar cells lies in doping, or adding in small quantities of other elements, to create an excess of electrons (n-type) or positively charged holes (p-type) that change the material's conductivity. N-type and p-type silicon are butted together to form p-n junctions, the basic building blocks of electronic devices such as solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and transistors.

For years, researchers have tried to do something similar with quantum dots, tiny semiconductor crystals a few nanometers in diameter. Now, a team of Israeli researchers has reported success. They have doped indium arsenide quantum dots to create n-type and p-type materials. The advance, published in the journal Science, could lead to new types of efficient, cheap, and printable thin-film solar cells.
Quantum dots hold promise for low-cost solar cells because they can be made using simple, inexpensive chemical reactions. Scientists have calculated that quantum dots could be used to make thin-film photovoltaics that are at least as efficient as conventional silicon cells, and possibly more efficient. The higher possible efficiency is because nanocrystals made of certain semiconductors can emit more than one electron for every photon absorbed. Plus, tweaking their size and shape changes the colors of light they absorb.  "We could tune the nanocrystal absorption to match the solar spectrum," says Uri Banin, a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who led the new work.
Source: TechnologyTeview

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Device Harnesses Wind Power from Passing Trains

When you think of wind power, you think of giant turbines harnessing big breezes. But industrial designers in China have developed a device that can capture the wind created by trains as they whoosh down the track. The "T-Box" device is installed between railroad ties and buried half-underground so as to not interfere with normal train operation. As the train passes overhead, the whooshing wind spins a turbine inside the T-Box to generate electricity.

Creators Qian Jiang and Alessandro Leonetti Luparini say that 150 T-Boxes could be installed along a kilometer (0.62 miles) of railway or subway track to take advantage of the otherwise wasted wind resource.
A train travelling approximately 125 mph would produce a wind speed equivalent to almost 50 feet/second. The T-Box would capture this wind, it's turbines producing about 3,500 Watts of power. If the train was about 656 feet long, travelling around 187 mph and passing over that 1 km (.062 miles) stretch, the T-Box could produce about 2.6 kilowatts of power.
The device could potentially provide electricity to remote and underserved areas or to facilities along the railway.
Designers say the turbine in based on models manufactured by Hetronix, with blades rotating about a central axis inside the T-Box's cylinder housing. Much of the device would be below ground, with only the vents exposed to let in the wind
The T-Box's design won a silver medal in last year's Lite-On Awards and was exhibited last summer at the Xue Xue Institute in Taipei, Taiwan.

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Solar Power Brings Night-Time Soccer to Kenya Slum

Solar lighting donated by China-based Yingli Green Energy is helping Nairobian youths play soccer after the sun goes down.
It is eight in the evening and amateur teams of youngsters drawn from one of Nairobi's toughest slums are locked in a five-a-side soccer match.
Normally they would have gone home long before dark to avoid the unsafe night-time streets of Mathare. But that was before the stadium became the first in Kenya to get solar-powered floodlighting, an incentive to stay on.

"We have already begun to see the changes. There is a big turn-out of teams who want to use the pitch for training in the evenings," said Stephen Muchoki, manager of the Mathare Football for Hope Center.
The development is a direct legacy of the first football World Cup in Africa held in South Africa last year: governing body FIFA afterward chose 20 African groups to house a Football for Hope Center to promote the sport, as well as health and education.
One was the Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) to which the new solar lighting system was donated by China's Yingli Green Energy Holding Company, quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.
On top of the extra four hours of light a night provided by the new system, football players welcome the chance to practice away from the glare of the powerful equatorial sun.
"During the day, the sun is too direct but at night it is (now) easy to see the ball without straining," said 16-year-old Edwin Ivusa, a Kenya under-17 international who aims to enter the national team in five years.
"Training at night is good for our fitness," added striker Kevin Irungu, a former ball boy. "We run a lot -- always on the ball -- and we don't get tired."
"I didn't think I would ever have a chance to play in a field like this. But the center has made us believe in ourselves and think we can do even better and that good things will come," he said.
Muchoki expects the newly flood-lit pitch to attract more players, and also to be rented out for events to raise funds for the association.
"We are targeting kids between the ages of eight to 18 and also the retired former players who are too busy in the offices during the day and want to train at night," he said.
MYSA was founded in 1987 and prides itself on having transformed the lives of more than 20,000 Kenyan youths living in the slums through training drills and courses ranging from football coaching to life-saving.
"These drills are very educative because they touch on every aspect of the daily life in the slum areas. They require a lot of concentration and skills from the participants," said games coordinator Robert Chege.
Programs are based on those of Streetfootballworld, a non-profit Berlin-based organization which uses the sport to promote development and gender and social equality in disadvantaged areas.
The Mathare association has a strong showing in ranks of street football -- a low-budget version of the game that can be played barefoot in the street without referees -- and dominated the previous two street football World Cup competitions in Germany in 2006 and South Africa in 2010.
Alongside its sport training, it runs programs on HIV/AIDS education and organizes clean-up groups to help prevent the spread of disease in Mathare, which is a collection of mud and corrugated iron shacks without sanitation or infrastructure.
Its pick as one of FIFA's "20 Centers for 2010" was a boost for its years of work. This center as well as ones in South Africa, Mali and Namibia have progressed well and are already hosting young sportspeople.
The Mathare stadium is the only sports facility in Kenya with a floodlighting system outside the two stadia in Nairobi -- Nyayo National Stadium and the Moi International Sports Center, Kasarani -- which are powered by the national grid.
Source: Discovery

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Coulomb and Nissan Europe Complete Compatibility Testing for New European ChargePoint Station and LEAF Interoperability

Coulomb Technologies is the leader in electric vehicle charging systems and application services, with the ChargePoint Network now operating in 14 countries, and Network Operations Centers in the U.S., London, and Hong Kong. The ChargePoint Network first went live in January of 2009. Coulomb provides a vehicle-charging infrastructure, with an open system driver network: the ChargePoint Network provides multiple web-based portals for Hosts, Fleet Managers, Drivers, and Utilities, and ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations ranging in capability from 120 Volt to 240 Volt AC charging and up to 500 Volt DC charging.

Coulomb Technologies, the leading electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions provider, announced the expansion of the ChargePoint® Network with advanced networking features specifically designed for the European market. The ChargePoint Network now supports the popular MIFARE-based transportation card that facilitates interoperability amongst different European energy supplier charging networks, making driver roaming possible. The family of ChargePoint Network compatible charging stations also now includes the ChargePoint CT2500, one of the first Mode3/Type 2 electric vehicle charging stations awarded the KEMA-KEUR safety certification mark for compliance with IEC 61851.
Coulomb’s ChargePoint Network is the world’s largest charging network supporting thousands of charging stations and EV drivers. The ChargePoint Network comprises stations installed throughout Europe including Ireland, England and the Netherlands, with more than 100 stations currently in use in the City of Amsterdam. Station owners, including energy suppliers and municipal governments, can now offer drivers: faster charging, flexible billing, email and text message alerts, 24/7 driver assistance, and compatibility with all new electric vehicles.
Additionally, Coulomb announced it has completed compatibility testing with the Nissan LEAF at the Nissan Technical Centre in England. The Nissan LEAF is expected to be on the streets of Portugal, Ireland, UK and The Netherlands in early 2011 and will be able to charge at any ChargePoint charging station in Europe. Coulomb’s CT2500 was one of the first public Mode 3/Type 2 charging stations to successfully test charging compatibility with the Nissan LEAF at the Nissan Technical Center in November 2010.
“We are proud to expand ChargePoint Network’s reach further into the European market,” said Bret Sewell, Executive Vice President at Coulomb. “The introduction of these new stations helps support EV adoption in Europe, and the ChargePoint Network enables energy suppliers to deliver EV charging services to drivers, bill customers, and provide driver support, while cost effectively and remotely managing their charging infrastructure.”
Source: coulombtech

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OpenStudio Visualizes Energy Use in Buildings

Look around you. Odds are, you are indoors reading this story using a computer or mobile device, perhaps sipping on a favorite cup of coffee. If you are indoors at this moment, you're draining energy from one of the largest consumers of energy in the U.S. — a building. Together, residential and commercial buildings account for a staggering 40 percent of energy use in the United States. However, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is developing a suite of tools to tame this energy beast — and it is free to anyone who wants to use it.

Whether retrofitting existing buildings or designing new buildings, energy modeling is a core component to changing a building from an energy guzzler to an energy sipper. "It's much cheaper to run an energy model than it is to build the wrong building or do the wrong retrofit," said NREL Senior Engineer Nicholas Long.
DOE's EnergyPlus is a powerful simulation engine that provides comprehensive building energy modeling. NREL is working to add tools to EnergyPlus, via its OpenStudio Application Suite, to improve overall functionality and make EnergyPlus easier to use.
"OpenStudio uses open source code so if someone wants a feature that we don't have the time or the funds to write, there are two options," Goldwasser said. "First, they can write that code and submit it to us. We look at it and decide if it gets accepted and works with what we want. Another option is for them is to use an API [application programming interface] and 'plug-in' to our software and write applications without changing our code."
Source: NERL

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High-Efficiency Solar Cells from Three Nations

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is partnering with major international industrial technology and solar research organizations to test how solar cells from three manufacturers perform in two geographic locations with different lighting conditions. A primary goal of the study is to assess how panels from three different manufacturers – from the United States, Japan and Germany – perform under different average lighting conditions characteristic of the study’s test sites in Aurora, Colo., and Yokohama, Japan.
Concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) solar systems – which use lenses to multiply the sun’s intensity, reduce the area of the solar cells needed to convert sunlight to electricity and improve the efficiency of conventional photovoltaics – have been installed at sites in Aurora and Yokohama, in part, to measure how well the same cells perform in the high-altitude sunshine of Colorado in comparison with those in cloudier, lower-altitude Japan.
NREL teamed with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to install 25 kilowatts of CPV systems at the Solar Technology Acceleration Center (SolarTAC) in Aurora, Colo. SolarTAC provides a venue for researching, demonstrating, testing, and validating a broad range of solar technologies at the early commercial or near-commercial stage of development. Concentrator Photovoltaic systems made by Daido Steel, a Japanese manufacturer, are installed at both sites and are designed to compare solar cells made by Spectrolab of the United States, Sharp of Japan, and Azur Space of Germany.
Daido’s CPV design uses a dome-shaped Fresnel lens and concentrator solar cells with efficiencies approaching 40 percent – meaning that 40 percent of the energy in the sunlight that hits the solar cells is converted into usable electricity – resulting in module efficiencies of about 30 percent. By contrast, most of the PV panels on rooftops today have an efficiency rating of 20 percent or less. The output of the CPV systems will be compared with conventional silicon PV modules.
The study will also test high efficiency, advanced versions of the Gallium-Indium-Phosphorous/Galium-Arsenic solar cells originally invented and developed at NREL, which are now widely used for space exploration applications, such as the Mars rovers. The high efficiencies of these cells, coupled with system designs that greatly reduce the area that needs to be covered by solar cells, have attracted growing interest in recent years. In the modules being tested, solar cells cover 1 one-thousandth of the space covered by similar conventional solar modules.
Source: NREL

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Rapid Testing Yields High-Energy Battery Materials

Wildcat has developed a pair of new materials that set new standards for the rechargeable battery industry, by providing unprecedented energy density of more than 675 Wh/kg while operating in full cells at 5 volts – levels beyond today’s industry standards.
Wildcat’s EM1, a novel 5V electrolyte formulation, and CM1, a new high voltage cathode material, have been shown to deliver a 25 percent improvement in gravimetric energy density, and a 61 percent improvement in volumetric energy density in the electrode, compared with existing state-of-the-art battery materials with comparable attributes. Thus far, batteries made with EM1 and CM1 have expected power and safety performance comparable to lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), while also handling more than 100 charge/discharge cycles in full-cell testing.

“This is a breakthrough discovery by our development team, which can lead to batteries capable of storing much more energy than current materials allow,” said Wildcat CEO Mark Gresser. “When batteries hold more energy, it creates new options for design engineers - electric cars can go farther, tablets, laptops and smartphones can be smaller with no loss of runtime, soldier packs can be lighter, and implanted medical devices can last longer before the need for replacement surgery. And while our initial tests have shown a 61 percent improvement in energy density, this is just the beginning – because the EM1 electrolyte is stable at 5-volt operation, it opens the door to development of a new world of cathode materials that should bring even greater advances.”
Gresser added that the new materials are fully compatible with industry-standard anode materials.
The EM1 electrolyte’s high-voltage capability is of special interest for the automotive sector, where cell development has been restricted by the inability of existing electrolyte formulas to cycle at high voltages. Current EV systems based on low voltage cells require complex and expensive pack designs and battery management systems. EM1 enables high voltage systems which are expected to reduce required cell quantities 30-40% vs. competing materials like LFP and NMC. Fewer cells and simpler pack designs translate into substantially lower costs for auto makers.
The materials were developed using Wildcat’s proprietary high-throughput synthesis and screening platforms, which enable rapid discovery and development of advanced materials. For the CM1 cathode material alone, Wildcat’s R&D team synthesized and evaluated more than 3000 materials in just eight months; this research may have taken years using conventional methods.
Source: Wildcat Discovery Technologies

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converts ground waste plastic into synthetic crude oil

Agilyx uses a patented, fully permitted process that converts ground waste plastic into synthetic crude oil. The Agilyx base system consists of four primary vessels as shown below and the associated secondary processing equipment. This base system is capable of converting approximately 10 tons of plastic into approximately 60 barrels (or approximately 2,400 gallons) of oil per day.
The Agilyx technology provides for the ability to scale the processing capacity to meet a customer's requirements in increments of 10 tons per day by combining multiple base systems together. One common exhaust system manages the hot air produced by all of the processing units, while one state-of-the-art Environmental Control Device scrubs all of the noncondensable gases, ensuring that the system meets the most stringent air quality requirements. The innovative Supervisory Station, with touch screens and a graphical user interface, allows operators to easily monitor and manage all parts of the system from one central location.

On Thursday company announced it has closed a $22 million Series B round, led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
The round also features participation from some giants in the world of waste and energy: Houston-based Waste Management Inc., the nation's largest waste industry player with $12.5 billion in revenue last year, and Paris-based Total S.A., one of the world's biggest gas and oil exploration companies with annual revenue of nearly $225 billion.
As part of Waste Management’s investment, the companies will form a strategic partnership through which they will look for various locations across North America where Waste Management can implement the Agilyx technology, said Tim Cesarek, the Houston company’s managing director for corporate development.
"There's a vast amount of waste plastic feed stock out there and no good solutions to getting rid of it," Wawro said. The Agilyx technology addresses "a lot of pain points for both the small folks that have to deal with waste plastic and is potentially a huge revenue source for somebody like a Waste Management or the large aggregators that touch 40 or 50 percent of the waste plastic we see out there."

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Are the Oil Barons Panicking? Saudi Arabia to Spend $100 Billion on Renewable Energy

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, may not be panicking quite yet about its ever-declining oil supply--but the country is certainly concerned. Consider: in February, a Wikileaks document revealed that Saudi Arabia might be overstating its oil reserves by 300 billion barrels, and the country recently asked for a slice of the UN's $100 billion climate change fund to help diversify to other energy sources (a galling request from such a wealthy country so dependent on other people not diversifying to other energy sources). And now the kingdom has announced that it plans to spend $100 billion on solar, nuclear, and other renewable energy sources. They haven't announced over what time period they will spend it, but that's a lot of cash. Private investments in Chinese renewable energy projects equalled $54.4 billion last year, which was the highest of any country.

"Fuel supply is one of the major challenges facing the power sector and the nation," Saleh Al-Awaji, Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister for electricity at the Ministry of Water, said at a recent conference in Abu Dhabi (hat tip: Bloomberg). "The policy is to work intensely on saving energy and making sure every barrel of oil that can be saved is, and is made available for export."
That means Saudi Arabia wants to wean itself off oil but keep the rest of us hooked (unless it has plans to become the world's largest solar-panel exporter, too). The country still has a long way to go in reducing its reliance on oil--Saudi Arabia consumes 2.4 million barrels a day, and is expected to need at least 8.3 million barrels by 2028 if no action is taken. But the U.S. consumes a staggering 18.8 million barrels daily, making it the most oil-hungry nation in the world. A large portion of our oil comes from Saudi Arabia, which exports nearly 9 million barrels each day.
Saudi Arabia does, at least, have an advantage in the solar power arena: plentiful sun. In September, the kingdom will complete a 3.5 MW solar array--the largest solar power plant in the country. That's not very large considering that the largest solar plants in the world produce nearly 100 MW of power, but it's a much-needed start for a country that has grown in proportion to its oil wealth.
Source: Fast Company

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