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  • UK’s Green Plan
    Srikant Rajan 01:28:33 pm on July 9, 2008 | 0 | # |
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    UK has released its blueprint for an energy plan aimed at removing bottlenecks in renewable energy projects. This plan seeks to provide financial incentives as well as ease the technical and regulatory hurdles in development of renewable power projects. Prime Minister Gordon Brown anticipates generating 15% of total energy requirements from renewable sources by 2020 and further expects a tenfold increase in UK’s renewable power generating capacity. Business secretary John Hutton adds that such a huge increase in green power would aid reduction of carbon emissions, enhance UK’s competitiveness and create nearly 160,000 new jobs.

    The key point of these measures is a proposed extension of renewable energy credits to encourage private investment in this sector, to the tune of nearly £100 billion .Notably, this plan even covers the hurdles in connection of the renewable power to the main grid system .Andy Lee, chairman of the Renewable Energy Association says “ The proposals appear to cover every aspect and they are taking a much wider view of the issues than has been the case in the past. The proposal for a simple feed-in tariff for onsite technologies is very welcome ”.

     

     

     

  • Rollback of Fedral Stay on Solar Power
    Srikant Rajan 11:45:18 am on July 5, 2008 | 0 | # |
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    The US government has lifted the temporary moratorium on building solar plants.Faced with a flood of proposals for building of solar plants on government land,the Bureau of Land Management US had previously enacted a two year ban on all projects ostensibly for studying the impact of such plants on the desert ecosystem.While earlier it seem that the govt was genuinely interested in analyzing the environmental impact of such plant ,this rollback seems to indicate otherwise.It now seems that the ban was just a means to arm itself with more manpower to study all the proposals it had in the pipeline.Worse, it also indicates that the exercise was meant as a PR stunt to convince environmentalists of its noble intentions.

    There can and must not be any two ways for achieving energy sufficiency.It is imperative to promote clean energy technologies ,but not at the cost of creating another danger to the environment.It is true that solar power is an attractive large scale power generation technology . However a sudden spurt of numerous such plants would undoubtedly impact the ecosystem which should be throughly analyzed to minimize the hazards.

     

  • Solar Power Goes From Large Deserts to Small Lands
    Srikant Rajan 04:11:07 pm on June 30, 2008 | 0 | # |
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    HCDish

    Image Courtesy:RawSolar

    Following the recent stay on using large swatches of desert land for solar power,the industry is now finding other means to tap into solar power.RawSolar,an MIT based startup is planning to commercialize its solar concentrator that is easily scalable and can also be built on small swatches of land.RawSolar’s design goes back to the basic model of a solar concentrator,which is essentially a parabolic reflective surface to concentrate sunlight.This approach however requires expensive machining methods  to achieve the precise shape of concentrator. RawSolar’s patented design,eliminates need for such expensive manufacturing methods without compromising on the performance.

    Matt Ritter,cofounder of RawSolar is currently planning for a first round of funding and hopes to get ready with a pilot installation by year end.

     

  • Federal Stay on Solar Power
    Srikant Rajan 09:07:05 am on June 28, 2008 | 2 | # |
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    With demand for energy showing no signs of abatement ,Mojave desert in California is emerging as an attractive destination to solar power developers.Nearly 8 startups have proposed plans to use the desert land for creating small to medium capacity solar power plants.The federal government has now placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact,which is expected to take 2 years.

    This temporary freeze on solar proposals has predictably caused a widespread concern among solar developers.Lee Wallach of Solel, a solar power company based in California says "The problem is that this is a very young industry, and the majority of us that are involved are young, struggling, hungry companies.This is a setback."However as unpalatable as this ban is ,it is essential to analyze the environmental impact of such plants on the fragile ecosystem of desert and neighboring areas.Two years is not a long time period to wait and the demand for energy isn’t going to fall in the coming years.However companies such as BrightSource, which already have secured permits to build solar plants would benefit immensely from his temporary ban.