Archive for June, 2010
NJ Legislature approves offshore wind bill
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010The New Jersey Legislature has just passed a new bill that would set up a system to review offshore wind developer’s projects and their financing proposals. The bill, which is endorsed by and is expected to be quickly signed by NJ Governor Christie, is expected to jump start offshore wind power development, by requiring that [...]
GE’s new hybrid water heater cuts energy use, wins award
Friday, June 25th, 2010 GE GeoSpring hybrid hot water heater
General Electric’s new GeoSpring hybrid water heater has won first place in the Edison Best New Products Awards in the Lifestyle and Social Impact category. GE won the award because its new water heater cuts the energy usage and the cost of water heating in the average home by [...]
Honda’s new CR-Z Sport Hybrid priced at $19,950 – available August 24th
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010Honda just announced that their 2011 Honda CR-Z 2-seater sport coupe hybrid will hit dealers on August 24th, 2010 and will have a suggested retail price (including destination and handling charges) of $19,950 for the base, manual transmission model. If you want the continuously variable automatic transmission, or CVT (which boosts the fuel economy), [...]
Two new wind farms in Missouri and Texas go live
Monday, June 21st, 2010Two new U.S. based wind farms have just gone live and have begun producing electricity.
The first one – the Farmers City Wind Power Project, near Tarkio in Atchinson County, Missouri, is Missouri’s largest wind farm. It consists of 73 Gamesa wind turbines which can produce 146 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 33,000 homes. [...]
NREL developing more efficient air conditioning
Thursday, June 17th, 2010 This illustration shows how the DEVap cooling core uses water and liquid desiccant to draw in outside air, exhaust some of that air and return cool, dry air to the area being cooled. DEVap’s integrated evaporative component and its desiccant drying process offer improved dehumidification, lower costs, and much lower energy usage.
Those of us who [...]
Review of the 2011 Ford Fiesta
Sunday, June 13th, 20102011 Ford Fiesta
It’s not a hybrid, but the 2011 Ford Fiesta gets an EPA estimated 40 mpg on the highway. It’s a lot cheaper than a hybrid too, at about $14K-$16K for the base models depending if you want the sedan version or the hatchback version. According to TopSpeed.com, the Ford Fiesta [...]
Combo wind / solar plant planned for Palm Springs, Calif
Saturday, June 12th, 2010AES Solar Energy is planning on developing a large scale combination wind and solar plant in Palm Springs, California. The new plant would place a 13 megawatt photovoltaic solar plant underneath the wind turbines being planned for a 77 acre site just south of Interstate 10 in California. By combining both types [...]
Hybrid sales rebound in May
Sunday, June 6th, 2010The May 2010 new car sales numbers are out, and they show a nice rebound for hybrids and Toyota. Toyota, which took a hit in the last few months from the negative publicity generated by safety issues and recalls, continued to struggle with their non-hybrids, but their Prius increased its sales by 13.5% over [...]
Solexant raises money, comes out of stealth mode
Saturday, June 5th, 2010Solexant, a Silicon Valley company that already is operating a pilot manufacturing line producing two megawatts of its thin-film solar cells., has just raised $41.5 million in new funding so it can build a larger facility. Solexant claims a cheaper way to make solar cells – their process involves taking raw semiconductor material and [...]
US Marines using solar thermal power at Camp Lejeune
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010The Marines are embracing solar thermal power at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Their entire base housing complex will have solar panels for hot water installed. Since there are about 900 houses on the compound at Camp Lejeune, this will make the Marine base one of the largest residential producers of solar [...]