Author: Green Tech

Onondaga CC will transition its trimmed and mowed lawns and landscape into a more appropriate state of natural flowers and grasses.  …

…   “implementation of the sustainable master landscape plan will reduce the College’s dependence on lawn-mowing and return portions of the campus landscape to a more natural state of grasses, meadows and wildflowers.  While some areas of the campus may look a bit unkempt initially, natural re-growth in these areas will occur over time.”   …

Via Onondaga Community College: Master landscape plan.

Sustainable landscape plan (PDF).

Course is scheduled for this June 23rd and 24th at Onondaga Community College through SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  …

…   “The advanced course is geared toward PV installers and engineers who have experience with PV systems. It offers participants an overview of commercial PV systems in a two-day workshop. The course is recommended for those who have taken an introductory installer course or have previous installer experience.”   …

Via SUNY: PV Installer Course.

EPA recognizes local communities, like Coachella, for their initiatives targeting at clean air.  Coachella began the build-out of its hydrogen infrastructure.  …

…   “SunLine Transit Agency was the first transit agency to own and operate a hydrogen generation and dispensing station, operating five generations of hydrogen buses that utilize the fuel station. With the support of state and federal agencies, SunLine upgraded the hydrogen station to also allow the public and outside fleets to purchase hydrogen 24 hours a day.”   …

Via EPA: Clean Air Initiatives (Link).

Coachella area alternative fueling station.

Victor Valley College and SolFocus celebrated the opening of the new solar power plant on the college campus.  The solar installation deploys concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) and is sized to generate one megawatt of solar power for Victor Valley College in California.  …

…   "The Victor Valley College solar micro-generating facility is now connected to the regional electrical grid operated by Southern California Edison and will produce approximately 2.6 million kilowatt-hours annually, which is roughly 30 percent of the College’s electricity demand. "   ….

Via SolFocus: Victor Valley College Solar Power Plant (Link).

President Obama gets to see solar technology up close and personal at the Solyndra factory in California.  Solyndra builds cylindrical solar panels that convert more of the sun rays into power.  The company benefited from investments through the Recovery Act.  …

…   “… construction of the new facility has created over 3,000 construction-related jobs and the new factory could create up to 1,000 long-term new jobs.  The Solyndra project is just one of the many ways the Administration is supporting clean energy manufacturing in America.  Today Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman participated in a ground breaking ceremony for Nissan North America’s new advanced batter manufacturing facility in Smyrna, Tennessee. ”   …

Via The Whitehouse: Make Things.

Supply chain impact of the solar factory investment …

Travel broadens the mind. MIT students are recognized with Fulbright scholarships to further their studies abroad. A number of the students are pursuing the renewable energy challenge. …

… “Ian Rousseau, a native of South Hero, Vt., who is completing undergraduate studies in physics, will study Novel Solar Energy Conversion via Terahertz Rectification in Germany. ” …

Via MIT: Fulbright scholarships (Link).

US Dept of State, Fulbright Program: “Fulbright is the most widely recognized and prestigious international exchange program in the world … ”

Solar power rectification technology on the horizon plan, NREL (PDF).

Penn State’s Solar Decathlon home, Natural Fusion, will become adopted by Bayer Material Science as its demonstration center for sustainable technologies.  …

…   “In its new capacity, this solar-powered, zero-emission building will serve as an energy modeling site, educational center and showcase for Bayer MaterialScience‘s EcoCommercial Building materials solutions.”   …

Via Penn State: Solar-powered home (Link).

Cisco brings smart grid router (CGR 2010) and switch (CGR 2520) to the utility marketplace.  …

…   “The purpose-built, ruggedized routers and switches form a resilient, manageable and highly secure network solution for the substation to integrate Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications with the power grid for intelligent grid monitoring and control. These technologies build on existing Cisco Smart Grid offerings and represent the latest in the company’s efforts to deliver end-to-end solutions that help utility customers address grid reliability, industry compliance and operational expenses.”   …

Via Cisco: Smart Grid Product Line (Link).

Montana State student teams will collaborate with suppliers to build an ecoSmart home in the Bozeman area.  The house will feature a number of technologies, but will focus on passive heating.  …

…   “Because of REHAU‘s involvement, a variety of other suppliers joined in the project, which will feature such sustainable building technologies as geothermal ground loop heat exchange, ground-air heat exchange; radiant heating and cooling; solar thermal energy for hot water; and insulating concrete forms.”   …

Via Montana State University: Bozeman Sustainable House.

MEMC Electronic Materials will acquire Solaicx for its efficient solar manufacturing technology at a price tag of approx $100 Million. …

… “Solaicx has developed proprietary continuous crystal growth manufacturing technology which yields low-cost, high-efficiency monocrystalline silicon wafers for the photovoltaic solar industry. The Solaicx technology allows for very high-volume crystal growth compared to the silicon ingots produced in the traditional precision semiconductor manufacturing process. The enhanced electrical performance of wafers from Solaicx ingots allows solar cell manufacturers to create higher efficiency cells with very competitive silicon costs. In addition to these customer benefits, the combined company will have low-cost polysilicon and crystal operations in North America and sales and support offices around the world, allowing the company to provide customers with industry leading customer service. ” …

Via MEMC Electronics Materials: Agreement to Acquire Solaicx (Link).

St Mary’s University Sustainability plan …

Onset introduces wireless sensing hubs that communicate with centralized monitoring to understand energy use and environmental conditions in buildings.  …

…   “HOBO ZW Series data nodes reduce the cost and complexity of data collection by measuring, recording and transmitting real-time energy use and environmental data – from dozens of points – to a central PC. Different from traditional data loggers, HOBO data nodes work together in a self-healing wireless network to transmit logged data to a PC at regular intervals.

This eliminates the need of having to spend time retrieving collected data from individual data loggers deployed throughout a facility.  The wireless nodes can measure temperature, relatively humidity, kilowatt hours, CO2, AC voltage, amps, gauge pressure, and a variety of other parameters. ”   …

Via Onset: Wireless data nodes.

Natcore Technology and Vanguard Solar combine to advance the efficiency of solar energy conversion.  Natcore Technology is the exclusive licensee, from Rice University, of a thin-film growth technology enabling room-temperature growth of various silicon oxides on silicon wafers in a liquid phase deposition (LPD) process.  Natcore’s acquisition of Vanguard Solar will close after appropriate due diligence.  …

…   “The first-generation products from Vanguard’s method could produce 15%-16% efficiencies at module costs of 60¢ to 70¢ per watt. It is anticipated that second-generation technology could achieve 20% efficiencies at even lower costs per watt.

The investment for production facilities is projected as low as $10 million to $15 million per 100-megawatt to 150-megawatt production capability, as compared with current costs of as much as $250 million for standard solar-cell production facilities.

Vanguard’s production equipment would be designed for insertion into an existing roll-to-roll film-coating line of the sort that has been displaced by the emergence of digital photography. All production materials are widely available and dramatically cheaper than silicon and other thin film systems.

If successfully developed, the process would enable a very cost-efficient production capability in large-scale facilities.”   …

Via Natcore: Solar Science Portfolio Expands.

Mitsubishi seeks to integrate solar, wind, and other renewable power sources into its production facilities through smart grid technology that will manage the reliability and stability of the energy supply.  Some of the production facilities will deploy solar photovoltaic systems in conjunction with rechargeable batteries to enable power usage when the sun is down.  …

…   “project to build facilities within the company’s production sites in Japan for experiments designed to establish advanced smart grid technologies. The project will contribute to the company’s efforts to support the adoption of sustainable power supplies worldwide.

Mitsubishi Electric will build experimental facilities at the company’s three Japanese domestic production sites located in Amagasaki, Wakayama and Ofuna. ”  …

Via Mitsubishi Electric: Smart Grid Technology Investments (PDF).

Pythagoras will commercialize a solar power generating window that can be integrated into green buildings, BIPV.  …

…   “Pythagoras Solar leverages a combination of patent-pending optics, high-efficiency crystalline silicon, advanced materials science and simulation software to create a highly efficient photovoltaic glass unit (PVGU), a new category of green building material. Unlike existing BIPV products, Pythagoras Solar curtain walls, skylights and windows simultaneously block solar radiation; concentrate sunlight and convert it into solar power; and deliver a high level of transparency for optimal daylighting and aesthetics.”   …

Via Pythagoras Solar: Green building material.

Solar panel performance is boosted with anti-reflective coating.  …

…   “This same is true of conventional solar panels, which is why some industrial solar arrays are mechanized to slowly move throughout the day so their panels are perfectly aligned with the sun’s position in the sky. Without this automated movement, the panels would not be optimally positioned and would therefore absorb less sunlight. The tradeoff for this increased efficiency, however, is the energy needed to power the automation system, the cost of upkeeping this system, and the possibility of errors or misalignment.  Lin’s discovery could antiquate these automated solar arrays, as his antireflective coating absorbs sunlight evenly and equally from all angles.”   …

Via RPI: Absorption of Sunlight.

Amonix invests in solar manufacturing capacity in Nevada.  …

…   “Amonix announced that plans to use $5.9 million of a $9.5 million investment tax credit from the Recovery Act’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit awarded in 2010 to establish a new manufacturing facility in Southern Nevada are well underway, and that the facility will be open by the end of 2010.

When fully operational, the facility will have an annual production capacity of 150 MW of CPV solar systems and employ 278 people in management, technical and production jobs. ”   …

Via Amonix: CPV Nevada Plant.

Amonix designs and manufactures concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar power systems that require less water, use land better, and produce more energy per acre than any other solar technology.  Amonix is headquartered in Seal Beach, California. with expanded manufacturing facilities planned for Nevada and Arizona.

Dow Corning collaborates with Reis Robotics to deliver solar encapsulant technology to the market. …

…   “Reis Robotics is now a preferred supplier of equipment used in a manufacturing process that significantly increases the production rate of solar panels, effectively lowering the cost per watt of solar power. The manufacturing process works in conjunction with Dow Corning PV-6100 Encapsulant Series, which provides protection to solar cells in a panel and can replace commonly used ethyl vinyl acetate resin. The liquid silicone-based material targets outperforming incumbent materials in durability, module efficiency, and manufacturing efficiencies providing an improved total cost for solar cell modules. “   …

Via Dow Corning: Market Breakthrough Solar Encapsulation Technology

Research will target innovation into new pathways to renewable energy.  DOE spreads the love with funding across a number of energy themes, such as this one: electrofuels.  …

…  “Electrofuels – Biofuels from Electricity — Today’s technologies for making biofuels all rely on photosynthesis – either indirectly by converting plants to fuels or directly by harnessing photosynthetic organisms such as algae.  This process is less than 1% efficient at converting sunlight to stored chemical energy. Instead, Electrofuels approaches will use organisms able to extract energy from other sources, such as solar-derived electricity or hydrogen or earth-abundant metal ions.  Theoretically, such an approach could be more than 10 times more efficient than current biomass approaches. “   …

Via Department of Energy: Transformational Energy Research Projects.

Sampling of organizations and their electrofuel research topics:

• University of Massachusetts Amherst: Electrofuels via Direct Electron Transfer from Electrodes to Microbes
• Pennsylvania State University: Development of Rhodobacter as a Versatile Microbial Platform for Fuels Production
• The Ohio State University: Bioconversion of Carbon Dioxide to Biofuels by Facultatively Autotrophic Hydrogen Bacteria
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Engineering Ralstonia eutropha for Production of Isobutanol (IBT) Motor Fuel from Carbon Dioxide, Hydrogen & Oxygen
• Ginkgo BioWorks: Engineering E. coli as an electrofuels chassis for isooctane production
• Harvard Medical School-Wyss Institute: Engineering a Bacterial Reverse Fuel Cell
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Bioprocess and Microbe Engineering for Total Carbon Utilization in Biofuel Production

through leveraging investment and legislative options.  …

… “This report presents an extensive menu of options, spanning across a wide range of programs, which the Administration could begin implementing immediately to advance a high performance, efficient green buildings agenda. All told, the programs identified in this report have the potential to directly provide or facilitate over $72 billion in funding or loan guarantees,2 and can leverage hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment through instruments such as mortgage insurance and regulation of the real estate lending market. Even a small fraction of this funding would, if directed to high-performing energy efficient and sustainable buildings, stimulate significant new “green” investments and job creation. “ …

Via US Green Building Council: Greener Buildings (PDF)