Archive for the ‘Green’ Category
China plans 500-megawatt solar plant
August 26th, 2009 | 
Author: Canadian Solar has been granted rights to develop a 500-megawatt solar power plant in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, the company announced Wednesday.
Baotou is a manufacturing city on the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia with a population of over 2 million, according to the Chinese government’s official Baotou Web site.
Canadian Solar’s agreement is with the Administration Committee of Baotou National Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone also known as its Chinese abbreviation “CPT.” The signed agreement includes rights “to design, install, operate, and maintain” the solar power plant in Baotou.
“To have a solar project of such magnitude in Baotou demonstrates our determination to develop the PV end-user market in China, as well as our commitment to cleaner and more sustainable economic development in Baotou,” Fu Ren, the committee’s director, said in a statement released to the U.S. press.
Canadian Solar, while founded in Canada, has subsidiaries based in China that already manufacture both solar cells and solar panel systems among other things. The Baotou solar project, subject to regulatory approval, will develop in three stages.
Stage one will include the installation of 100 megawatts of photovoltaics between September 2009 and December 2011, followed by two more development phases each including 200-megawatt installations.
While the installation is massive, this is not the first of its kind. In October 2008, the U.S. Army announced plans to build a 500-megawatt solar thermal power farm in Fort Irwin, Calif. in an effort to reduce its annual energy costs.
Solar Trust was also recently granted rights to to develop the construction and installation of two or three 242-megawatt solar power plants for California that would be operational by 2013 or 2014.
Baotou, a city in Inner Mongolia, China, is about 12 hours northwest of Beijing by train.
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Mobile ‘biochar’ machine to work the fields
An ancient technique to fertilize soil by creating charcoal from plant waste is being revived to tackle some of today’s environmental problems.
The latest company to pursue manmade charcoal, called biochar, is Biochar Systems, which has developed a biochar-making machine that can be pulled by a pickup truck. Two customers–a North Carolina farm and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management–will be begin testing the units this fall.
The unit, called the Biochar 1000, is designed to convert woody biomass, such as agricultural or forestry waste, into biochar, a black, porous, and fine-grained charcoal that can be used as a fertilizer. It uses pyrolysis–slowly burning biomass in a low-oxygen chamber–to treat 1,000 pounds of biomass per hour, yielding 250 pounds of biochar.
The Biochar 1000 converts agricultural wastes to charcoal, which is then added to soil, a process that enriches soil and removes carbon from air.
Energy-aware Internet routing coming soon
Researchers have come up with a new way to route Internet traffic that could save big Internet companies like Google millions on their electricity bills, according to an article published by MIT’s Technology Review.
Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University and the networking company Akamai recently published results from a study that suggest big Internet companies could save up to 40 percent on their electricity bills by using an algorithm to send Internet traffic to data centers where electricity is less expensive.
Data centers consume a lot of energy, which costs operators like Google and Amazon millions of dollars to run each year. And now as more digital information is “virtualized” and accessed in the cloud, centralized data centers are getting even bigger and are consuming even more energy.
Full Story…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10312408-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Source :
CNETNews Energy-aware Internet routing coming soon http://bit.ly/4wlbfr
NJ using utility poles in solar push
The NJ Board of Public Utilities is set to approve on Thursday a $200 million contract between Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) and Petra Solar to install over 200,000 photovoltaic panels to tie in to the state’s electrical grid.
Full Story…
CNETNews NJ using utility poles in solar push http://bit.ly/VmnhS
