News 4/14/11

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German Firms Move Toward Postnuclear Economy
By JUDY DEMPSEY
Published: April 14, 2011

HANOVER, Germany — Josef Mehrer, a family-owned German company
established more than 120 years ago, has survived by adapting with the
times. Early on, it made sewing machines, then machines for cleaning
beer vats, then it switched to compressors in the 1950s.
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In the early 1990s, the company placed a bet on the renewable energy
sector and started to make compressors for the emerging biogas
industry. Jörg-Peter Mehrer, the fifth generation to run the business,
says he believes he made the right move — especially after Chancellor
Angela Merkel announced last month a safety review of Germany’s
nuclear industry in light of the disaster in Japan.

“This is a market that keeps expanding,” Mr. Mehrer said. “The
government’s decision is very positive.”

Mehrer, which was exhibiting its products at the Hanover International
Trade Fair last week, was just one of many companies, large and small,
that were seeking an opportunity in what may turn out to be a
significant reordering of energy sources in Germany, Europe’s largest
economy.

The show highlighted the different paths European countries are taking
toward energy security. While some of Germany’s neighbors, like
nuclear-dependent France, home to the giant contractor Areva,
criticize Mrs. Merkel for what they call an exaggerated, knee-jerk
reaction, Germans seem determined to move toward a postnuclear economy
— even though they acknowledge the switch will be expensive.

Many companies at the exhibition said that they had begun to position
themselves in the market more than a decade ago, even before the
former left-leaning government passed a law in 2002 to close all of
Germany’s nuclear plants by 2022.

The conservative Mrs. Merkel, pushed by her pro-business coalition
partner, the Free Democratic Party, reversed that decision last year
by agreeing to keep the nuclear plants operating well into the 2030s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/global/14energy.html?src=busln



IBM cools solar cells for water and power
Duncan Graham-Rowe, New Scientist
Thursday 14 April 2011 16:32

Pumping water through micro-channels on the surface of a solar panel
not only makes it more efficient but can also make seawater drinkable.

Concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) cells use lenses to focus large areas
of solar energy onto a relatively small section of photovoltaic
material, so it is not surprising that they can reach temperatures of
120 °C. These high temperatures make the cells less efficient,
reducing the amount of electricity they can produce.

That is why keeping them cool is so important, says Bruno Michel, head
of advanced thermal packaging at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in
Switzerland. So with this in mind IBM has developed the "ultra-high
concentrated PV", a hybrid solar panel that incorporates technology
originally developed to help cool computer chips. The idea is to use
water-filled microchannels to cool the cell - the hot water would then
be used in desalination.
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2011/04/14/50899/ibm-cools-solar-cells-for-water-and-power.htm



OE Awards $1.2B Loan Guarantee to NRG, SunPower Solar Plant
By Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech
Tue Apr 12, 2011 6:32pm EDT

DOE Chief Steven Chu announces a $1.2B loan guarantee for a solar farm
from SunPower and NRG Energy.

At a packed room at the solar factory of solar company SunPower and
electronics maker Flextronics on Tuesday afternoon, Department of
Energy Chief Steven Chu announced that the DOE has awarded a
conditional commitment for a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to a solar
farm that will be built by SunPower and owned by power company NRG
Energy. (Both NRG Energy CEO David Crane, and the DOE’s Loan Chief
Jonathan Silver will be speaking at our Green:Net event next week).

Loan guarantees essentially serve as a promise by the government to
make good on a loan if the company can’t, and typically enable better
interest rates and lower costs than would otherwise be available to a
company for project financing. U.S. government loan guarantees can
also mean the difference between getting a large clean power project
like this funded in a difficult financing environment, and having one
of these farms stall at the commercialization phase.

That award, to NRG Energy’s so-called California Valley Solar Ranch
farm, is on the larger side of the DOE loan guarantees offered to
date. BrightSource’s solar thermal farm was awarded a $1.6 billion
guarantee, and the DOE awarded a $1.45 billion loan guarantee that
will help Abengoa Solar build a solar thermal plant in Arizona. In
comparison to BrightSource and Abengoa’s solar thermal plants, the
SunPower farm will use solar photovoltaic panels.

NRG Energy bought the solar farm in San Luis Obispo County in late-
November 2010. The farm is supposed to go under construction in the
second half of 2011, and start delivering power by the end of 2011,
with final completion by 2013. Utility Pacific Gas and Electric
already has already signed a 25-year agreement to buy the electricity
from the power plant.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/12/idUS213265447120110412



Google Invests Massive $168M in BrightSource Solar Project
By Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech
Mon Apr 11, 2011 4:56pm EDT

The solar investments from Google just keep on comin’, and this time,
it’s a biggie. On Monday afternoon, the search giant announced its
largest investment in renewable energy to date: $168 million into one
of the first utility-scale solar projects being built by startup
BrightSource Energy in California’s Mojave Desert.

Even for the clean power fans at Google, the size of the funding is
impressive. To date, Google’s investments in solar and wind farms have
been considerably smaller, including announcing last week that it
would put €3.5 million ($5 million USD) into a solar photovoltaic farm
in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany, which is near Berlin. In May
2010, Google announced it planned to invest $38.8 million into 169.5
megawatts worth of wind projects developed by NextEra Energy Resources
in North Dakota. And Google has made a variety of smaller equity
investments into greentech startups over the past few years.

The investment in BrightSource announced Monday comes from Google
corporate. In contrast, Google actually funded BrightSource with $10
million several years ago via its philanthropic arm Google.org, and
Google also makes equity investments through Google Ventures.

Google says with the BrightSource deal, its investments in clean power
have now hit $250 million. Google launched its “RE<C” program back in
2007, which is geek speak for Google’s renewable energy cheaper than
coal project. The goal is to spend “tens of millions of dollars on
R&D,” and ultimately produce a “gigawatt of renewable energy
capacity,” over several years.

BrightSource’s Ivanpah farm in the Mojave is a high-profile, first-of-
its-kind, solar project, which will benefit from Google’s spotlight
and support. BrightSource builds solar thermal technology — which uses
concentrating lenses to tap into the sun’s heat — and the Ivanpah
plant will produce 392 MW of solar power when up and running in 2013.
It began construction last October, after finally getting approved by
the California Energy Commission last year. About two-thirds of the
power from the project will go to Pacific Gas and Electric, while the
rest will go to Southern California Edison.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/11/idUS178161355620110411