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Some good moves being made towards a large-scale reservoir for irrigation in Hawkes Bay.
http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/stor...-s-bay-4707359
http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/stor...-s-bay-4707359
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Aquaflow in Nelson are starting to talk bigger, with plans to build an algae and biomass combined biofuel plant in USA, Australia or NZ, bypassing a smaller pilot plant they'd planned.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/indu...el-plant#shareComment
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China is quadrupling the size of its planned solar farm arrays, to help use up an oversupply of solar panels, and support the price for them. This is truly big scale.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/busines...t_15545374.htm
Note that it's likely China will install 30GW of extra solar capacity by 2015. This is a lot of renewable power. In fact NZ uses 140PJ of electrical energy in a year, which is an average of just 4.4GW over all 24hrs. So this set of panels in China would be enough to run all of NZ, if the spare output was stored by say pumping water up to a head and using hydro in times of low solar incidence.Comment
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Here's another way of storing the energy: heating up a large tank of salt, and then using it to produce steam for a standard thermal power plant.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/energy/new...lery_id=124607
Cost-effective diesel from algae looks a step closer, if sited close to a plant producing spare CO2 (a bit like Huntly Power Station for example).
http://www.gizmag.com/algae-biomass-plant-brazil/23378/Comment
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Joule have recently teamed up with Audi, allowing Audi to be the first movers with their new fuels. Joule have a bioengineered organsim that uses CO2, light and water to directly secrete liquid fuels instead of multiplying. No shortage of funds, they obtained $70mill earlier this year.
http://www.jouleunlimited.com/about/overview
More than a promising technology, Joule® is advancing a platform for renewable fuel and chemical production that is expected to eclipse the scale, productivity and cost efficiency of any known alternative to fossil fuel today.
The company's Helioculture™ platform incorporates proprietary, engineered photosynthetic microorganisms to directly produce infrastructure-ready diesel, ethanol and multiple chemicals with no dependence on biomass feedstocks, agricultural land or fresh water. In parallel, Joule has developed a novel SolarConverter® system to enable the direct, continuous process with productivities that will be up to 100X greater than biomass-dependent methods, which require numerous energy-intensive steps and downstream processing to achieve an end product. In contrast, using sunlight, non-potable water and waste CO2 from industrial emitters or pipelines, Joule ultimately targets productivities of up to 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre annually, at stable costs as low as $50/bble and $1.28/gallon respectively (without subsidies).
This unprecedented combination of scale, cost efficiency and infrastructure readiness will allow Joule to leapfrog the incremental progress of biofuels and create an entirely new industry around sustainable, localized solar fuel production.
Joule has successfully pilot-tested its platform for over two years, initiated operations at its SunSprings™ demonstration plant, and launched a global subsidiary, Joule Fuels, to deploy fuel production sites worldwide.
Joule is privately held and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts with operations in Leander, Texas; Hobbs, New Mexico; and The Hague, Netherlands.
More background, it's a modified cyanobacteria. http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group.../message/29693Comment
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Solarzyme is a listed company, and is supplying an algae biofuel mixed with diesel for a limited testing period, in America.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680909/n...pump-algae-oil
But here is an article showing the truly vast amount of phosphate fertiliser that would be needed to be recycled by algae, to produce the world's liquid fuels each year. Phosphate is an increasingly important limitation on the world's food supplies.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Ener...he-Future.htmlComment
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In 2012, 2013, solar cell prices continues to drop, and an accord was reached in July this year to set a minimum price per watt for solar panels. This was to halt the further loss of jobs in EU PV firms, which had been decimated by Chinese imports.
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/EU...spute_999.html
The minimum price was reportedly US56c a watt of output, and this is definitely hitting the sweet spot for many new applications.Comment
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Some interesting advances in supercapacitors - best results yet, using silicon as a base material. Replacing large batteries with light flat supercaps could be quite possible in the future. Still a bit lower than the energy density in LiIon batteries.
http://www.electronicsnews.com.au/ne...549eb-58915369Comment
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A simpler method of getting to the oil stage, with algae as the starter. Short on the energy and nutrient inputs though, in this article.
http://www.gizmag.com/algae-crude-oi...1c66d-91378781Comment
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This project for Abu Dhabi looks useful. The nutrients are used to feed saltwater fish and shrimps, and mangroves get the leftovers and are converted to biofuels.
http://www.gizmag.com/halophyte-avia...bd184-91378781Comment
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Fusion energy is the holy grail of many scientists, and here is an unexpected breakthough of a short fusion reaction being achieved by using concentrated lasers on a small brew of Deuterium and Tritium that was encased in plastic. It produced 1% more energy than was put into the internal capsule, and they hope to improve it further.
http://www.gizmag.com/fusion-breakth...8342c-91378781
Here's more detail: the full view is that the experiment produced 17kJ of energy from Fusion, about 1% of the amount used to fire it up. But it's still a big step in the right direction.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...-energy-sourceComment
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Gizmag has a writeup on this revolutionary Archimedes-type wind turbine. This could be huge, if it's as efficient as they say it is.
http://www.gizmag.com/the-archimedes...574a0-91378781Comment
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Gizmag has the latest fusion idea (a dynomak), a sphere that contains the plasma using plasma as a barrier, and this could produce energy at about the same price as coal, and it's unlimited.
http://www.gizmag.com/dynomak-fusion...04066-91378781Comment
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Solar PV is still dropping in price, and energy to households from PV panels should match the price of gas generation, from around 2025.
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-Ne...y-As-2025.htmlComment
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In fact, another 40% drop in the price of installed solar PV is anticipated in two years.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/why-...wo-years-21235
Even looking at the raw cost of the panels per watt, US50c/watt is looking normal now.Comment
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