Archive for April, 2009
ZenithSolar’s rotating dishes helping to power Israel
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009ZenithSolar, an Israeli startup, has just turned on a new solar farm that consists of a system of rotating dishes to produce electricity and thermal energy. The dishes, which are made up of mirrors and concentrated photovoltaic solar cells, track the sun to harness up to 75% of the incoming light to generate electricity, [...]
Nuclear fusion news: The National Ignition Facility and General Fusion, Inc – two different approaches to nuclear fusion
Sunday, April 26th, 2009Tyler Hamilton, from The Toronto Star and the CleanBreak.ca blog noted a couple of developments in the nuclear fusion area this week. One part of the article was about how scientists at the new National Ignition Facility that was completed last month plan to take its 192 lasers and aim them at a tiny pellet [...]
Ford’s 1000 miles per tank challenge
Saturday, April 25th, 2009Can you go 1000 miles on a single tank of gas? That’s the challenge that Ford has laid out, and this weekend they’re seeing if their Ford Fusion Hybrid can do it. Ford is using an unmodified (except for the paint job) Ford Fusion Hybrid for the test, and has employed some hypermilers [...]
U.S. giving clearance to offshore wind farms
Saturday, April 25th, 2009The US Interior Department has just finished up new rules that will allow the first offshore wind turbines to be built along the Atlantic coast. These rules have been a long time in the making – alot of effort was put in to this by the Bush Administration, but they weren’t able to finish [...]
Exelon and SunPower unite to develop urban solar power plant
Friday, April 24th, 2009In a press release on April 22, Exelon and SunPower Corp announced that they had entered into an agreement to develop the largest urban solar power plant in the US. The new solar plant will be placed on 39 acres of a former industrial site on Chicago’s South Side. The brownfield site will [...]
New Texas Gulf Coast wind farm in place
Saturday, April 18th, 2009Iberdrola Renewables has announced that they have completed their development of their new 202 megawatt Peñascal wind farm near the Texas Gulf Coast. They also announced that they have a 15 year contract in place with CPS Energy to provide 76.8 megawatts of electricity from the wind farm to CPS Energy customers. [...]
The US now #1 in wind power
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), in 2008, the US became the country with the largest amount of installed wind power capacity, with an increase of 8,500 megawatts of new wind power. Germany was the previous leader. The US had a total installed capacity of 25,300 megawatts at the end of [...]
Hybrid price wars – great news for hybrid buyers!
Saturday, April 4th, 2009It looks like Toyota is aggressively going after the new Honda Insight, which is great news for hybrid buyers. The new Insight, which has been a great seller so far in Japan, was being billed as a Prius killer by Honda, and so Toyota is reacting to the challenge. The new, third [...]