Green Tech

NEW YORK--New York State is looking for developers to build wind farms on its Great Lakes that could generate 120 to 500 megawatts of power to boost the amount of electricity that comes from renewable sources by 2015.

The New York Power Authority would buy all the power generated from the offshore projects, which could be located in either Lake Erie or Lake Ontario.

Offshore wind power costs about twice as much as land-based wind projects, according to industry estimates. Offshore wind farms cost about $4 million per megawatt if no interest accrued during construction.

However, typically offshore wind farms can generate more power. Five firms are studying the Great Lakes wind project, which was first proposed in April.

A combined cycle natural gas plant, which does produce carbon dioxide, meanwhile costs just about $1 million a megawatt.

One megawatt powers about 800 homes in New York.

Companies interested in making a proposal have to inform the state-owned power generator by March 20. Proposals are due June 1.

The state will announce any winners by December 2010 with power purchase agreement negotiations completed by May 31, 2011. The Power Authority said it would favor projects completed in 2015 and those that benefit the local economy.

The project would generate much needed Upstate jobs and help the state and its Democratic governor, David Paterson, meet ambitious renewable-power goals and the region's greenhouse gas reduction efforts.

New York's renewable portfolio standard requires 25 percent of its electricity come from renewable sources by 2013, while the governor set a goal of 45 percent of the state's power come from energy efficiency and renewable resources by 2015.

New York is a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which uses a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Wind power produces no greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide.

Several firms want to build wind power facilities in New York. The state power grid operator said earlier this year it was studying proposals to interconnect more than 8,000 MW of wind projects. Of course, most of those projects will not be built.

New York already has more than 1,200 MW of wind power capacity, most of which was built over the past year or so in part to capture substantial federal and state incentives.

Story Copyright (c) 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Mazda, EnerDel, Think Global, and others are partnering on a test project that will pair all-electric cars with stationary storage units as charging stations, EnerDel and Mazda announced this past week.

Mazda plans to convert some of its Mazda2 vehicles (known as the Mazda Demios in Japan) to all-electric cars running a Think drivetrain with EnerDel lithium ion batteries.

The Mazda2 (called the Demios in Japan) is expected to become available in the United States in 2010.

(Credit: Mazda)

The cars will be offered to Japanese customers through a rental car program, called the Tsukuba Environmental Style Test Project, which should be up and running by March 2010 in Tsukuba City, Japan, near Tokyo, according to Mazda.

U.S. battery manufacturer EnerDel has described the test project as the Japanese equivalent to Zipcar in the States, a program in which customers join a car club that offers car rentals on an hourly or daily basis.

Instead of recharging stations tapping directly into a smart grid, those in the Tsukuba test project will use stationary grid storage units also developed by EnerDel. The stationary storage units will enable the rapid charging of the all-electric Mazda2 cars, while avoiding the possibility of having to tap into a smart grid during peak usage hours.

"The unique combination of on-site battery storage with rapid charging allows the use of direct current throughout the system, sharply reducing the amount of time needed to charge a vehicle," according to a statement from EnerDel.

The recharging stations, which will draw from solar panels as well as grid power, will be located at Family Mart convenience stores in the Tsukuba City area.

Itochu, a Japanese conglomerate that has partnered with EnerDel on energy projects since 2003, owns the Family Mart chain. It was through a partnership with Itochu that EnerDel and Think Global converted and tested a fleet of trucks to all-electric vehicles for the Japanese Postal Service.

California will be the "lead market" for the Chevy Volt when the electrically driven car is available at the end of next year, General Motors said Wednesday.

California was chosen because the state has the largest U.S. car market, and Californians are "known to be leaders in adopting groundbreaking new technologies," GM's vice president of global Chevrolet brand, Brent Deware, said in a statement pegged to this week's Los Angeles International Auto Show.

Production of the Volt is scheduled to start in late 2010. GM has not announced pricing for the 2011 model, though newly dethroned CEO Fritz Henderson acknowledged earlier this fall that the price would be about $40,000. (GM's board on Tuesday asked Henderson to resign, effective immediately.)

California, here we come.

(Credit: General Motors)

As part of the California rollout, GM plans to make 100 Volts available to three utilities for testing. The cars will be used as fleet vehicles, and performance data will be collected via GM's OnStar in-car communications for a Department of Energy-run research program.

Financially strapped GM has a lot riding on the Chevy Volt. The car is designed to run for 40 miles on its lithium ion batteries and then use an engine-generator combination for longer rides. GM expects that most customers will do the majority of their driving on electric charge only, making the cost per mile cheaper than gas-only cars.

Even with the public excitement over electric cars, automakers are still not totally sure how consumers will adjust to the new technology and how electric components will operate in real-world conditions.

GM, as well as other automakers, plans to offer electric vehicles in certain regions that will invest in the infrastructure to support them. The California research program calls for the installation of 500 charging stations at people's homes, at businesses, and in public places.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--U.S. energy objectives are closely intertwined with--and in many cases, rely upon--the country's broadband infrastructure, government officials and smart-grid company executives say.

The Federal Communications Commission on Monday held a "field hearing" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the role of communications in energy and environment. It was an information-gathering session designed to help set a national broadband strategy.

Energy displays bring the smart grid home (photos)

The entire notion of the smart grid supposes connectivity at different points along the grid. Adding digital technologies to the existing system will allow energy to be used more efficiently, increase reliability, and let grid operators use more solar and wind power, say smart-grid advocates.

During the hearing, speakers argued that broader broadband coverage lays the foundation for those benefits by enabling smart-grid applications, such as home energy monitoring, alerting utilities to outages, and charging plug-in vehicles economically and without stressing the grid.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has been involved in both telecom deregulation and energy legislation, said here Monday that future economic growth is tied closely to the intersection of energy and broadband.

U.S. Rep Ed Markey speaks during the FCC's hearing on broadband with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski seated.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

"The smart grid is an electricity Internet. Without the broadband revolution, you cannot have the revolution we're talking about," Markey said. "If you look at the energy sector and the broadband sector, you can determine the economic growth of that country."

In the case of consumers, smart-grid companies are already relying heavily on home broadband connections. Smart meters are equipped with networking gear so that data can regularly be sent back and forth between customers and utilities. Millions of smart meters will be installed in the next three years. But there will still be millions of homes without smart meters, and many utilities have limited meter communications for security reasons.

As a result, energy monitoring companies are designing products so that they can function with an Internet connection instead. Rather than have a smart meter provide real-time energy use to an energy display, for example, data can be collected using different workarounds, including Internet gateways that give consumers access to a Web portal.

Wider broadband coverage would open up energy-efficiency services delivered through home energy displays to a bigger set of people, said Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril, a company focused on smart energy monitoring.

"It's cheaper to give low-income families access to a broadband than it is to give them smart meters," he said. "We use the existing broadband to compensate for the fact that smart meters are not in place."

Regulatory 'hairball'
Better broadband coverage opens up the market to more businesses, too, said Rick Counihan, president of regulatory affairs at energy-efficiency company EnerNoc.

EnerNoc ratchets down electricity use in office and industrial buildings during peak times by connecting to its customers' meters. That communication with many smaller companies is done with a cellular modem, rather than an Internet connection, which makes the service more expensive, he said.

For utilities, connectivity is integral to improving the reliability of the grid, according to executives from utility companies who said that more radio spectrum would help ensure reliable communications to detect outages.

The other area that needs work on the government level is standards and interoperability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is now leading an effort to establish the necessary standards for smart-grid, covering everything from cybersecurity to in-home communication protocols. But there would need to be coordination among various government agencies for new grid products to be plug and play.

Regulations need to be put in place to promote efficiency at utilities and to reflect peak-time and off-peak pricing of electricity, panelists said.

"The technology is there. The markets are there. The entrepreneurial drive is there," said venture investor Chuck McDermott of Rockport Capital. "The hairball occurs at the regulatory side. We don't have a system that accommodates a dynamic market."

Artist's rendering of the Cloud structure envisioned for the 2012 Olympics in London.

(Credit: MIT Senseable City Laboratory)

An extensive team of engineers, designers, and architects from around the world unveiled plans on Monday to create a digitally connected structure to grace the 2012 Olympics in London.

The structure, called the Cloud, is both a physical and digital cloud designed to broadcast real-time data and images on spherical, three-dimensional screens. While the images would float high above the city, the sound would be broadcast at ground level.

Carlo Ratti, head of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a team leader on the project that includes experts from across the world and Google as a partner. Ratti is known for his work on a textualizing waterfall at the Zaragoza World's Fair in 2008, the Real Time Rome population-tracking project, and the EyeStop bus shelters throughout Florence, Italy.

Digital cloud set to hover above 2012 Olympics (images)

In a statement, Ratti referred to the Cloud as a "new form of collective expression and experience and an updated symbol of our dawning age: code rather than carbon."

The Cloud will power itself, using a combination of solar energy from photovoltaic panels installed both on- and off-site.

The team wants to build the Cloud from money donated by individuals and companies through a "cloud raising" effort that will use the digital cloud to solicit donations. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are already on board to support the effort. Google plans to run adds via YouTube and its search results pages, according to MIT.

The structure is flexible enough in design that it can be modestly built for $5 million or be expanded to a $50 million project, depending on how much money is raised.

In addition to the many artists, architects, engineers, and computer scientists collaborating on the project, the team also includes legendary author Umberto Eco among its advisers.

Google's Dan Reicher (at podium) was joined by Stanford's Lynn Orr (left), Nth Power's Tim Woodward, and Under Secretary of Energy Kristina Johnson (onscreen) at an event Monday on innovation in green energy.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--Ahead of a key international summit on climate change, Google hosted a panel discussion at its offices here Monday on the need for the U.S. to play a key role in the development of the next generation of energy.

Energy experts from Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and MIT joined Google's Dan Reicher, director of climate and energy initiatives and energy venture capitalist Tim Woodward of Nth Power in a wide-ranging discussion on a very timely topic: how to transition the world toward a more sustainable form of energy consumption and production. They were later joined via video conference by Kristina Johnson, undersecretary of energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The panelists sought not only to emphasize that such a move is essential, but one that presents enormous economic opportunity for countries that get ahead of the technology and innovation curve. "If we really do pull off changing the world's energy system, then a whole lot of money is going to be spent on putting the equipment in place to do that," said Lynn Orr, director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University.

The discussion was held a week before the beginning of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will be held in Copenhagen with representatives from 192 countries. The conference is expected to produce some sort of global agreement on reducing carbon emissions and embracing alternative forms of energy, although the scope of any such agreement is very much up in the air.

Several panelists agreed with the assertion of Dan Kammen, director of the Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, that no matter what happens in Copenhagen, substantial progress has already been made this year with climate-change talks between the U.S. and China.

"China wants to be seen as a modern country," said Ernie Moniz, director of MIT's Energy Initiative. That means that not only do they want in on the gold rush toward green energy, they recognize that their citizens could be greatly affected by climate change.

Copenhagen aside, much of Google's interest in fostering debate in this area is designed around getting the federal government to play a larger role in helping technology research make it out of the labs and into the market, Reicher said. "We don't do a very good job in this country of moving technologies through this pipeline," he said.

Google is throwing its considerable resources behind green technologies such as wind, solar thermal, and advanced geothermal, Reicher said. In 2007, Google announced plans to generate 1 gigawatt of clean electricity through investments in companies that are researching and developing clean-energy technology.

The CMT-380 serial hybrid sports car is built on a Factory Five Racing kit car platform.

(Credit: Capstone)

In an unlikely alliance, Capstone, manufacturer of electricity-generating microturbines, and Electronic Arts Chief Creative Director Richard Hilleman have built a hybrid sports car for the upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show. The CMT-380 uses an electric power train with a range-extending diesel-fueled microturbine. A lithium polymer battery pack gives the CMT-380 80 miles of pure electric range, and the microturbine generates power for an additional 500 miles.

The car itself is built on a kit car platform, the Factory Five Racing GTM supercar. Capstone cites performance figures of 3.9 seconds to 60mph and a 150mph top speed. Impressively, the microturbine burns its fuel so cleanly that no catalytic converter or other exhaust treatment is needed for the car to meet California's Air Resources Board emissions requirements.

Not the first name that comes to mind in the automotive industry, Capstone has been making microturbines for stationary facilities and hybrid public transport vehicles since 1988. The microturbine in the CMT-380 is the company's smallest, generating 30 kilowatts. Capstone claims many benefits of its microturbine technology over an internal combustion engine, such as compact size, low maintenance, and efficient operation.

But forget buying your own CMT-380. Capstone says it may build a limited number based on interest at the Los Angeles Auto Show, but the car really serves as a demonstration of microturbine technology. Capstone will look for interest in the technology from automakers.

When you're the host city for international climate change negotiations, using energy-efficient LED lights on the Christmas tree apparently isn't enough.

The traditional Christmas tree in Copenhagen's City Hall Square will be powered by people, rather than a distant power plant. The square has been equipped with 15 bicycles which, when pedaled, light up the 700 LED bulbs on the tree.

Staying fit and lighting the night in Copenhagen.

(Credit: Denmark tourism bureau)

The 17-meter-high tree went up on Sunday during an opening ceremony in which Saint Nicholas climbed a fire truck ladder to the top of the tree and lit fireworks. Even during the ceremony, the lights were being powered by the bicycles, according to a representative from the city of Copenhagen. Children, a mayor, and international VIPs joined in the pedaling during the opening ceremony, he added.

The carbon-light approach to lighting the traditional Christmas tree is one of the attractions being organized for COP15, the latest round of international climate change talks, which start next week. The purpose of these meetings is to establish treaties to limit the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

Reuters has a list of the commitments under discussion during the negotiation, which include a goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, a "threshold that many scientists see as a threshold for dangerous climate change."

Expectations that there would be a major breakthrough in Copenhagen have been low in part because the U.S. Congress has not been able to pass an energy and climate bill that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. But the past two weeks have seen a number of political twists, summarized here at the New York Times.

All the political jockeying, though, could have a real impact on green technology and innovation. For the most part, green-tech entrepreneurs and investors are not betting on having a hefty price attached to carbon in the immediate future. Rather any climate regulations serve mainly as a signal that the economic system will find a way to create a financial incentive for technologies that reduce emissions.

Another important topic for discussion in Copenhagen is how green technologies will be transferred to poor countries, writes Earth2Tech.

In the chill of a massive cave beneath an orthodox Christian cathedral in Helsinki, Finland, a city power firm is preparing what it thinks will be the greenest data center on the planet.

Excess heat from hundreds of computer servers to be located in the bedrock beneath Uspenski Cathedral, one of Helsinki's most popular tourist sites, will be captured and channeled into the district heating network, a system of water-heated pipes used to warm homes in the Finnish capital.

"It is perfectly feasible that a quite considerable proportion of the heating in the capital city could be produced from thermal energy generated by computer halls," said Juha Sipila, project manager at Helsingin Energia.

Beneath Helsinki's Uspenski Cathedral a new data center is being built whose heat will help warm homes in the Finnish capital.

(Credit: Jrielaecher/Wikimedia Commons)

Finland and other north European countries are using their water-powered networks as a conduit for renewable energy sources: capturing waste to heat the water that is pumped through the system.

Due online in January, the new data center for local information technology services firm Academica is one way of addressing environmental concerns around the rise of the Internet as a central repository for the world's data and processing--known as "cloud computing."

Companies seeking large-scale, long-term cuts in information technology spending are concentrating on data centers, which account for up to 30 percent of many corporations' energy bills.

Data centers such as those run by Google already use around 1 percent of the world's energy, and their demand for power is rising fast with the trend to outsource computing.

One major problem is that in a typical data center only 40-45 percent of energy use is for the actual computing--the rest is used mostly for cooling down the servers.

"It is a pressing issue for IT vendors since the rise in energy costs to power and cool servers is estimated to be outpacing the demand for servers," said Steven Nathasingh, chief executive of research firm Vaxa.

"But IT companies cannot solve the challenge by themselves and must create new partnerships with experts in energy management like the utility companies and others," he said.

Data centers' emissions of carbon dioxide have been running at around one-third of those of airlines, but are growing 10 percent a year and now approach levels of entire countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands.

Energy savings
Besides providing heat to homes in the Finnish capital, the new Uspenski computer hall will use half the energy of a typical data center, Sipila said.

Its input into the district heating network will be comparable to one large wind turbine, or enough to heat 500 large private houses.

"Green is a great sales point, but equally important are cost savings," said Pietari Paivanen, sales head at Academica: the center, when expanded as planned, will trim 375,000 euros ($561,000) a year from the company's annual power bill. Academica's revenue in 2008 was 15 million euros.

"It's a win-win thing. We are offering the client cheap cooling as we can use the excess heat," Sipila said.

The center's location in the bowels of the cathedral has an added bonus: security. It is taking over a former bomb shelter carved into the rock by the fire brigade in World War II as a refuge for city officials from Russian air raids.

Story Copyright (c) 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.