Alstom Renewable Power, the division of Alstom involved in the manufacture and development of renewable power generation equipment has announced plans to establish a Global Technology Center (GTC) in Tianjin, China. This will be part of the EUR 100 million investment plan, announced in late 2010, for upgrading Tianjin's hydro industrial facility, the company's largest in the world.
China Ming Yang Wind Power Group has opened a research and development center in the US, on the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University. The focus area of research of the new center will be the offshore wind sector, with the aim to enhance offshore wind turbine energy output and further reduce the cost of electricity generated this way.
The Centre for Wind Energy Technology, located in Chennai, India, has published an onshore wind energy map of India, detailing the regions with the most abundant wind resources. The map is the result of measurements and data collection at various locations throughout India at 50 meter heights above ground, with validation, as well as estimations for 80 meters above ground, without validation. The findings show potential for almost 103 GW of wind capacity at 80 meters above ground, with the northern most parts of the country, at the slopes of the Himalayas, showing the largest potential by far.
AWS Truepower has been chosen as one of the partners to be involved in the Carolinas Offshore Wind Integration Case Study (COWICS), funded by the US Department of Interior. The company's partners on this project are Duke Energy, ABB and the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), as well as the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC). The purpose of
the study is to assess the benefits and challenges associated with the development of offshore wind capacity near the coasts of North and South Carolina. The US DoI will regard the results of this study as critical for making policy and commercial descisions having to do with offshore wind development.
Vattenfall will be taking part in an innovative project to store wind energy as hydrogen gas, which can later be used to generate electricity and heat. The new hybrid power plant, the core of the project, is located north of Berlin, Germany, and will be the first such facility in Europe.
Google is downsizing its external operations, as the company's CEO Larray Page is steering the company back to its core business. Among the projects getting shut down or abandoned is RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal), a research program initiated by the company in order to find ways to reduce the cost of renewable energy and make it cheaper than coal. The research efforts were mostly concentrated on solar power technology.
E.ON is looking into options for storing excess wind energy in other of forms of potential energy. One of the options is to convert the produced electrical energy into hydrogen, which can then be stored in Germany's gas grid. E.ON is making a EUR 5 million investment in such a pilot plant, and more research in this new field of energy storage.
The US Department of Energy announced a USD 60 million investment, as part of its SunShot Initiative, into innovative concentrated solar power technology development. The aim is to reduce the cost of solar energy by 75%, and make it competitive with other sources of energy by the end of this decade.
Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) said the institute will invest GBP 25 million in an offshore wind floating system demonstration project, with the goal of opening up new areas near the coast of the UK for offshore wind development. It is hoped these new areas will contribute to reducing the cost of offshore wind energy further.
Ocean Power Technologies will work with a consortium of European companies and institutions on advancing its PowerBuoy wave energy conversion system. The PowerBuoy is to be enhanced with the addition of a new wave prediction technology, which will allow the system to adjust its performance with the oncoming waves.
