Cleantech Update

CHP Industry and Interested Stakeholders: At the upcoming Clean Energy Roadmap Workshop, the GC RAC seeks input from the CHP, waste heat recovery, and district energy industries and key stakeholders regarding market development strategies and RAC service offerings in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. A vital part of the workshop preparation is a survey of the CHP industry and interested stakeholders. Your input is needed now to help develop a successful workshop. Whether or not you plan to attend, please TAKE THE CH P SURVEY NOW Please forward the survey link to anyone you know that might have an interest in taking part. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=P59WnTuFDAM1jHWu3JZn1A_3d_3d If you are interested in attending the Workshop, come prepared to roll up your sleeves and share your ideas to help grow the CHP market in the Gulf Coast region. This event will be a major opportunity for interested stakeholders to provide strategic input to the GC RAC regarding its education and...

In the late 1970s, John Gofman, co-inventor of plutonium, had second thoughts about his work with nuclear power over the years. He authored a book entitled Irrevy, in which he argued that the use of nuclear power for electrical production amounted to a bad tradeoff of inefficient and expensive power generation for an insoluble toxic waste problem and generations upon generations of unknown cancers and genetic defects. While the portion of domestic electricity currently produced by nuclear energy is marginal, at that time there were quite a few more nuclear power plants and nuclear energy production. A perfect storm of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl together with movies such as The China Syndrome gave impetus to an anti-nuclear movement, of which, Gofman was a pre-eminent spokesman, which changed all of that. Now, as the nation faces an energy crisis, not just of gas lines, but of all energy production, the idea of re-introducing nuclear energy with a vengeance has emerged. During the ...

SB412 Testimony Submitted to the (California) Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce by Jonah Crawford, CEO, MicroGrid Systems Inc . on Monday, June 29, 2009 Honorable Members, The public analysis prepared for the June 29th Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce states: “When results of this study are assessed with the quantity of demanded installed capacity, one could conclude that even moderate subsidies and policy incentives could induce a significant over-investment in CHP or to a point where the marginal benefits significantly decrease.” However the report fails to qualify this adjective ‘marginal’. With or without fossil fuels when a technology or grouping of technologies such as CHP reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% there is nothing marginal about them. The report goes on to state: “The ARB's target of 4,000 MW of CHP would equate to about 6.7% of total system power, which far exceeds existing solar (368 MW or 0.6%).” and further that: “The utilities have b...

I found this five year old post that proclaims they time for cogeneration has come. It is more true today than ever. -Editor The Future of Small Scale Distributed Generation Feb 27, 2004 12:00 PM, By George Zirnhelt, P.E., Power Systems Research, Inc. Even though the United States’ electric utility system delivers only 20% to 30% of potential energy to end-users, it’s still the most cost-effective means of generation available today. Distributed generation (DG) has proven to be more efficient, but its cost has been prohibitive to this point. Its supporters have been pushing to capture more of the power market for years, but until it can compete on both levels, it will have trouble. In certain situations, however, economics, reliability, and/or quality have created a circumstance where it actually makes sense for the electric power user to generate his own power. Large-scale industrial users—especially those who can also use the by-product heat—can justify the investment on economic ter...

Capstone Receives Order for C200 Microturbines for China Southern Power Grid Pilot Project Capstone Turbine Corporation - 05.26.2009 Capstone Turbine Corporation (www.microturbine.com) (Nasdaq:CPST), the world's leading clean technology manufacturer of microturbine energy systems, today announced that it has received an order for three C200 microturbine systems for China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd. ("CSG"). CSG was established on December 29th, 2002 as a result of the power sector deregulatory reform in China. CSG is one of two state-owned power grid companies in China. CSG invests in, constructs and operates the transmission and distribution networks in Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and Hainan provinces and regions. The low-emission, highly efficient, natural-gas powered turbines will be installed in a 330,000-square-foot CSG dispatch building and serve as a pilot project to show the benefits of microturbines in a combined cooling heat and power ("CCHP"...