1. Skimming niches for greener power - by Doug Mohney

    Views and Opinions on Green IT (Oct 6 2010)

    1. Skimming niches for greener power - by Doug Mohney

      In the quest for more and better (i.e greener) power, a number of companies are working different angles on the basics of wind and co-generation.

      Out in Connecticut, Optiwind (www.optiwind.com) has a mid-sized “production scale” wind turbine under test, reports CNET news. The 200 foot tower – smaller than utility-scale turbines of 200 to 300 feet tall with 100 foot blades – uses cylinders to speed up the wind before it goes through fans connected to a direct drive generator. The cylinders optimize air flow, quiet the noise as compared to open blades and – big winner here – don’t cause radar headaches as do big spinning blades (A development that might not make everyone happy; radar manufacturers are pumped at the prospects of providing upgraded gear to airfields next to wind farms to mitigate interference).

      Meanwhile, General Electric (yes, THAT GE) picked up Calnetix Power Systems last week, a company that uses waste heat from engines, biomass boilers, and gas turbines to produce electricity.  Today, most of activity in the small-scale waste heat recovery sector is in Europe. Since GE is going to integrate the business into its Austria-based Jenbacher gas engine business, there’s plenty of opportunity for squeezing more power out of anything using hot gases to generate power – and maybe even some side business with the geothermal crowd.

      GE’s power generation equipment business is booming in “higher-flying” countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, and India; the company just announced it is going to supply $700 million in equipment and Services for a new gas-fired plant in Saudi Arabia in order to meet growing energy needs for the country. 

      Finally, you’ve got Canada bragging about the world’s largest solar panel (PV) farm in Ontario.  The Sarnia Solar project has 80 MW on line and is expected to generate enough electricity each year to power more than 12,000 homes.  Truth be told, Canada isn’t exactly well-known for its year-round sunshine, but the government is bragging about how it is replacing “dirty, smog producing” coal plans with renewable energy from solar and wind power.  Maybe next week Greenpeace will send them a pat on the back rather than flogging Facebook.  

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    On 10/15/10 jakobneu said:
    "Good that Canada is leading the field with renewable power. Personally, my site http://www.lookrichforless.com is hosted at a webhost that says they get all their electricity from wind energy. Not sure if that is true or not but the extra cost of electricity is quite small. Another thing to consider is that a desktop CPU today uses 80 watt of power. Compare that with the 2-3 watt that an atom CPU uses. Yes, an atom cpu has 4 less power thna a desktop cpu but that is still only 8 watt instead of 80 watt - 10 times less. And for those saved 70 watt you save an additional 2 time amount in aircondition =210 watt saved per computer. if you then have 30.000 computers in one datacenter x 210 watt - then that is quite a lot to save."

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