Category Archives: Alternative Energy
Well here’s some good news for those keeping their noses in the air trying to sniff out carbon emissions. Global Co2 emissions dropped by a sweet 1.3% last year, this may not seem too much, though it does mean a whole lot, on a global level. The emission levels have fallen to 31.3 billion tons on a global scale, which could probably be caused by global economic crisis and rising investments in renewable energies. However, a few people think this isn’t really true, since the dropping levels of Co2 emissions in Europe, the U.S., Russia, and Japan were simply replaced by the increase of emissions in Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Currently according to IWR reports, China has the highest Co2 emission levels at 7.43 billion tons, followed by the United States at 5.95 billion tons and Russia at 1.53 billion tons.
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Remember the Thyagaraj Stadium in New Delhi being built for the 201 Common Wealth games? Well, Reliance Group’s solar energy initiative, Reliance Solar, has just plugged in what will be India’s first one-megawatt (MW) solar plant to the stadium. This stadium is in fact something to look up to in India, an example set, with a host of green features, which hopefully other stadiums will look up to and follow. Owing to the fact that a 1MW plant will help power it up, the stadium will keep away as much as 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually. When unused, the power generated will be returned to the grid too, which will help relieve the strain on other power plants around to some extent. Expected to generate around 1.4 million units of electricity per year, the plant was installed and commissioned in a record braking duration of less than 3 months in the country.
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Burntisland Fabrications has had a makeover, changing from an oil industry equipment manufacturer, to building tidal energy turbines. The firm will build one of these; the world’s most advanced till date, on the west coast of Scotland. Winning a contract of $6.25 million, the company will have the turbine up and functioning by 2013. The turbine will help power up whiskey distilleries too besides just homes on the island for 23 hours a day and we raise our glasses in cheer at that. Eight whisky distilleries and malteries will be powered up with tidal energy. To be rooted at the Sound of Islay, the 101MW turbines, the HS1000 were developed by a joint venture between energy companies, Hammerfest Strom.
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Just a while ago, we mentioned the Macarthur Windfarm. The deal has been inked and finalized now! The largest wind farm below the equator, in the southern hemisphere, will now sprout up near Hamilton, 260km west of Melbourne, with Australian firm AGL Energy and New Zealand-based renewable energy developer Meridian Energy, joining hands to build a 420MW power plant. The wind farm, costing $1bn, will be completed somewhere near 2013. Using as many as 140 Vestas turbines, the wind farm will easily power up at least 220,000 homes. This will help do away with as much as 1.7 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, the equivalent of pulling off 420,000 cars off the road approximately.
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The Big Apple will have a lot more in its skyline than just towering stacks of concrete and bricks. The New York City will now play host to green energy, in the form of wind turbines, if all goes as planned. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is looking forward to setting up five 280 feet tall wind towers that will operate on the west side of New York Harbor. That’s not all. A few wind turbines will tower up in the City of Bayonne, N.J. that will be used to power a sewage-pumping station, while the Department of Veterans Affairs is considering placing wind turbines on or near its hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Currently, the Big Apple isn’t really using the power of the wind to the fullest, besides a wind powered Coke billboard and a building with wind turbines.
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Producing more than one actually uses is always a good thing, especially when it comes to energy. Well that’s exactly what the Sonnenschiff solar city in Freiburg, Germany does. This one’s net positive, a net-zero project. To get it right, the city basically uses a bunch of solar panels, facing the sun and soaking in its heat, and unlike most green projects, this one’s designing is done with the solar panels in focus, and not as an added accessory. The Sonnenschiff (Solar Ship) and Solarsiedlung (Solar Village), designed by Rolf Disc, the city uses a series of large rooftop solar arrays that also play the role of sun shades. Built to Passivhaus standards, these green buildings produce as much as four times the energy they actually use.
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The giant amongst them all, the Atlantis Resources AK1000 is sure catching the waves in the right way and a whole lot of attention too. This huge tidal turbine recently had its veil pulled off in Scotland, and will soon be installed at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney later. The colossal tidal energy generator weighs in at around 130 tons and stands around 74 feet. It’s just as wide too, with the rotors measuring up to nearly 60 feet across. Taken that it’s so huge and heavy, the AK1000 is bound to generate a whole lot of energy, and it does so too. Capable of generating up to 1MW, a single tidal turbine like this can generate enough energy to lighten up around 1000 homes.
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Macarthur, Victoria, will now play home to a $1 billion wind farm, all set for completion by the year 2013. Located near Hamilton, 260 kilometers west of Melbourne, the wind farm will be the largest in the southwestern hemisphere and will also be one of the worlds largest. Using 140 three-megawatt wind turbines, the wind farm will generate enough power from the winds to lighten up 220,000 average Victorian homes, abating greenhouse gases by a sweet 1.7 million tones a year, an equivalent of kicking 420,000 cars off the road annually. To be launched by Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, and the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, Senator Penny Wong, the wind farm will also create jobs, besides a load of green renewable energy.
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Storing renewable energy for use later in grids has left technological experts scratching their chins and chewing their pencil tops for ages. Well, things are getting better for renewable energy now, thanks to Xcel Energy, the firm that has developed a battery big enough to store wind power-generated electricity for 500 homes, a feat never thought of or worked on before. The sodium sulfur (NaS) battery is currently under testing stages at an 11-megawatt (MW) wind farm somewhere near Luverne, Minnesota. The battery weighing in at 80-tons was made by NGK Insulators Ltd. of Japan. The mammoth uses wenty 50-kilowatt modules, and stores 7.2 megawatt-hours of electricity, instantly absorbing or generating one megawatt of power.
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A unique energy storing plant in New York will show up soon enough, using flywheels to save up all the extra power. Beacon Power, based in Massachusetts, states that the plant will help buffer 20 megawatts of power on the grid. Earlier technology helped provide just a single megawatt of power. Well if you don’t really know what flywheels are, these are devices that help store electricity as kinetic energy, dispensing it back to the grid in quick bursts and can store energy generated from renewable energy sources which at times are fickle minded. Hooking up solar and wind power to a system like this could help create a renewable-energy grid after all! Using electricity to accelerate a carbon-fiber rotor inside a vacuum, flywheels help provide that extra burst of energy needed sometimes while demand is at peak.
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