Tagged: efficiency

Photo of the week: century old technology meets Kalahri sun

Earlier in the Photo of the Week series, we saw how Vortex Bladeless is offering a radical new way to harvest wind energy. But in the solar energy sector a lot of innovation is going on as well. The Swedish firm Ripasso is building what it claims to be the most efficient solar electricity system. In the South African Kalahari desert, giant parabolic mirrors follow the track of the sun and focus the rays in a small point where it drives a Stirling motor. That’s an invention dating back to 1816, but up to now it has mainly been used in military submarines although it can have much higher inefficiencies than classical combustion motors. It has no exhaust or inlets and works solely on the heating and cooling cycle of an internal fluid. Ripasso took this Stirling motor to South Africa where it is now able to convert solar energy to electricity with an efficiency of 34%, significantly higher than the 23% at best of other solar systems available today. Although it was not easy to convey banks their technology can fulfill its promises, Ripasso has now enough funding to start its first commercial-scale installation.

Ripasso showed that their 100m² mirrors in combination with a Stirling motor can reach an efficiency up to 32% (photo: Jeffrey Barbee)

Ripasso showed that their 100m² mirrors in combination with a Stirling motor can reach an efficiency up to 32% (photo: Jeffrey Barbee)

Sources

Ripasso Energy
The Guardian

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Photo of the week: Energy efficiency scorecard

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, ACEEE, is a non-profit organisation aiming for a more energy efficient (American) economy. They’ve made an international scorecard, a ranking of energy efficiency of 16 large economies including Germany, the UK, China, Mexico, the US etc. Countries can earn a maximum of 100%, by scoring points in 31 metrics across four groups of important energy efficiency aspects: nation-wide energy aspects such as energy production and transmission, buildings, industry and transportation. The top three brings no surprises. On the first place comes Germany, followed by Italy and the European Union as a whole. Surprising result: China comes at the fourth place, while the US only comes only at the 13th place of the 16 economies investigated. But there’s still room for improvement: even Germany was rewarded a mere 62 on a scale of 100.

The energy efficiency scorecard of ACEEE, ranking 16 large economies (map: ACEEE)

The energy efficiency scorecard of ACEEE, ranking 16 large economies (map: ACEEE)

 

Source

ACEEE

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Negawatt power

Global energy demand is ever growing. A few years back China was opening a new coal plant every day on average to keep pace with its demand. Luckily they are considering other means of energy production these days, as air pollution is a worsening problem in the country. Most countries – including China – still tend to build more power plants to tackle their shortage on energy. But why not using the available energy more efficiently?

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