Tagged: renewable

Photo of the week: first all-electric ferry

The times of smoke spewing ferries could finally come to an end. Earlier this year, the first all-electric ferry was taken into service in Norway. Equipped with a battery pack worth 1600 car batteries, the ferry makes a journey of about twenty minutes crossing the Sognefjord in Norway. It can carry up to 120 cars and 300 passengers. At each pier, a battery pack is installed to recharge the ferry when docked. It takes only ten minutes to charge up for the trip back, which is done during unloading and loading of the ship. The batteries are charged with hydro power, making the operation of the ferry 100% renewable and emission free. Its operation will annually cut down the use of one million litres of diesel and reduce 570 tons of carbon dioxide and 15 tons of NOx emissions in comparison to conventional ferries operating on the same route. The new vessel is a pilot project to test the viability of operating fully electrically-powered ferries in about 50 ferry routes within Norway and beyond.

The Zerocast 120 is a battery powered ferry which crosses the Sognefjord in Norway since the beginning of 2015

The Zerocast 120 is a battery powered ferry which crosses the Sognefjord in Norway since the beginning of 2015

 

Sources

Ship-technology.com
CleanTechnica

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Photo of the week: Google’s engines go green

Data centres are the engines of the internet. They are the places where the network of servers and fibre-optic cables are housed to provide the vast online services of Google. But they fret energy and until now this energy is mainly provided by nuclear and coal power. Around 35% of their data centres are powered by renewable sources, but Google aims for a 100% renewable operation in the future. Although the company didn’t give an end-date for this transition, they clearly want to compete with Apple, whose data centres are already 100% running on renewables since 2012 and is the company is now looking to improve the footprint of their production processes.

Google made a big move recently by buying an old coal-fired power plant in Alabama that will be turned it into a 100% renewably powered data centre. Patrick Gammons, a senior manager of Google’s Data Center Energy and Location Strategy, explained the decision on his blog. “Decades of investment shouldn’t go to waste just because a site has closed; we can repurpose existing electric and other infrastructure to make sure our data centers are reliably serving our users around the world.”

Google will turn this coal mine in a fully renewable powered data centre (photo: Google)

Google will turn this coal mine in a fully renewable powered data centre (photo: Google)

Sources

ClimateProgress
Apple
The Guardian

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Photo of the week: Solar eclipse challenges Germany’s grid

Seen as a bad omen by old cultures, the solar eclipse last Friday was enough reason to make some people worrying. Germany, highly reliable on solar energy generation, faced a serious challenge. The country has around 37gigawatts installed photovoltaic capacity -a typical nuclear reactor is 1gigawatt. In a timespan of 75 minutes, solar power output of 21.7 gigawatts dropped to a low point of 6.2 gigawatts. When the eclipse was over its apec, the output increased again with 15 gigawatts, according to TenneT (one of the four transmission net operators in Germany) this is triple the usual rate. This effect was enlarged because the eclipse started in the morning when insolation (amount of sun rays falling on earth’s surface) was not so high, but ended around 11:30 AM when insolation is much higher. The whole effect was amplified because of the bright weather that day. Thanks to careful preparations, the German grid didn’t experience any problems. They put alternative power sources including coal, gas, biogas, nuclear and hydroelectric energy pumped from storage in action to fill in the gap. Some big industrial facilities such as aluminium plants, which are very energy intensive, temporarily lowered their demand. The solar eclipse was a unique test which is relevant for all of us, since we’re going towards more sustainable energy generation which make us more vulnerable to changes in nature. But there’s nothing to worry about -the German engineers have shown we can handle it.

The solar eclipse on March 20th posed a serious challenge to the German electricity grid (graph: Opower)

The solar eclipse on March 20th posed a serious challenge to the German electricity grid (graph: Opower)

Sources

DW
GreentechMedia

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Facts and figures: solar power is booming

Despite the political insufficiency to address the climate challenges of our time – debating endlessly about whether climate change is engraved by human activity or not – solutions are here today and they’re working. The IPCC has calculated the global “carbon budget” we can spend until 2050. If we want to stay under the 2°C temperature rise, which is generally accepted as the tipping point to unleash feedback loops in our climate system, we can only burn fossil fuels for another 17 years at the current rate (see blue scenario on graph below). It’s obvious we need to shift to renewable solutions, now. Luckily there are more and more investors who seem to have noticed this. Get ready for some nice facts and figures about the solar photovoltaic power industry. Unless otherwise stated, all graphs are produced by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st century (REN21) and published in their global status report 2014.  (more…)

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