Wind power

According to Agora-Energiewende, and brought to our attention by PV-Magazine.com, on Sunday at 11 AM, 95% of German electricity demand was being met by renewable energy. In one of the most advanced manufacturing countries on the planet – this is an amazing feat of engineering.

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Today is the 46th Earth Day. Though from the perspective of the earth, it’s probably closer to its 1.6 trillionth day. Nonetheless, Earth Day is supposed to be an occasion to demonstrate your support for environmental protection.

You can show your support in very simple ways like using less energy or finally recycling those dead batteries that have been piling up in your junk drawer, or you can try to pick up some new habits and initiate yourself to new and greener technologies.
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U.S. Democrats recently said they were open to a lift of the four-decade-old ban on crude oil exports, if Republicans would allow the bill to include an extension of the federal tax credit for solar installations, which is currently set to decrease from 30% to 10% in 2017.

Reports from earlier this week suggested that Democrats were looking for a 10-year extension, but today we learn that both parties have agreed to a 5-year extension.
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With the Paris climate talks taking place this week, I thought it fitting to share an idea I came up with a few years ago while visiting the French capital. ‘Moulin Eiffel’ is taking the 130-year old Eiffel Tower, the iconic symbol of Paris, and outfitting it with a vertical axis wind turbine. The idea is that the tower seen around the whole world would genuinely (not BS) become energy neutral and a symbol for a sustainable energy future.

I had originally considered the option of placing a traditional “windmill” on top of the tower like you increasingly see in farms around the world, but with all of the equipment located up there already plus factoring changing wind patterns and the all important aesthetics, the vertical model works the best. This is how:

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Google has announced its largest ever purchase of renewable energy to power data centers across the U.S., Sweden and Chile, reports The Washington Post. The new projects, mostly wind-powered, add a massive 842 megawatts of green energy, which Google claims is the largest investment ever by anyone other than a power company.

The investment brings Google’s total renewable energy capacity to 2 gigawatts, which is equivalent to the total energy output of the Hoover Dam. Google has pledged to power its entire operations from green energy by 2025, and Re/code reports it was 37% of the way there prior to this deal. That suggests this deal ought to take the company to around 60%.

There is a little small-print, however … 
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZwguLJVxsM]

We’re mostly going to stay away from politics but this ad is very specifically on solar and renewables and it will hopefully kick off a debate on the energy sector that we’ll see in the run up to the 2015 elections.  The 10 year goal of moving US residences to renewables is a worthy 1st step. More from her campaign page

If you are to set a goal for the production of renewable energy, why not make it 100% of total production? This is exactly what Hawaii did this week by enacting a law imposing requirements for electric utilities to supply the state with 100% renewable energy by 2045. Hawaii is already a leader in clean energy with 22% of their electricity production coming from wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy resources. The new policy, Act 97, would require electric utility to produce 30% of their energy from renewable sources by the end of the decade and 100% within 30 years.

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Gaelectric Group CEO, Brendan McGrath and Gaelectric Head of Energy Storage, Keith McGrane at the Tesla Energy event last month

Ireland’s Gaelectric Group entered into an agreement with Tesla Motors to build a 1 MW demonstration utility-scale project. The project is expected to be deployed in 2016. The company is among the firsts to sign a “utility-scale” deal with Tesla. Executives from Gaelectric were among the electric utility industry specialists invited to the event introducing Tesla Energy at Tesla’s design studio in Los Angeles. Here’s Brendan McGrath, Gaelectric Group CEO, on the deal:

We are delighted to be associated with Tesla in introducing its battery systems to Ireland. As a renewable energy group with a pipeline of 500 MW of wind power in Ireland and energy storage projects in Ireland and Europe, Gaelectric has an obvious incentive to drive the adoption of technologies that facilitate the economic dispatch of wind and other renewable sources.

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In a new paper in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, Tugce Yuksel and Jeremy Michalek at Carnegie Mellon University have shown the average energy usage per mile of electric cars across the US.  You’ll note that warm but temperate climates like the California Coast and the Deep South especially Florida fare the best. Very hot desert areas like Arizona don’t do well because of the energy required to cool off bith the batteries and cabin. The North does poorly because batteries lose power as weather gets cooler.  Below, a Nissan Leaf efficiency is graphed at different temperatures which illustrates this disparity more clearly. The optimum range for operation is between 45 and 82 degrees where the 300W/mile threshold is beaten.

This all translates to CO2 emissions obviously and with the West making their energy much cleaner, they produce about 1/3rd the CO2 emissions as the north Midwest which is basically one big coal plant. In fact, that area’s energy is so CO2 intensive that running an electric car there (assuming you don’t have your own solar/wind) rivals the CO2 emissions of a fuel efficient car like a Prius.

The big takeaway is that moving to electric cars isnt enough. The grid also needs to move to cleaner power like wind and solar.

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Tesla just announced details of the Battery Gigafactory to be located in the Southwest US. The location hasn’t yet been selected but will provide 6500 US jobs and, in 2020, enough batteries for 500,000 electric vehicles.

Tesla also announced a $1.6B convertible notes offering to fund the Gigafactory and other ramping.

As we at Tesla reach for our goal of producing a mass market electric car in approximately three years, we have an opportunity to leverage our projected demand for lithium ion batteries to reduce their cost faster than previously thought possible. In cooperation with strategic battery manufacturing partners, we’re planning to build a large scale factory that will allow us to achieve economies of scale and minimize costs through innovative manufacturing, reduction of logistics waste, optimization of co-located processes and reduced overhead.

The Gigafactory is designed to reduce cell costs much faster than the status quo and, by 2020, produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013. By the end of the first year of volume production of our mass market vehicle, we expect the Gigafactory will have driven down the per kWh cost of our battery pack by more than 30 percent. Here are some details about what the Gigafactory will look like.

Learn more about the Tesla Gigafactory

TESLA ANNOUNCES $1.6 BILLION CONVERTIBLE NOTES OFFERING http://t.co/rHkp9L1rWe

— Electrek.co (@ElectrekCo) February 26, 2014

Press release follows:
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