One of the first questions that comes up whenever we’re discussing electric vehicles is, “Where am I going to charge the darn thing?” The new PlugShare app for iPhone (along with the network of users behind it) aims to help EV owners to charge in some pretty unorthodox places–for example, other people’s driveways.

After downloading and installing the PlugShare app, you are presented with a Google Map filled with icons indicating user-submitted locations where EV drivers can plug in. There are separate categories for basic household plugs, privately owned J1772 charging stations, and public and commercial charging points.

You can elect to share your own outlet or charging point with PlugShare’s other users, expanding the charging network. However, sharing an outlet is not a required condition for accessing PlugShare’s network via the app. And you don’t need to be an EV owner to try it out and, if you’re feeling generous, to start sharing your electricity with your friendly neighborhood electric vehicle owners.

PlugShare is a free download in the Apple App Store. An Android version is said to be coming soon.

View the original article here

Green Technology Achieve a Sustainable Future with Green Technology. Create Innovation for New Energy. « Solar Decathlon 2011 Location Change | Main | National Renewable Energy Laboratory »

Jordache Enterprises Uses Solar for Electricity and Hot Water

Jordache Enterprises – owner of Jordache Jeans – uses solar panels at a factory in Jordan. 

They are ” … among the first garment manufacturers worldwide to have installed and use solar panels to heat water … “

A subsidiary owns the The Orchid hotel in Israel which was the first to install solar cells; these generate ” …  electricity in excess of the resort’s consumption. … hooked to the regional electric grid, selling excess capacity to the Electric Company…”

Via:  Jordache  LINK

Post Details
Posted by Green Dude on February 28, 2011 06:58 PM | Permalink|

Category: Solar

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.greentechnolog.com/blog-mt/mt-tb.fcgi/2836

Post a comment (If you haven’t left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won’t appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

View the original article here

“We’re using sustainable green power from a 1.5 megawatt solar array to create clean groundwater. The photovoltaic modules sit on top of a capped landfill that was closed decades ago,” said Bill Geary, President, Clean Harbors Development, LLC. “At Clean Harbors, we are in the business of protecting the environment. This project demonstrates our commitment to sustainability by redeveloping an otherwise unusable Brownfield to generate renewable clean energy to power ongoing decontamination activities at the site. This is the very type of Innovative Green Energy Project the USEPA and State of New Jersey are advocating from business and industry.”

Upon completion of the project in the spring, the groSolar installation is expected to lower annual electric costs at the site by more than 90 percent.

“After deciding to install solar last year, we went through a formal procurement process and hired independent experts to conduct a Request for Proposal (RFP) process to evaluate several, qualified providers of integrated solar energy solutions. We selected groSolar because of its outstanding reputation in the commercial solar industry, broad capabilities, strong knowledge of landfill construction, and turnkey approach,” said Geary.

Clean Harbors (NYSE: CLH) is funding the project internally. However, the project is receiving the benefit of federal tax credits and New Jersey SRECs, which will accelerate the company’s return on investment (ROI).

“Our landfill experience provided Clean Harbors with the extra assurance they needed on this project. The New Jersey renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is providing them with additional cash flow to support the ongoing clean-up project to generate revenue as well as clean power, which benefits large commercial facilities, such as Clean Harbors,” says Jeff Wolfe, CEO, groSolar.

About groSolar

groSolar is North America’s premier provider of solar energy solutions for commercial and residential applications. groSolar serves the 1 to 30 MW commercial markets with complete EPC, financing, and development options, while serving the residential markets exclusively through its nationwide distribution division. Founded in 1998, groSolar brings leading knowledge to the industry and integrates components from leading solar manufacturers into simple solar energy solutions, which generate clean, reliable energy for decades. groSolar is a mission-driven company dedicated to providing high quality solar energy systems and financial solutions. Learn more at groSolar.com or call 800.374.4494.

About Clean Harbors

Clean Harbors Environmental Services, Inc., and Clean Harbors Development, LLC are wholly owned subsidiaries of Clean Harbors, Inc. (“Clean Harbors”) (NYSE: CLH), the leading provider of environmental, energy and industrial services throughout North America.

View the original article here

This mismatch between the renewable energy resources being integrated onto the grid and the models built to plan for new generation has significant implications. Perhaps most concerning to those in favor of renewable energy build-out is that the traditional models call for significant levels of new natural gas generation development to shape the variable renewable resources being brought online – an outcome that would directly undermine our nation’s renewable energy progress.

But if we are able to fundamentally shift the planning paradigm to include variable renewables as a non-negotiable piece of our energy mix rather than a risky outlier, the prospect of integrating high levels of solar onto the grid becomes eminently manageable.

The conventional view of grid operations presumes that load creates grid instability and that generation is dispatched in a manner to address that instability.  From this view it is easy to see how renewables might raise a number of concerns from the people responsible for keeping our lights on and electricity available.

However, this view fails to recognize that all generation presents at least the potential for some type of grid instability or impact. So that means that solar generation is disproportionately penalized simply because solar is the last resource to be added to the planning “stack.”  In other words, solar generation is subject to cumulative historic generator impact or, to add another acronym to the already the acronym-heavy world of grid operation, CHGI.

By way of example, in the California market, certain categories of power — imports, nuclear, Qualifying Facility (QF), and some types of hydroelectric generation  — are actually so inflexible that they have deleterious grid impacts.  Similarly, even the most flexible gas resources have limited operating ranges and can be subject to unexpected outages.  Despite their limitations, these generator resources do not raise emphatic concerns about grid impacts like their renewable counterparts.

For the most part, these generator limitations have been operationally addressed through balancing area coordination of the entire generation fleet.  The related costs have been rolled into general concepts of grid reliability, and then attributed, both conceptually and financially, to load.  Solar generation, because it is the “last in the stack,” risks being both conceptually and actually charged with the impact of not only its intrinsic solar variability, but also the CHGI that has traditionally been assessed to load.

Existing scheduling, dispatch and settlement protocols further exacerbate the CHGI issue. Because they were developed based on the requirements of non-renewable generation such as gas, nuclear and coal, the existing protocols are not well suited for solar generation.  The historic paradigm assumes baseload generators, such as nuclear and coal, run all the time, serving the minimum level of expected load.  Additional load and fluctuations of that additional load, both expected and unexpected, are usually “followed” by more flexible resources such as gas. 

From this paradigm protocols such as hourly scheduling were established.  Hourly scheduling makes sense for scheduling traditional generation, such as nuclear, coal or gas, because it is not designed to change output quickly or because it is not generally susceptible to sub-hourly fuel fluctuations.  Solar variability, on the other hand, can occur on a sub-hourly basis, and thus solar generation is poorly served by traditional generation protocols such as hourly scheduling.

Furthermore, a general lack of understanding regarding how solar generation will perform on a balancing-area-wide basis is causing solar variability impacts to be overestimated.  The research from Thomas E. Hoff and Richard Perez as well as many others, compellingly demonstrates the importance of solar generator geographic diversity. As demonstrated in their geographic diversity research, a dispersed portfolio of solar electricity systems spread across the balancing area “smoothes” the impact of weather–based solar variability to the point that it can be cost-effectively managed. These two experts will be presenting their findings as part of Vote Solar’s free Get Some Sun webinar series: PV Output Variability: the Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing.

Taken as a whole, the concerns identified above hold considerable potential for chilling the continued development of solar energy and for driving unnecessary development of fossil fuel generation to purportedly back up the solar.  To ensure the continued progress of solar energy development, the following should be proactively pursued:

By separating the impacts of solar variability due to the daily movement of the sun (called DMV – diurnal movement variability) from the weather change impacts (WBV – weather based variability), grid planners can begin to address their intermittency concerns. The former is predictable and known, such that it can be addressed ex-ante, meaning that its grid impacts can be effectively eliminated in a least cost manner. The latter, WBV, however, is more likely to require ex-post solutions, such as requiring grid operators to consider solar generation on a fleet wide basis, rather than assessing performance on each individual unit.  Thus, while WBV cannot be entirely avoided, it can certainly be significantly minimized.

Again by way of example, the current California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) long-term planning proceeding does not distinguish DMV and WBV from each other.  This lack of separation could potentially cause the CPUC’s integration model to overestimate the amount of new gas resources needed to firm, follow or back-up solar generation.

DMV Modeling

Once isolated, DMV can be addressed ex-ante through policies that allow DMV to be shaped in a manner that best neutralizes this type of variability (DMV Shaping).  Take, for instance, the case where the most desirable solar generation shape is one that ramps consistent with load.  To the extent that solar generation ramps up faster than load, compensated curtailment can be explored.  Likewise, to the extent solar generation ramps down faster than load, acquisition of clean shaping energy, such as hydroelectric generation or energy storage, can be explored.

FERC’s Integration of Variable Energy Resources Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) is currently considering three elements, including sub-hourly scheduling, that relate directly to making DMV Shaping a reality.  When combined with advocacy directed at balancing area authorities and state commissions, the NOPR holds considerable promise for advancing this issue.

WBV Impacts

Once DMV is addressed, policies and planning should focus on minimizing the impacts of WBV. These weather-driven impacts can be largely addressed by incorporating the smoothing impacts of geographic diversity into grid planning and operations and advancing policies that support such dispersal.

If a cloud passed over a specific solar generator, the momentary change in output of that solar generator can and should be smoothed by other solar generators that are located where the sun is still shining. It sounds optimistic, but analysis of geographically dispersed PV system output indicates that this smooth effect does indeed effectively minimize the impact, on a fleet-wide basis, of the WBV. 

Nevertheless, depending on the manner in which any particular balancing authority operates, on a meter-by-meter basis, individual generators could be charged for WBV that, in effect, had only a minuscule impact on the grid.  Exploration of protocols to address or avoid this possibility should be pursued with balancing area authorities and, to the extent necessary, before FERC and appropriate state commissions.

With DMV Shaping enabled and WBV smoothing of geographic diversity properly incorporated into grid operations and planning, that leaves a final area of advocacy to effectively manage solar variability: policies that address the costs related to any remaining WBV impacts.

To the extent that Residual WBV impacts are entirely attributable to solar generation, the costs should be appropriately allocated. On the other hand, careful attention must be given to recognizing the unaccounted for CHGI, and ensuring that solar generation, simply because it is the last in the stack, is not solely responsible for mitigating, and paying for, the impacts.

View the original article here

The green electricity market will boom once subsidies are withdrawn and it can manage on its own, predicted one renewables expert.

John Constable, director of policy and research at the Renewable Energy Foundation, highlighted the benefits of subsidies for renewable energy generation for allowing the UK to experiment with deploying and integrating new technologies.

However, he noted that the industry still relies on funding and that subsidies will not transform the UK’s electricity system overnight as they are not “economically sustainable”.

Dr Constable added that schemes such as the feed-in tariff are “very attractive” for householders in encouraging them to install renewable technology in their home.

Householders can be paid for generating their own electricity from solar power, as well as being paid for supplying excess electricity to the grid.

On a larger scale, Ecotricity recently announced that it is to open up a new 1MW sun park in Lincolnshire, comprised of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels.

“Like wind power, solar PV is very heavily subsidised,” explained Dr Constable, stressing that without valuable government subsidies, this kind of technology development would not happen.

Posted by Mark Stephens

Sign up for regular email updates to help you save money and energy

For more information please see: Ecotricity sun parks

View the original article here