Renewable Energy Archives - Page 2 of 2

Geothermal, Solar Put Oregon Tech On All-Renewables Course

Pete Danko for Earthtechling Oregon Tech thinks it’s back on track with its ambitious goal of becoming the first university in North America to generate all of the electrical power it requires – from renewable sources, no less. The university, in Klamath Falls on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains in southern Oregon, is in a great spot for renewable energy. Klamath Falls boasts that it gets nearly 300 days of sunshine a year, and the Klamath Basin sits atop a geothermal reservoir. Geothermal already serves campus heating needs and there’s a 280-kilowatt geothermal combined heat and power plant on campus. Geothermal also provides process heat to the local wastewater treatment plant and keeps dozens of city buildings, schools, swimming pools and more warm. Two-megawatt solar array going in at Oregon Tech (image via Oregon Institute of Technology) What the 3,900-student university has been aiming to do for some years now is add a 1.75 megawatt geothermal power …

HyRef Technology Revolutionizes Renewable Energy Forecasting

IBM has long been known for building some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, but what happens when it applies advanced modeling to solving the intermittency of renewable energy? The answer, it turns out, is “Hybrid Renewable Energy Forecasting” (HyRef). This new technology, already online in China, is able to produce accurate local weather and renewable energy forecasts as far as one month in advance, down to 15-minute increments. The HyRef technology combines advanced power and weather computer modeling, sophisticated cloud imaging, sky-facing cameras, and on-site sensors to accurately predict solar power and wind energy output and increase the amount of renewable electricity flowing onto grids across the world. HyRef forecast system graphic via IBM Crowded Field In Renewable Energy Forecasting Race HyRef joins an increasingly crowded field of innovative technologies seeking to accurately predict the output of renewable energy resources. The National…

Interns Help Create Solutions For Clean Energy Challenges

by National Renewable Energy Laboratory on Earthtechling They travel far and wide, from all corners of the country. They come from a diverse set of backgrounds, and they have very different plans for their futures. But the 54 student interns at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) this summer all have something in common — a thirst for knowledge and a desire to apply what they have learned in school to real-world science in a state-of-the-art laboratory environment. Each summer, students make their way to NREL’s facilities in Golden, Colorado, seeking an opportunity to work side by side with top researchers investigating the solutions to our energy challenges. “Students get to take their knowledge from school and apply it in a national laboratory environment,” said NREL Education Program Coordinator Linda Lung. “The students are contributing members of these research teams. It’s an invaluable experience for both the interns and their ment…

When Your Rooftop Solar Panels Make More $ than S&P 500

by Chris Meehan for SolarReviews Thirteen might not be a lucky number, but it seems like a better number when you consider that in 13 states—over a quarter of all states, including the most populous ones like California and New York—solar offers a better return on investment than investing in the S&P 500. That’s just another way to look at why solar is a better investment today than many other investments people can make. That’s according to the latest Geostellar Quarterly Index, which looked at the profitability of investing in rooftop solar across the U.S. The report found that the internal return on investment over the anticipated 25-year lifespan of solar panels was highest in Hawaii (24 percent) and that the majority of top states for internal returns on investing in solar were primarily on the East coast. Among the top 10 states only California (eighth with a 12 percent return), Colorado (fifth with a 15 percent return), New Mexico (seventh with a 13 percent r…

Foldable Electric Scooter — Awesome! (Crowdfund It)

After sharing our recent post on the crowdfunding campaign for MicroPower Chips, someone from MOVEO also contacted me about its campaign for its foldable electric scooter. This is the lightest such scooter out there, according to MOVEO, and it really does fold up in such a way that it is easily transportable — includes luggage wheels and all. It reminds me of the Transformers, one of the best cartoons ever (note: I haven’t seen the movie). Naturally, I couldn’t pass on covering this crowdfunding campaign. If you prefer videos, there’s one on the campaign page, where the crowdfunding push was just launched (like, moments ago). By the way, don’t be alarmed if you click on over to the campaign page and notice that it’s note on Kickstarter or IndieGogo. The crowdfunding platform is called JumpStartCity and is actually quite new. But anyway, back to the foldable electric scooter. The goal of the campaign is to “complete the development and start a limited series production…

Renewable Energy and the Utility: The Next 20 Years

The focus on the transition to renewable energy, energy efficiency programs and legislation surrounding these areas is spurring tremendous change in the utility industry. A lot of money and effort are being funneled to the research, development and deployment of clean energy technologies. The federal debate over fuels, technologies and the legislation supporting them has reached a fever pitch. The utility industry is undergoing fundamental change. The extreme change sometimes envisioned-that utilities will disappear-is not likely. The future utility will almost certainly be a hybrid of centralized power plants and massive distributed generation, combined with a much more efficient system of both generation and consumption. But the business model of the utility and the relationship between utility and customer will be radically different. For more on this story, please visit Renewable Energy World here.