Solar Power Thread

[amor de cosmos]

BENTLEY SOLAR DEVELOPER PLANS $623 MILLION U.K. INVESTMENT
1 May 2013

May 1 (Bloomberg) — Lightsource Renewable Energy Ltd., the U.K. developer that installed a sun-power project on the roof of Bentley Motors Ltd., may invest as much as 400 million pounds ($623 million) this year in U.K. solar facilities.

Britain’s largest solar park developer said it expects to install as much as 300 megawatts worth of facilities in the year starting today, or about 40 projects, said Nick Boyle, chief executive officer of the London-based company.

“We’re working on about 140 megawatts of projects at the moment that will reach financial close before July,” he said in an interview in London. “We have a very large pipeline of self- developed projects and a large number of other sites that we’re in negotiations to buy off third parties.” Each project is about 5 to 15 megawatts in capacity and will take about nine months to build.

Britain aims to install as much as 22 gigawatts of solar energy by 2020 as part of a target to get 15 percent of its energy from renewables by the same year. The country offers predictable revenue streams for investors because of government subsidies and long-term power-purchase agreements that guarantee prices, Murphy said.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/bent...-k-investment/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: May 1, 2013
Solar-powered nanofilters pump in antibiotics to clean contaminated water

“Engineering Bacterial Efflux Pumps for Solar-Powered Bioremediation of Surface Waters”
NanoLetters

Using the same devious mechanism that enables some bacteria to shrug off powerful antibiotics, scientists have developed solar-powered nanofilters that remove antibiotics from the water in lakes and rivers twice as efficiently as the best existing technology. Their report appears in ACS’ journal NanoLetters.

David Wendell and Vikram Kapoor explain that antibiotics from toilets and other sources find their way into lakes and rivers, with traces appearing in 80 percent of waterways. Those antibiotics foster emergence of new antibiotic-resistant bacteria, while harming beneficial microbes in ways that can degrade aquatic environments and food chains. Filters containing activated carbon can remove antibiotics from effluent at municipal sewage treatment plants, before its release into waterways. But activated carbon is far from perfect. So the scientists looked for a better technology.

http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/cor...a-647f7ef80c11

Solar to Account for Almost All New Generation in California System in 2H 2013
“Are we getting a lumpy renewable energy portfolio?”
HERMAN K. TRABISH: APRIL 30, 2013

Almost all of the new generation capacity in the California transmission system operator’s queue for the second half of 2013 is solar -- 97 percent, to be exact.

There are 1,633 megawatts of new generation capacity in the 2H 2013 queue, according to the 2012 Annual Report on Market Issues and Performance from the California Independent System Operator (the ISO). Of that, 1,581 megawatts are new solar and 52 megawatts are biomass.

By the end of the first half of the year, the ISO will have added 3,391 megawatts of nameplate capacity, of which 2,296 megawatts will be natural gas, 565 megawatts will be wind and 530 megawatts will be solar.

However, what is in the ISO’s queue is not necessarily what will end up in the state’s energy mix, REC Solar Director of Governmental Affairs Ben Higgins pointed out.

But in this report, California ISO Manager of Monitoring and Reporting Keith Collins noted, “the ISO has done its best in determining which projects have a high probably of coming on-line instead of just taking generation in the queue as-is.”

This is likely a very good indication of the new generation the marketplace will build to replace the 2,200-megawatt deficit caused by the San Onofre nuclear facility outage and the mandated closures/retrofits of fossil fuel plants that over-consume the state’s water resources. And it is a strong indication of the kind of building that will be driven by the state’s 33 percent by 2020 Renewable Portfolio Standard.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...ar-and-biomass

How graphene and friends could harness the Sun’s energy
01 May 2013 Manchester University
Under embargo until 02 May 2013 18:00 GMT

Combining wonder material graphene with other stunning one-atom thick materials could create the next generation of solar cells and optoelectronic devices, scientists have revealed.

University of Manchester and National University of Singapore researchers have shown how building multi-layered heterostructures in a three-dimensional stack can produce an exciting physical phenomenon exploring new electronic devices.

The breakthrough, published in Science, could lead to electric energy that runs entire buildings generated by sunlight absorbed by its exposed walls; the energy can be used at will to change the transparency and reflectivity of fixtures and windows depending on environmental conditions, such as temperature and brightness.

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem...CultureCode=en