By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2007-11-22 08:30
And is already here in parts of California
The role of solar power is still negligible in the world’s overall energy system. It accounts for a mere 0.3 per cent of the energy production in Germany and even less in the rest of the world. According to industry leaders, energy producers are waiting for price parity with fossil fuels before making the necessarily massive investments. They simply cannot rely on politically fickle subsidies in their long term planning.
Until recently, this so-called grid parity still seemed very far away. Solar electricity was calculated to be at least five times as expensive as fossil fuels. Today however, new reports claim that in the sunny parts of the United States, Japan, and southern Europe, parity with fossil fuels could very well be reached by 2012. Even more, in certain parts of the State of California, grid parity is already reality.
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By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Sun, 2007-09-09 00:00
Low-cost handheld instruments performing a large variety of electrical measurements are recently appeared on the market. Their diffusion is mainly due to the availability of integrated circuits that carry out many measurement functions, thus simplifying the instrument implementation and reducing the costs. In this paper, the accuracy performances of an integrated circuit featuring rms and power measurements are evaluated under both sinusoidal and non-sinusoidal conditions. The implemented measurement bench and the obtained results are presented.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Mon, 2007-07-23 16:56
In 2001, EPRI estimated that poor power quality costs the US economy between $119 and 188 B annually.
A new survey by Leonardo ENERGY now concludes very similar figures for Europe. The study is based on the results of 62 completed PQ surveys carried out in eight European countries. Its extensive results make it possible to estimate overall PQ costs in Europe, and also to analyse many different aspects of PQ like perception of PQ problems, PQ problems versus causes, affected equipment, solutions.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Wed, 2007-05-23 07:30
Economic, energy and environmental benefits investigated
The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted a study to assess the effect of deploying Concentrating Solar Power Plants (CSP) in California. It investigated the economic return, the impact on the energy supply, as well as the environmental benefits. The final paper of the study has been published on TroughNet.
The NREL chose a 100 MW parabolic trough plant with six hours of storage as the representative CSP plant to focus the results of the study. Cumulative deployment scenarios of 2,100 MW and 4,000 MW between 2008 and 2020 were assumed. California has certainly enough potential CSP sites to realise such scenarios.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2007-03-08 08:30
A preliminary report
In November 2006, the Commission Energy 2030 submitted a preliminary report describing the energy challenges that will be facing Belgium by 2030. The goal of the commission was to make a scientific analysis of Belgium’s options with regard to energy policy, taking into account appropriate economic, social, and environmental aspects. The commission worked under the authority of the Federal Minister of Energy Marc Verwilghen.
The report gives a detailed description of nine different scenarios, modelled with PRIMES.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Wed, 2006-12-06 08:30
A meltdown threatens by 2010
Data centres have reached a crossroad in terms of energy consumption. Up to now, the primary concern of data centres was to satisfy unrelenting IT demands by increasing processing power. Servers with higher density are being installed, taking less space while offering an increased transaction power. But those servers also consume more electrical power.
According to the Power and Cooling Survey 2006, a report by the Data Centre Practice at analyst BroadGroup, the rising energy costs will jeopardise the operational viability of the UK data centres by 2010. The report expects the energy cost of the average UK data centre to double between 2006 and 2010.
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By Sergio Ferreira / Published on Thu, 2006-11-23 17:43
The Home Energy Saver is designed to help consumers identify the best ways to save energy in their homes, and find the resources to make the savings happen. The Home Energy Saver was the first Internet-based tool for calculating energy use in residential buildings. The Home Energy Saver was the first Internet-based tool for calculating energy use in residential buildings. The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as part of the national ENERGY STAR Program for improving energy efficiency in homes, with previous support from the U.S.
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