All Entries Tagged With: "Renewables"
Keeping the Lights on in California Amidst 33% Renewables and Environmental Rulings
Amazon.com Widgets California’s 2020 goal of generating a third of its power from renewables will be more complicated than just building enough solar power plants, utility-scale wind projects, and geothermal facilities. Renewable energy, much of it variable, must be delivered to and integrated in the state’s transmission system. Responsibility for 80 percent of the state’s [...]
The Humanitarian Side of Solar and Renewables
The energy market is ruthlessly competitive. American consumers want cold beer and warm showers from low-cost utilities, and the "green-ness" of the electricity is of minimal concern to the average user. This pits solar firm versus solar firm and wind power firm versus wind power firm. More broadly, this mindset pits renewable energy against the [...]
California’s Grid System Operator Confronts the Prospect of 33 Percent Renewables by 2020
Building enough new solar and wind capacity to meet California’s 33 percent renewables by 2020 mandate will not be easy — but reliably getting the electricity generated by those resources to the places where it will be consumed may be even tougher. That is the responsibility of the California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO). The [...]
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Aims at 33 Percent Renewables by 2020
California’s 46 publicly owned utilities manage about a quarter of the state’s power. Of them, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the state’s (and the nation’s) largest public utility with about nine percent to 12 percent of California’s generation, has been thought the bad boy for making lots of promises about developing [...]
Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holding Forms Renewables Unit
MidAmerican Energy Holding Company, the Midwestern utility subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, announced today it will form a branch dedicated exclusively to the development of renewable energy. The renewables platform will, unlike four of MidAmerican’s five other highly regulated platforms (two utilities and two gas pipelines), offer MidAmerican the opportunity it has only had [...]
Autodesk: A Hollywood Happy Ending for Renewables and Greentech Innovation?
The last 16 Academy Award winners in the Visual Effects category use Autodesk design tools, acccording to the company. Autodesk describes its multiple visualizing tools as “digital prototyping software.” The software allows users to create three-dimensional virtual realities in which to challenge and perfect their designs. “It lets people design, visualize and simulate their ideas,” [...]
Getting Renewables on the Grid, Part 4: Why PV and the Grid Need CSP
Concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies that use mirrors instead of photovoltaic (PV) panels are challenging to finance. CSP is a newer technology that is just starting to bring down costs through economies of scale and improved efficiencies. But there is a compelling rationale for concentrating technologies. PV doesn’t entirely answer the needs of the transmission [...]
Massive Trophy Renewables Project for NYC Tech Campus
Last month we reported that Distributed Sun (D-SUN) and Washington Gas Energy Systems proposed to co-develop and finance the on-site renewable energy solutions for Cornell University’s proposed NYC Tech Campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. This month, the project was been awarded and is now actually on its way. Chase Weir, the CEO [...]
Is Google Really Abandoning Renewables?
“I just read that Google is ending its involvement in green energy projects,” a GTM commenter recently wrote. Nothing could be farther from the truth, it turns out. Google is more committed than ever to renewables and energy efficiency. The company closed down a series of programs, largely unassociated with renewables, in 2011. “It’s a [...]
Renewables South of the Border
Renewables advocates warn that if Congress doesn't provide incentives, the U.S. will lose an enormous greentech opportunity to China. Germany and Japan are also reaching for the renewables gold ring, and other EU and Asian nations are rapidly growing new energy economies. And multinational developers, weary of fighting U.S. policy and regulatory resistance, are starting [...]
