Category: Energy

The rise in the demand for renewable energy has made researchers think about alternatives for solar and wind generators, which can provide continuous energy to the proposed “Smart Grids” of the future. Harvesting solar power from space might be a feasible option, but there is no shortage of plans that propose to harvest energy from living creatures, right here on earth, in a manner that most won’t even believe. Here we’ve put together a list of some of the most interesting ways to generate energy from natural resources beyond conventions:

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A physicist at Harvard has an idea for fighting climate change that’s radical in every sense of the word. He wants to pump massive amounts of microbubbles into the world’s oceans, increasing their reflectivity and cooling their waters. More »

Earth Hour 2010 commences tonight, charging citizens and corporations alike to turn off their lights for an hour to raise climate change awareness. The real benefit, though, is that it lets you watch the cooler version of this light-sensing video. More »

Since it’s coming on to spring, I thought I’d talk about some green shoots, such as the ones in my little balcony garden (see picture; I thought for sure I’d killed those onions!).

– There’s the Vegawatt, a device that takes a restaurant’s waste cooking oil, which the restaurant would normally have to pay to have hauled away, and turns it from an expense into an extra source of power and hot water. It’s got rave reviews from its customers so far. (Go here to hear Vegawatt inventor James Peret discuss which sorts of customers he feels are best suited for his machine.)

– Sharon Busch in Akeley, a small town in northern Minnesota just a little south of the headwaters of the Mississippi River, inherited from her mother a prized melamine utensil that was part ladle, part scoop, and all useful: the unique design enabled her to get the last bit of soup or goulash out of any kettle, without spilling. When the handle on it broke after decades of use, she couldn’t find a replacement, so a friend of hers suggested she start a business making new ones. And so she did: http://www.soupsaverscoop.com/

– Wind power is poised to reach cost parity with coal sometime in the next four years — and that’s without taking wind-power subsidies into account. That’s also assuming nothing’s done to put a higher price on coal, to reflect its true cost to the planet.

So what’s shooting up green in your neck of the woods?

The Sauter Formula Zero Solar Hybrid Megayacht is a 197-foot catamaran, with four diesel-electric counter-rotating propellers, rotational wingsails, and solar cell arrays. All that to enable it to cruise at 17 knots with zero carbon footprint. [Sauter via Born Rich] More »

2010Mar26: China invested $34.6 billion in renewable energy technologies in 2009, while the US invested $18.6 billion in renewable energy technologies in 2009, according to researchers at the Pew Charitable Trusts (BBC, 2010).

Reference: BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8587319.stm

Read the Pew Charitable Trust Report Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race? Growth, Competition and Opportunity in the World’s Largest Economies and Press Release http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=57972

Image Description: Wind farm in Xinjiang viewed from the Lanxin railway. Photo by taylorandayumi, 2008May08. Image Location: Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wind_farm_xinjiang.jpg Image Permission: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

2010March25: CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom fell 9.8% in 2009, according to the UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change. A decrease in energy consumption due to the recession was the primary reason for the change. The switch from coal to nuclear to generate electricity also helped lower CO2 emissions, according to the department (Guardian.co.uk, 2010).

Reference: Guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/25/uk-greenhouse-gas-emissions-drop

Image Description: The Corus Steelworks in Redcar, from across the River Tees, UK. Photo by Ralph Gant, 2008Sept29. Image Location: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Redcar_Steelworks.jpg Image Permission: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic  license.

By Ken Edelstein
Green Right Now

Soon after Aaron Mann and his wife bought a 3,500-square-foot home overlooking San Francisco Bay, a friend looked up from the driveway with envy.

Rooftop solar panels (Photo: Michael Hieber/dreamstime)

He noticed that the house in the Berkeley Hills had south-sloping and west-sloping roofs, unobstructed by trees or other buildings. It would be perfect, he said, for photovoltaic solar panels.

The visitor planted an idea for the Mann family: Why not cut their power bills and reduce their carbon footprint by investing in a solar electric system?

On and off for the next couple of years, the Manns discussed their fantasy. But they never did anything about it; they couldn’t settle on a way to finance the solar panels.

Taking out a home equity loan was one possibility. But what if the Manns sold the house soon after the project was complete? They’d end up saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt for an improvement that wasn’t likely to boost their market value by anything near the amount they’d invested.

Paying for the project with cash would leave them with precisely the same problem.

“The person who’d be enjoying the benefit of the reduced electricity bills would pay nothing,”  Mann lamented.

Then, in 2008, the city of Berkeley announced a pilot program for financing property owners’ clean energy projects. It sounded too good to be true: No upfront cost to homeowners. No cost at all to the city. You’d pay for your home improvement with a loan, but the debt would be carried by the property rather than by the current owner. Not only that, the program had a streamlined application process and was structured so that money wouldn’t wasted on shoddy work by bad contractors.

Not surprisingly, the concept that grew out of that pilot has become a high-powered public policy phenomenon. PACE financing – it stands for “Property Assessed Clean Energy” – is shooting like lightning through statehouses and city halls across the country.

“It’s one these ideas that, if it can be set up correctly, is win-win-win-win-win,” says Ryan Foshee, a Houston-based advocate for programs that make cities more sustainable. “The construction industry’s been hit so hard by the recession. This puts people to work locally. It promotes local investment. And it saves energy.”

PACE is the brainchild of Cisco DeVries, who three years ago was chief of staff to Berkeley’s mayor. DeVries had been charged with coming up with ways for the Bay Area city to meet an ambitious goal of reducing its greenhouse emissions by 80 percent.

Cisco DeVries conceived of PACE funding while on staff with the city of Berkeley

At the same time, the city happened to be developing a property tax assessment district for a neighborhood that wanted to place its utilities underground. That scheme, common in California, called for Berkeley to issue bonds to pay for the utility line project, then for homeowners in the neighborhood to pay for the project gradually through special assessments on their property taxes.

“I was just trying to look at all kinds of options” to help homeowners pay for clean energy projects, DeVries recalls. “I had this sort of moment, where I said, ‘Jeez, if you can put the poles and wires underground,’” then why not use similar bonds to put solar systems on people’s roofs?

Stripped down, his idea was simple: A city or county issues bonds. Homeowners or commercial property owners apply for loans funded by those bonds. The loans must be used to invest in efficiency or clean energy projects. And the property owners pay back the loan over 15 or 20 years (with interest, of course) through a special assessment tacked onto their property taxes.

DeVries and his colleagues realized PACE needed to be more than just a financing mechanism. Clean energy projects have long made economic sense for homes, but few homeowners take the step of actually investing in them.

“I think it boils down to the fact that energy bills are not such a big factor in peoples lives that they’re going to do something about them,” says Merrian Fuller, a researcher at the U.S. Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Fuller, who’s tracked PACE closely since its beginnings in Berkeley, explains that people don’t have time to hassle on their own with details like choosing which precise technology to use, how to finance the project and which contractor to pick.

So DeVries and his colleagues spent a lot of time figuring out how to make everything easier, ranging from pre-approved contractors to standard, streamlined loan applications.

According to Mann, they succeeded. “It was a very elegant way to finance,” he says. In November 2008, his family became the very first participants of the pilot program. Mann estimates that the 32 panels on his roof have cut the family’s electric bills from around $4,000 a year to less than $300. In exchange, the family pays an extra $2,400 a year in property taxes, part of which is tax deductible.

PACE’s spread since the Berkeley pilot started has been remarkable. First it was picked up by other eco-centric pockets of the country. Boulder, Colorado’s ClimateSmart program is writing $1 million a week in loans. In California, San Francisco is about to implement its own program. Los Angeles County isn’t far behind, and a statewide consortium called CaliforniaFIRST is working with 14 counties to set up a joint PACE program.

It hasn’t hurt that the nation’s new energy secretary happens to be from Berkeley. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, was director of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab (where Fuller works) before President Obama picked him to lead the nation’s push toward clean energy.

“I had the opportunity to brief him on PACE early on,” DeVries says, “and he was certainly an early supporter of the concept.

Millions in energy-related block grants under the president’s stimulus package have gone toward setting up PACE programs across the country, including $30 million in California alone. And more money appears to be on its way. Part of the federal dollars will be used to kickstart bond issues; part may be used to offset the loans’ underwriting costs (which normally would be passed on to the borrower in the form of administrative fees or interest rate surcharges).

The Energy Department also is in the midst developing standards for PACE programs, and Congress seems likely to approve credit guarantees that would lower the interest rates on the PACE program.

Meanwhile, local governments — and at least one entrepreneur — aren’t waiting around for the rules, grants and loan guarantees. That entrepreneur is DeVries, who left his city job to spend more time with his toddler while Berkeley was preparing for its first PACE bond offering in 2008.

After he left, he says, he kept getting more and more calls from advocates, bureaucrats and politicians, who wanted to know how to set up PACE programs in their own communities. So DeVries helped to start a company, called Renewable Funding, to help cities set up their PACE programs.

At least 16 states where laws might have conflicted with PACE already have passed legislation, designed to overcome legal hurdles that might make it difficult for local governments to develop their own programs.

Ryan Foshee, who works for an organization formed by mayors called the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, says he’s helping Houston, Dallas and three other Texas cities that have formed a “PACE Partnership,” which is working with the state government to develop PACE in Texas.

“Houston’s got what they call a straw man — the first chop at it,”” Foshee says. “It’ll surely be tweaked before they actually start up.”

There are variations off the original PACE program. Some fund the gamut of efficiency and clean energy projects. Foshee says the Texas cities are likely to concentrate on high-efficiency products and weatherization for both home and commercial property owners. And the Texas cities are planning to partner with local banks to offer the loans, rather than issuing bonds.

Another feature — workshops for property owners — has become part of most PACE programs since the Berkeley pilot. The idea, Foshee says, is to help participants “decide in an educated way” what they want to do.

Fuller stresses that the city’s objective isn’t to get more property owners to borrow money through PACE. It’s to help property owners actually reduce their energy bills and carbon footprint. So participants who plan to live in their homes for many years may use a PACE workshop to help them figure out that they can pay lower interest with a second mortgage.

“It’s about giving people options,” she says. “PACE is a stable financing platform from which to build around.”

Resources:

• PaceFinancing.org — a project by Brigham Young University students to provide information on PACE funding opportunities in PACE-ready states.
• PaceNow.org — an information site with an archive of states’ enabling legislation and background on the history of PACE in various states.
• Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency — information about tax credits for many types of renewable energy sources, including PACE financing.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

Gregory T. Huang wrote:

[Updated 4:00 pm, 3/25/10. See below.] Bend, OR-based PV Powered, a maker of solar energy components, announced yesterday it is being acquired by Advanced Energy Industries of Fort Collins, CO. The deal will be worth as much as $90 million—$50 million upfront ($35 million in cash and $15 million in Advanced Energy’s common stock), and up to $40 million in earn-out pay based on PV Powered’s 2010 sales.

The acquisition shows how solving a relatively small but crucial piece of the solar energy puzzle can pay off in spades, even in a difficult economy. PV Powered makes solar power inverters, which are electronic components that help convert the DC electricity output of solar cells into AC current that homes and businesses can use.

At least one cleantech industry observer thinks the acquisition—and more specifically, its size—signifies a resurgence of the mergers and acquisitions market in alternative energy. Michael Butler, the CEO and co-founder of Seattle-based Cascadia Capital, calls the Oregon company’s sale a “big deal” at a “huge price.”

“It tells me that M&A premiums are coming back,” Butler says in an e-mail. “Traditionally, balance of systems companies such as inverter companies trade at 1x revenue. This is more than 1x revenue. We are seeing M&A coming back big time in the alt energy /clean tech markets. This is another data point… and a good one.”

Gregg Semler, co-founder and managing director of Portland, OR-based Pivotal Investments, seems to agree. “Corporates have cash and a growing need to differentiate themselves with proprietary technology that can build their leadership in renewable energy,” he says. “This acquisition by Advanced Energy shows the increasing demand for growing companies that have innovative technologies focused on solar energy. I think we will see lots more this year.” [This paragraph was added for further analysis—Eds.]

PV Powered, founded in 2003, said it will operate under its current management team as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Advanced Energy Industries, and will continue to sell its inverters out of Bend. The company has about 90 employees and made $21 million in revenue in 2009.

In a statement, PV Powered CEO Gregg Patterson said his employees are “excited” to join Advanced Energy Industries, and implied the cultural fit is a good one. “Both organizations share a common mission to deliver the innovations our customers are asking for in efficiency, reliability and uptime that will maximize the 20+ year financial returns of solar projects,” he said.

Advanced Energy Industries (NASDAQ GM: AEIS) says it expects PV Powered to contribute $40 to $50 million in revenues this year, the majority of which will come from businesses, not residences. Advanced Energy makes a wide range of solar components, including inverters, but also other power systems and thin-film semiconductor technologies for large solar power plants.

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A sample of water technologies invented to store, ship and provide one of the most critical resources for crisis recovery.

By Emily Bouckaert
Circle of Blue

Photo © Carmen Barker/IWT

Local residents collect clean drinking water from a newly installed SunSpring unit at a Youth Sports Center in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti.

After a natural disaster, safe drinking water is always among the most urgent needs. Without it, health conditions deteriorate. Illnesses spread quickly.

That’s why having equipment in place that makes it easier to provide water is so crucial in disasters. Water transportation and purification technologies, say authorities, should be part of the rapid response solution in emergencies. Early forays into commercial applications for such equipment have been unsuccessful, said Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick. But he sees enormous potential for them in crisis situations.

“If we were smart enough to pre-position these kinds of resources,” Gleick said, “either large bags for moving water or small scale technologies that are capable of treating large quantities of water quickly, I think we’d do much better at preventing, or at least reducing, the impacts of natural disasters.”

Here are some useful new tools:

SunSpring™

The SunSpring™ is a solar powered water purifier created by the small Colorado-based company Innovative Water Technologies (IWT). Each unit is equipped to produce microbiologically purified water from a variety of poor quality inlet sources including rivers, wells, lakes, ponds, ditches and recycled rain water.

SunSpring™ uses a General Electric Homespring Central Water Purifier that effectively removes bacterial and viral pathogens, as well as particulate matter from contaminated water, to meet the water quality standards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. GE Homespring™ units have been used for disaster relief in the aftermath of the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the earthquake in Sichaun, China in 2008. Andrew Warnes, senior channel manager at Pentair Residential Filtration (a GE-Pentair Joint Venture), said that the units need electricity to operate, sometimes limiting their ability to function in disaster relief efforts.

“It was always a desire on our part to go completely off the grid with this technology,” Warnes said.

Meanwhile Jack and Carmen Barker, owners of IWT, found a way to power the purifier off the grid. They reinvented the GE Homespring by combining it with a solar panel and creating a unit that could be filter water entirely independent of an electrical grid. Recently, the Sunspring™ units have been put to work in the field to help satisfy the great need for safe water in Haiti after the January earthquakes. Fourteen units have been donated to relief efforts in Haiti, each with the capacity to provide water to almost 10,000 people. Ten of these units were donated by the GE Foundation to the Clinton Global Initiative. CGI sent the Sunsprings to UNICEF, which finally forwarded them to Esperanza—a sustainable development organization—making a chain of noteworthy Sunspring™ supporters. Additionally, Jack Barker is leading the installation team and training NGO Esparanza on the ground in Haiti to maintain the units for the long term.

One of the next major concerns in Haiti’s recovery is the threat of widespread waterborne illness, according to Warnes. IWT has created a real-time interactive map that pinpoints the sites of the donated units.

“The intent behind these sites is to create a necklace or a string of safe havens surrounding medical facilities so that those sites don’t have to worry about ongoing water supply,” Warnes said.

The Sunspring™ can filter 19,000 liters of water per day and last ten years, making it one of the most permanent drinking water solutions for disaster recovery.

Spragg Bags™

Spragg Bags™ are giant cylindrical bags designed to transport freshwater around the world. For the past 22 years, Terry G. Spragg & Associates have been developing and refining the water bag technology.

Photo © Terry Spragg

An air inflation test of two Spragg Bags.

A test voyage in the Pacific Ocean was conducted in 1996, transporting freshwater from Port Angeles, Washington to Seattle. Each bag can hold about 770,000 gallons of freshwater. More than 1.5 million gallons were transported during the test voyage with two 230 ft bags. The Spragg Bags ™ are connected by ultra strong zipper technology and “towed” in trains.

“The key to the whole system is the connection system. The zipper system gives you the ability to modulate,” inventor Terry Spragg told Circle of Blue.

As suggested in a recent blog entry by the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick, in emergency situations empty bags could be transported with safe drinking water to nearby sites.

Spragg is confident in the technical merits of his water bags.

“The economics are easy to calculate, the technology is easy to demonstrate; it’s the politics of water that have been the most difficult part of my process,” he said.

Terry Spragg’s next goal is to run another test voyage demonstration, this time between Northern and Southern California. He hopes the test voyage gives investors the data and evidence they need to support Spragg Bags.™

WaterBox

Photo © Mark Atherton/Brunel University

The interior of a WaterBox purifier, housed in a one-foot by two-fooot plastic bin.

Deveopled by professors and former students from Brunel University, the WaterBox was created for disaster relief. The purifying system can filter approximately 15 liters of water per day, which fulfills daily water needs for about 15 people.

According to WorkingwithWater.net, the WaterBox system uses two carbon filters, a reverse osmosis filter, and ultraviolet light to purify water. The WaterBox is also equipped with a meter that triggers automatic cycling of water back to the holding tank if it doesn’t meet the necessary standards.

The system can be powered by electricity from the grid or by solar panels.
While the WaterBox is designed as a short-term water purifying solution, Dr. Mark Atherton told WorkingwithWater.net that the WaterBox is intended to be recycled.

“A team based around very able mechanical engineering students had a vision for the WaterBox to be the best affordable western technology made quickly available for a disaster situation, and then retrieved and made ready for the inevitable next time occurrence.”

Currently, the creators of the WaterBox are seeking investors for the project.

Historically, individuals and governments alike have struggled with targeted planning to fund and distribute technologies like the SunSpring™, Spragg Bags™ and WaterBox before disaster strikes. Relief only pours in after major events. The retroactive response is more expensive, and slower. A whole spectrum of organizations, and generous individuals, usually help make ends meet. The pattern held in the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, but it’s not a permanent solution.

“I think we need to set up effective, permanent disaster response in all aspects of disaster. Not just water, but also in food and health,” Gleick said. “To rely on overstressed and overstretched non-governmental agencies just isn’t the most effective way to deal with it.”

Carefully positioned water transportation and treatment technologies could be part of that permanent solution.

Emily Bouckaert is a reporter for Circle of Blue. You can reach her at [email protected]

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signs renewable energy law.

From Green Right Now Reports

The move to renewable energy got another boost today as Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed into law landmark legislation that 30 percent of the state’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2020, including 3 percent to be generated by local solar power.

With Colorado’s new law, 29 states now have renewable energy requirements. The state said its 30 percent requirement is the best in the Rocky Mountain West and among the highest nationally.

Sponsored by Rep. Max Tyler and Sens. Gail Schwartz and Bruce Whitehead, the bill’s supporters expect it to create thousands of jobs and lead to 100,000 solar rooftops over the next decade, and help protect consumers and ratepayers.

“Today we continue to chart a new course for Colorado’s New Energy Economy and America’s clean energy economy,” Gov. Ritter said as he signed the bill into law at SolSource Inc., a Denver-based solar installation company. “Colorado is giving every state and the entire nation a template for tomorrow. This is a game-changer. We are transforming the future of Colorado and our country.”

“With HB 1001 we will manufacture and install panels and turbines all over Colorado to capture free energy,” Rep. Tyler said in a statement. “The sun will always shine for free, the winds will always blow for free, and our energy production will be cleaner. Renewable energy, green jobs, and a cleaner future — what’s not to like?”

What’s an easier green power source to acquire than sun or wind? Random ambient vibrations, that’s what. And that’s exactly how some new generators juice up. More »

Ranking companies based on a scoring system can be tricky. A good company may score low for a number of reasons. Despite the challenges, Kevin Lo, an analyst at FirstEnergy Capital, has ranked drilling companies – he calls them “the riggies” – to determine which operations deserve gold stars. And, while he was at it, Mr. Lo also noted the shortcomings in his ranking system and put some low scorers on the curve, boosting their final results.

His effort was comprehensive; Mr. Lo examined 557 of the roughly 806 rigs available in western Canada. His results?

“Our conclusion is that there is no large drilling contractor that has the definitive best fleet in the [Canadian] basin or has more equipment enabling it to perform better,” he said. “There is more dispersion in the smaller contractors, and some companies are certainly better than others in terms of type of equipment.”

Investors should pick the cheapest large and mid-sized companies on a price-to-asset calculation. Savanna Energy Services Corp. came out on top, the analyst said, noting it is retrofitting its smaller rigs so they can drill deeper. Savanna has been trying to place its shallow-focused rigs in international markets such as Australia, India, and Colombia. As North America leans toward deep wells, those that follow Savanna’s plan should be better off.

Jomax Drilling Ltd. came in first in one of Mr. Lo’s ranking systems. Can’t find its ticker? That’s because the small company is private. Keep your eye on it, though – it would be an “excellent” takeover target. Beaver Creek, perhaps, too.

Western Energy Services Corp., placed third in one of Mr. Lo’s categories. Total Energy Services Ltd. was a laggard. “We believe this is one of the reasons why numbers do not always tell the real tale,” the research note said. Mr. Lo still seems to like the company, even though it didn’t fit well into his boxes.

Trinidad Drilling Ltd. also ranked well among the large and mid-sized companies. Ditto for Precision Drilling Trust. Ensign Energy Services Inc.? Not so much. “Surprisingly, Ensign comes in much lower, although the company consistently makes money from its equipment, again alluding to the intangibles that may not be evident on paper.”

So, with no clear answers on which company has the best fleet, investors should just buy the cheapest driller in terms of book value, and “as the earnings normalize, the company should over time revert back to mean, and thus should provide the most upside.”

The large and mid-sized winner is Savanna. Among the small guys, Stoneham Drilling Trust comes out on top. “However, the historical underperformance in utilization compared to the quality of the fleet may not provide the investor with the greatest return for those seeing earnings growth.” 

Carrie Tait

Eco Factor: PC Power Management program turns off PCs automatically when users are not present.

Ford has deployed a new PC Power Management program that will be able to centrally control the power settings on Windows laptops and desktop PCs to enable a managed shutdown of computer systems not in use, especially overnight and on weekends. The company estimates that as many as 60 percent of Ford’s PC users don’t shut their PCs off at the end of the day, resulting in wasted energy.

(more…)

From Green Right Now Reports

Chevron Corp., based in San Ramon, Calif., announced today that it will host a demonstration and testing site for seven solar technologies — six thin-film and one crystalline-silicon photovoltaics — at the site of a former oil refinery in Bakersfield.

Chevron has announced Project Brightfield in Bakersfield.

The interesting repurposing of the refinery site is the brainchild of Chevron’s Technology Ventures division, which evaluates emerging technologies.  “Testing competing technologies side by side means that we can better understand their potential application at other Chevron facilities,”   said Des King, president of Chevron Technology Ventures.

Even though oil and solar would not appear to mix — solar power is being developed mainly to power buildings, whereas oil remains the primary source of energy for the world’s transportation needs. In that light, Chevron can be seen as just another company with power needs. And that makes solar power just another example of  “Chevron’s efforts to find ways to integrate innovative technologies into our business,” as Bruce Johnson, vice president of Chevron’s San Joaquin Valley Business Unit put it.

But there’s really more to the picture. Chevron is actively investing in solar power, and expects to develop and distribute commercial solar power. It is already involved in other pilot projects. It recently announced it will be designing and installing a 3.7 MW solar array at East Side Union High School in the San Jose school district. The company also is developing a concentrating solar photovoltaic installation at a Chevron Mining Inc. facility near Questa, New Mexico that is due for completion in late 2010, according to Chevron.

The Bakersfield demonstration, called Project Brightfield, will be one of the first, if not the first, major side-by-side tests of cutting edge solar tech. The project, which will include 7,700 solar panels on the 8-acre site, is expected to generate 740 kilowatts of energy. The power that will be directed onto the local utility grid and also used to power Chevron’s oil production operations at the large Kern River Oil Field in California. And perhaps more importantly, it may yield important information to steer development, because, as Chevron notes in the YouTube video on Project Brightfield, the world needs both the conventional and emerging energy sources. (The company-produced video doesn’t mention the fact that the world is running out of cheaply obtainable oil.)

The participating solar companies are  Abound Solar, MiaSolé, Schüco, Solar Frontier, Sharp, and Solibro and Innovalight (the crystalline-silicon producer).  Each company will be able to collect data about how its panels are performing, and compare it against a benchmark that has been installed on the site, a commercially available solar photovoltaic installation.

Chevron previously reused another company site for a clean energy venture, re-purposing a refinery facility in Casper, Wyoming, into a wind farm that generates 16.5 megawatts of power.

With government and business leaders assembled this week in Sydney, Australia for the 2010 National Smart Grid Forum, GE today released the results of a new consumer survey. One of the key challenges that emerged is that the majority of Australian consumers, much like their U.S. counterparts, don’t know what a smart grid is — pointing to the critical need for the industry to focus attention on consumer awareness. However, in an encouraging sign for adoption of smart grid technologies, the survey found that of those Australians who are familiar with the term, they are ready to embrace it. As Bob Gilligan, vice president of transmission and distribution for GE Energy, told the group in his keynote address: “Energy costs as a percentage of take home pay have been on a decline for 25 out of last 30 years, but over the last five years that trend has reversed itself.” Citing new estimates that show electricity prices in parts of Australia are expected to rise by up to 64 percent over the next three years, Bob said that “these increases are resulting in consumers who have traditionally been unconcerned about their electricity bills … now focusing on what they can do to influence their spend on electricity.”

Bright idea: In May, the Australian government announced an AUD $4.5 billion Clean Energy initiative as part of its commitment to ensure that 20 percent of Australia’s electricity comes from renewable energy by 2020. Australia’s energy consumption is projected to increase by 44 percent by 2030 and homes in 2030 will demand 56 percent more energy than they did in 1990, according to a government white paper. Sydney is pictured above. Photo: Getty Images

The smart gird survey, which polled 500 Australian consumers, found that 72 percent of Australians are not familiar with the term “smart grid.” Of those who are familiar with the term, nine out of 10 respondents were overwhelmingly positive about the technology; 45 percent agreed that the smart grid would help Australia rely more on clean domestic energy sources; and 45 percent said it would help reduce the number of outages and lead to quicker power restoration when outages did occur.

“The good news is that many Australians who do understand this new energy system grasp its benefits — among the top being time-of-use pricing,” Bob said. “I can’t stress enough that driving consumer awareness and acceptance of the smart grid must become as significant a priority to industry and government leaders as actually bringing smart grid technologies online, because smart grid’s success is reliant on achieving both.”

A similar GE survey conducted in the U.S. was also released today, showing that — much like their Australian counterparts — 79 percent of respondents are still not familiar with the term smart grid. However, of those in the U.S. who are familiar with the term, 80 percent are ready and willing to learn about how it can help them. The survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers also found that of those familiar with the term, 72 percent think it will help them save money on their monthly power bills and 63 percent believe smart grid will create new jobs in the energy sector.

* Learn more details about the Australia survey
* Learn more details about the U.S. survey
* Read about our U.S. survey data compiled last year
* Read more smart grid stories on GE Reports
* Learn about GE’s smart grid efforts in Florida, Oklahoma and Houston
* Read “Getting smarter about the smart grid” on GE Reports
* Read “Switching smart grids from ‘demo’ to ‘deploy’ at WEF” on GE Reports
* Read a blog post by Bob Gilligan
* Read “GE’s smart grid: Introducing the “Zero Energy” home” on GE Reports

One of the fastest-growing states in the nation has the potential to save its residents billions of dollars over the next decade and a half and create thousands of new jobs to boot.

How? By adopting several common-sense policies to save energy and investing more in clean-energy research.

So concludes a new report focused on North Carolina by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “North Carolina’s Energy Future: Electricity, Water, and Transportation Efficiency” offers a set of policies that could meet nearly a quarter of the state’s energy demand while boosting its economy with 38,000 new jobs by 2025.

“Adoption of the energy efficiency policies suggested in this report would put the state on the path to greater economic, energy, and environmental sustainability,” says Maggie Eldridge, ACEEE’s lead researcher for the report.

As the report notes, North Carolina — with a population that’s expected to grow from 9.4 million to 12 million by 2025 — stands at a turning point in its energy future. Currently ranking 26th out of the 50 states in ACEEE’s “The 2009 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard,” North Carolina also remains heavily dependent on dirty energy sources, with coal-fired plants providing 62% and nuclear plants 31% of the state’s electricity. It ranks ninth among states in terms of electricity produced from burning coal.

Meanwhile, the state’s two big utilities are pursuing construction of new polluting power plants: Charlotte-based Duke Energy is currently building a new $1.8 billion coal-fired unit at its Cliffside facility in western North Carolina, while Progress Energy has plans for two new nuclear reactors at its Shearon Harris plant near the company’s Raleigh headquarters. The estimated cost of those reactors has soared from $4.4 billion to more than $9.3 billion. 

North Carolina has taken some steps in recent years to encourage the development of less polluting energy sources. In 2007, for example, it became the first state in the Southeast to adopt a renewable portfolio standard requiring the state’s investor-owned utilities to supply a modest 12.5% of retail electricity sales from renewable sources by 2020.

However, ACEEE’s latest analysis finds that significant potential for energy efficiency would remain untapped were the state to continue with business as usual. Among the policies ACEEE’s report recommends:

* Energy Efficiency Resource Standard: Set a statewide goal for long-term energy savings to spur the creation of programs and incentives for residents and businesses to make energy-saving improvements to homes, offices and industrial facilities. Efficiency is quick and relatively inexpensive to deploy and cuts energy bills, saving money that can be reinvested in the state’s economy.

* Livable Communities to Reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled: Invest transportation dollars in a robust multi-modal transit system to encourage the growth of compact communities and reduce statewide vehicle miles traveled.

* Clean Energy Innovation Hub: Enhance the state’s position as a global leader in technological innovation by encouraging collaboration among North Carolina’s clean energy industry leaders, universities, research facilities, and policymakers to boost clean energy innovation, business development, and leadership in the state.

“This is not revolutionary stuff we’re talking about here, it’s just plain common sense,” says Maria Kingery, co-founder of Southern Energy Management, a sustainable energy company based in Morrisville, N.C.

The ACEEE report is the latest piece of research showing that North Carolina has great potential to reduce its reliance on dirty energy.

Last week, the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network released an analysis finding that taking some relatively modest steps toward greater energy efficiency and expanded use of renewable generation sources would make it possible for North Carolina to phase out all coal-fired power plants while avoiding the need for expensive new nuclear reactors.

That came on the heels of another report that found North Carolina’s need for backup power generation would be modest if it were to switch to an energy system based largely on solar and wind power combined with efficiency, hydroelectric power and other renewable resources such as landfill gas.

“Widespread deployment of energy efficiency and renewable power is far preferable to the utilities’ plan to gamble $40 billion on giant coal and nuclear power plants, which would double power bills,” says N.C. WARN Executive Director Jim Warren.

(Photo of compact fluorescent light bulb by PiccoloNamek via Wikimedia Commons.)