Tag Archives: grid
Europe 2012: $2.35B Invested in Smart Grid
The Joint Research Centre (JRC), a Directorate-General of the European Commission that provides independent scientific and technical advice to the European Commission to support a wide range of EU policies has published an update of the 2011 report “Smart Grid projects in Europe: lessons learned and current developments,” which is the most comprehensive inventory of [...]
Microgrids: Ready to Launch
Whenever I come across an article like this on microgrids, i.e., “islands” of distributed energy generation, storage, and consumption that are not connected to a power utility, I look at the numbers. If I were a utility exec, how scared would I be about the incursion of microgrids into my turf? This article projects that [...]
In Focus: Connecting the Americas 2022
By 2022, the Obama administration hopes to finish off an electrical grid that will connect all of the Americas, from northern Canada down through the Caribbean and ending at the southern tip of South America. The idea behind ”Connecting the Americas 2022″ is to make electricity universally available – and is part of the US State Department’s broader effort, the Energy and Climate Partnership [...]
The European Supergrid: Game Changer for Renewables?
Europe’s energy infrastructure urgently needs updating. In this interview published in the latest edition of EWEA’s Wind Directions magazine, Ana Aguado, CEO of Friends of the Supergrid, explores how this can be done. What is the supergrid and why do we need it? We define the supergrid as “a pan-European transmission network facilitating the integration [...]
The U.S Power Grid: Vulnerable to Everything?
As Washington hunts ill-defined al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East and Africa, and concerns itself with Iran’s eventual nuclear potential, it has a much more pressing problem at home: Its energy grid is vulnerable to anyone with basic weapons and know-how. Forget about cyber warfare and highly organized terrorist attacks, a lack of basic physical [...]
California’s Oldest Winery Goes Solar
The Charles Krug Winery, California’s oldest, has joined a growing number of California wineries turning to the sun for more than just growing grapes. The winery is becoming the latest to add photovoltaics to reduce its grid-supplied electric demand. It’s also taking advantage of the installation to reduce its energy use. The Napa Valley winery [...]
Infographic: Suntech Celebrates 7 GW of Solar Panels Shipped
Recently, Suntech celebrated another first in the industry – a total of 7 gigawatts of panels shipped to more than 1,000 customers in more than 80 countries. That’s a lot of green power. Altogether, deployed Suntech panels generate about 9 terawatt hours of clean electricity per year. What does that look like? Check out this [...]
The Princeton Satellite Systems’ SunStation EV Charging Station
Solar EV charging stations are hardly new – as regular readers of SolarChargedDriving.Com surely know. But every now and then something comparatively new comes along in the world of solar EV charging. Now is one of those times, at least according to Princeton Satellite Systems, which claims it will soon be producing “the first 100 [...]
Nano Coating Could Make Solar Panels Self-Cleaning
Seamus “Shay” Curran, director of the University of Houston’s Institute for NanoEnergy, doesn’t like cleaning windows. “My wife gets after me about it,” he said. A new hydrophobic nano coating he and his team of researchers at UH have developed holds the promise of self-cleaning windows. Of course, that’s just a pleasant byproduct. Curran developed [...]