Plug and play solar energy storage system for the home

Bosch is selling a near plug and play energy storage system for home use, the BPT-S 5 Hybrid, a refrigerator-sized cabinet that houses a large battery, charge controller and inverter, to simplify integration with a house’s existing solar and grid lines. Installation is estimated at a mere two hours! It’ll charge up when your solar panels are producing excess energy, and discharge that into your house as needed at night. Unfortunately…it’s only available in Germany at this point. 🙁

December 30, 2013

Powering the World with Solar

Solar panels take space, but just how much land area would need to be covered with solar panels to provide 100% of this planet’s power needs (including transportation)? The answer is pretty surprising, as the image here shows (click on it for a larger version). It helps show just how much energy the sun is sending our way, and what a small percentage of that is actually required to power our civilization.

There’s still a matter of energy storage with solar panels, but I wonder, if long range transmission efficiency could be boosted to the point where we have a global power grid? The sun is always shining on about half the planet…if that power could be transmitted to the dark side of the planet, there would be no need to store electricity. Nikola Tesla suggested that just such a system could be possible. The drawbacks are obvious though…it would be difficult or even impossible to employ Tesla’s system in a way that would allow companies to control who uses that energy. The business model falls apart, sadly, and we live in a world controlled by business and profit.

(image credit)

December 19, 2013

Energy payback of solar (PV) panels

Does the production of solar panels require more energy than the panels will produce in their lifetime? That’s a question you may hear now and again, especially when talking to those who aren’t really on board with this whole clean energy idea. So, time to set the record straight. There’s a great article over at Care2.com that addresses just this subject. The bottom line is that depending on what technology of panel you’re talking about, the energy payback point (they’ve produced as much energy as it took to manufacture the panel) is from one to four years. Check out the full link above if you want all the details.

September 2, 2013

Grid-scale 10MWh battery

To address concerns over solar and wind power fluctuations, the UK is installing a 10MWh battery…it’s not huge in terms of typical grid power usage, but is another big milestone in weaning us off of fossil fuels. Read more over at gizmag.

July 30, 2013

Low(er) cost solar

The cost of solar/PV energy production continues its sharp decline…with the latest advancement being a California company named RSI that has found a way to produce large thin film PV modules at about one third less cost than current technology. This cost target wasn’t expected to be reached by the industry until 2017…and RSI plans to deliver modules in 2014. The industry is seeing lots of steps like this in both energy production and storage…things are changing fast and that bodes well for our future and the future of this planet…the big question is how quickly clean energy can be implemented and CO2 emissions eliminated…

via CleanTechnica

July 24, 2013

Lithium-sulfer battery promises 4X improvement

A new lithium-sulfer battery technology under development promises to prove around four times the energy storage as current lithium ion batteries. Also, since it doesn’t use a liquid electrolyte, it’s expected to be safer (ie, less flammable) than existing technologies. It’s in the prototype phase, which usually (for stuff like this) means a couple years from production.

All in all, it sounds remarkable, but what’s really cool is that announcements like this are becoming pretty common…there’s often another new fantastic battery technology mentioned in the news. It’s an indication that, overall, battery storage is quickly headed to the kind of levels where it’ll be making a big impact on our lives…first with electric cars, and soon with off-the-grid power supplies for houses and the development of ‘micro grids’. Cool stuff.

(via inhabitat)

June 11, 2013

Thermoelectric Fabric

Researchers have managed to make a flexible, inexpensive energy-producing fabric that can be used in clothing or covering any surface (like inside the walls of your house, as an outer layer to use heat escaping your house). Traditional thermoelectric devices have been too rigid (and expensive) for this, so this is a pretty big deal. It’s not that efficient, but it doesn’t need to be when it’s cheap and can cover large areas. Power production is around one milliwatt per square centimeter, so you might get a watt or two from clothing made with this – but that would go a long ways towards charging your iPhone, for example. As a bonus feature, it’s piezoactive, meaning that energy is created when the material is flexed. The first products made from this material might hit the market as soon as next year.

(read more at Business Insider)

April 11, 2013

Apple’s Data Centers 100% powered by renewable energy

Apple has reached a cool milestone…their data centers, historically facilities of massive power consumption, are now powered by 100% renewable energy! It has accomplished this by building large solar arrays, building a fuel cell power plant, and also purchasing renewable energy credits from its energy suppliers. It’s not just good for the environment…the more a company can rely on already-installed solar panels, the more predicable (and lower) operating costs become over the life of those panels. It just makes good business sense, if you can afford the initial investment.

March 22, 2013

Abu Dhabi now home to the world’s largest Concentrated Solar Power Plant

The world’s largest concentrated solar power plant has been switched on in Abu Dhabi recently. At a cost of about $600 million, it covers almost a square mile and will generate enough electricity to power around 20,000 homes.

Small-scale investing in solar

Interested in investing in solar, but at a smaller level than some multi-megawatt facility? Then check out Mosaic. I’m not affiliated with them and am not a current investor, but it’s a neat business model that I thought I’d pass along. They treat your investment like a loan, to fund smaller scale solar energy projects. Most projects listed are returning 4.5%, so it’s not some get rich quick scheme, but not a bad investment all in all.

March 15, 2013