EGEB: Being ‘green’ scares men, wind turbine production in Iowa factory causing injury, 1100kV HVDC, more

Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source.

Men Resist Green Behavior as Un-Manly – The idea that emasculated men try to reassert their masculinity through non-environmentally-friendly choices suggests that in addition to littering, wasting water, or using too much electricity, one could harm the environment merely by making men feel feminine. C’mon fellas – overcompensating for something? You seriously need special marketing so your sensitive little feelings don’t get hurt while saving the planet? You’d think you’d support the thing that would make your offspring healthier…

Chemical exposure results in injuries, pink slips at Iowa wind blade maker, lawsuits claim – The 36-year-old suffers from contact dermatitis, a condition she says she contracted while crawling inside cavernous wind turbine blades to apply a hazardous resin at TPI Composites’ Newton factory. And logs of Iowa’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration show more than 300 recorded cases of skin injuries at TPI from the plant’s opening in 2008 through 2016. However, records also show that the agency, which enforces workplace safety laws and regulations, has never penalized the company regarding the repeated skin injuries. That’s not how you build a manufacturing machine in the USA.

US researchers model alternatives to farmland for PV deployment – The researchers delineated a 58,815 km² region of California’s Central Valley to make their calculations, and using satellite radiation models developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, theorized that these four land types have the potential to host PV installations generating at least 17,348 TWh/year – around 13 times California’s projected annual electricity demand up to 2025. The basic answer – California can more than meet its clean energy needs via solar power alone without using important farmland. There’s enough space to power the whole of the USA – four times over – if we wanted to pave Cali over with solar panels. I think the lesson simply is, we’ve got plenty of space to make clean electricity.

The world’s first ±1,100 kV HVDC transformer passed testing – It is the first of a total of seven ±1,100 kV transformers that Siemens and a partner company are building for what is currently the world’s largest HVDC transmission system. This type of transformer is among the most powerful single-phase units in the world, with a transmission capacity of 587.1 megavolt amperes (MVA). This is the world’s most powerful HVDC transmission system in terms of transmission capacity, voltage and length. The HVDC link is 3,284 kilometers long and will transmit electricity from the northwestern Xinjiang region to Anhui Province in eastern China. With a transmission capacity of twelve gigawatts (GW), it will replace what was previously the most powerful system with a capacity of 10 GW. We covered this last week, but that header image really changes it. Look at those tiny people on the ground underneath. And when we think a bit harder about what China is building to move their electricity – maybe we ought to get a bit excited at the potential benefits we can gain from this type of hardware innovation. Global HVDC?

Lots of red, tiny slight amounts, across this chart – except for polysilicon. Analysts thinks it’s about time where we will see the price of solar cells/panels/etc start to flatline as the Chinese solar building season speeds up. Might be about the best time to buy some solar – at the end of the seasonal price drops for solar panels (and beginning of the year means install lull about to hit in the USA).

Long 0.725/pc, GCL 0.64/pc, mono and multi wafers' price war start!#PV #Solar pic.twitter.com/FrdcK2pBaM

— InfoLink Consulting (@InfoLinkConsult) December 27, 2017

Featured image is from Siemens HVDC article.

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