Renewable and alternative energies

The world's population consumes about 15 terawatts of power, a business worth some $6 trillion a year (1/10 of the world's economic output). Renewable and alternative energies (hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, waves, biomass and waste, biofuels) represent already some 17% of this production.

This web site aims at providing information about the current state of renewable and alternative energies and future prospects.


Hydro

By far the largest source of renewable energy, hydro-electric power produces about 15% of the world's electricity, compared with 3% for other renewables, with still lots of room for growth. New Energy Finance, a research firm, reckons that less than one-third of the world's potential capacity has been developed.

Thousands of data centers, filled with thousands of powerful computers, consume lots and lots of energy, rivaling aluminum smelters in the energy they consume. Often just as much power is needed for cooling them as for computing. Building them close to a dam solves both issues in an optimal way.

Advantages

Drawbacks


Biomass

Advantages

Drawbacks

Biomass research/innovations

Solazyme
Uses algal biotechnology to renewably produce clean fuels, chemicals, foods and health science products from agriculture and industrial biomass (glycerol, starches, sugars, cellulosics, switch grasses, wood waste).


Wind

World capacity of wind power is growing at 30% a year and will exceed 100 gigawatts in 2008 (about 1% of world-wide electricity use).

Modern wind turbines extract about 50% of the wind power, close to the theoretical (Betz) limit of 16/27 (59%).

Advantages

Drawbacks

Wind research/innovations

WhalePower
Increases blade efficiency with bumps on the leading edge (biomimicry inspired by humpback whales).
Ti'éole
Helps you to build a wind turbine yourself, for your own garden, with cheap material.
wind engine using boat sails
The sails moved around a fixed vertical axis. Free technology. In French.
boat sails prototype
Video in French of a prototype using boat sails that still works with very little wind.
Enercon
They have developed a "direct-drive" system with a generator that can operate at low rotational speeds and does not require a gearbox (gearboxes are exposed to lots of vibrations and movements inside the turbines). However, such generators are very heavy and tend to be more expensive.

Offshore wind turbines

Clipper Windpower
They are building a 7.5 MW offshore prototype (as of December 2008).


Solar

Strong research in solar cells is producing many interesting projects to increase power output.

Advantages

Drawbacks

Solar research/innovations

Innovative financing schemes
Article about 2 utilities that pay all of the cost of installing solar panels on your rooftop. In addition you get a share of the revenues generated (electricity is sold to the grid by the utilities, with reduced line loss and less paper work for them than the construction of a new plant).
Kender solar
An attempt to harness the solar heat stored in the air as much as direct solar light. Sponsors this site.
Hydrosol-2
New method for solar-heated two-step water-splitting thermochemical processes operating at temperatures below 1500 K, sponsored by DLR (the German Space Agency)
Nicole Kuepper
Inventor of cheap low-temperature solar cell manufacturing without costly equipment.
GreenField Solar
Builds high intensity solar cells and concentrators of solar light and heat.
New solar cell material
Comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum and titanium, it fluoresces and phosphoresces, using the visible spectrum of light energy.
3-Dimensional Nanotube Solar Cell for Visible and UV Light
William Yuan has designed a 3D solar cell that works for visible and UV light, which makes it highly more efficient and powerful.

Thin Film

Thin films of solar cells are roughly half as efficient (meaning that a panel must be twice as big to generate the same amount of power) as standard crystalline solar panels, but a third cheaper (watt for watt) and way more versatile - they can be mounted on a variety of materials including flexible plastics and fabrics.
First Solar
The biggest force in the thin film industry. It makes its cells from a chemical called cadmium telluride.
Nanosolar
They believe that a combination of copper, indium, gallium and selenium known as CIGS will prove cheaper to produce on a mass scale than cadmium telluride-based thin films.

Space Solar Power (SSP)

Around the clock, 1.3 gW of solar energy pour through every square kilometer of space around the Earth. Space Solar Power is an attempt to catch this energy and beam it to isolated places or vehicles.
Space Island Group
Plans to build large SSP systems piggy-backed onto empty fuel tanks converted into living quarters.
Solarbird
Mitsubishi Electric bets on squadrons of small satellites orbiting in formation.

Solar Associations

Swissolar
Swiss association of solar energy professionals.


Experimental

Experimentations at the edge of science. Might work. Might not.
BlackLight Power
An attempt to release latent energy from the hydrogen atom.
Cavitation heaters
Mechanical energy applied to weirdly shaped rotors with holes that would create over-unity heating (more energy produced than was put in the system).
Orbo
Based upon time variant magnetic interactions (magnetic interactions whose efficiency varies as a function of transaction timeframes). They attempt to generate energy from this variation.



References:

Magazines about renewable and alternative energies:


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