Puerto Rico will soon be getting a 4.5 MW solar PV park, featuring 20,000 solar panels, in the Cerillos area of the city of Ponce. The solar power plant is being developed by Windmar Renewable Energy, a state owned renewable energy development company. Once completed, the solar power plant will be the largest of its kind in Latin America. Completion is scheduled for late 2010.
RenewableUK has published the final draft of the document dealing with standards for training and safety regulations for working at large heights involved in the offshore wind energy industry. The document has been developed in collaboration with key industry representatives such as training providers, original equipment manufacturers, construction and supply partners, developers, and other stakeholders in the business. The document gives an outline of the basic safety training and knowledge required by RenewableUK for everyone involved in activities around offshore wind turbine installations.
Working at Height & Rescue Training Wind Turbines, as the document is called, is now available at the RenewableUK site. It doesn't contain hundreds of standards, but rather focuses on key areas and gives guidelines that were agreed upon to be reasonable. RenewableUK recommends training for all workers to be involved in offshore wind construction, through a RenewableUK approved training provider. Individuals that complete the training courses will be issued certificates, and recorded as RenewableUK approved. The certificate will be valid for two years, from the date of training completion.
Of course, none of this is official yet, since the document has to be ratified by RenewableUK's Health and Safety Strategy Group.
[source: RenewableUK, via: New Energy Focus]
The American Wing Energy Association (AwEA) announced the formation of the Offshore Wind Development Coallition (OffshoreWindDC), which represents a group of founding associations, institutions, and companies – AWEA, Apex Wind, Cape Wind, Deepwater Wind, Fishermen’s Energy, NRG Bluewater Wind, OffshoreMW, and Seawind Renewable. The new coallition's headquarters will be in Washington DC. The main focus of the organization will be advocacy and promotion of wind energy.
OffshoreWindDC will expand ongoing activities done by AWEA, which is currently working on securing long-term tax policy for offshore wind energy projects, and on shortening the permitting timeline for projects.
[source: AWEA]
Spain is now officially ahead of the US, previously numero uno in terms of installed solar power capacity with 422 MW. Spain now has 432 MW of solar capacity, following the commissioning of La Florida solar power plant with 50 MW of installed capacity. The power plant uses parabolic trough technology. The plant is located in the western part of Spain, at Alvarado, Badajoz.
Spain is the leader in solar power generation technology, with some provinces having as much as 70% of their power generation from renewables sources, namely solar, such as the norther Navarra region.
Even though this represents a nice achievement, it may be significant to say that the total solar power output of Spain or the US, as the largest solar power generators, is still at the level of a single average nuclear power plant. We need more, and luckily more solar power is coming in the future.
[source: Guardian]
Siemens will acquire a 49% stake in A2SEA, the company specialized in the construction of offshore wind farms. The main shareholder in the company will continue to be DONG Energy. Siemens wants to see A2SEA go further and advance in the industrialization of offshore wind power.
A2SEA will probably build optimized vessels to server the offshore wind industry. Optimization of these ships along with the optimization of processes will result in higher efficiency, shorter installation periods and more value for the customers.
Closing of the acquisition agreement is expected in Q4 2010, with EUR 115 million as the amount involved in this deal, payable in two yearly installments.
[source: Siemens]
Solar Millenium's subsidiary Milenio Solar has been awarded the right to perform a fesibility study in El Salvador. The study is to determine whether a parabolic trough solar power plant can be developed in cooperation with Inversiones Energéticas (in majority ownership by Salvadoran public utility Comisión Ejecutiva Hidroeléctrica del Río Lempa).
The scope of the study will be covering, among other things, a proposal for a solar thermal power plant configuration, as well give a recommendation for a power off-take concept and layout a public-private investment infrastructure. Additionally, Milenio Solar will set up and maintain metorological stations for acquiring weather and insolation data at three considered sites in El Salvador.
Apart from being a great opportunity for the Spanish company to enter the Latin American markt for solar power, the project represents a significant step forward in the implementation of El Salvador's renewable energy strategy whereby the country is broadening its energy portfolio to include more renewable energy sources and lessen its dependency on energy import and also to reduce the country's carbon footprint. El Salvador has mainly seen hydropower development as far RE technologies are concerned, although there had been some activities involving wind energy, and more recently solar energy.
[source: Solar Millenium]
Vestas received an order for 50 MW of wind turbines from a Chinese customer. The wind turbines are destined for the Heilongjiang province in China. Under the terms of the deal, Vestas is to supply the units, but also provide service and maintenance for two years, along with VestasOnline Business SCADA. Delivery of the wind turbines is to happen in Q3 2010. No further details about the deal were disclosed.
Vestas has been present in the Chinese wind energy market for about twenty years, and has an accumulated installed capacity of about 2000 MW in China.
[source: Vestas]
This has been a very active year for the renewable energy sector. Many changes and developments have spawned great hope for further progress and global expansion of the renewable energy industry as one of the main sources of clean energy and ecnomic development in the future. Even though Cop15, one of the main events of the year, has resulted in moderate progress, we hope 2010 will bring more exciting changes, and a major turn towards renewable energy as a goal for all nations.
Several renewable energy technologies have shown great progress, and are on their way to becoming a major part of the renewable energy industry mix. These are primarily geothermal energy and marine energy. Several start-up companies from these sectors have emerged as promising future players, and we've already seen successful demonstrations of these technologies around the world, with investors slowly but steadily showing more interest in these technologies.
The already established renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and hydropower, have also seen significant developments. The wind sector has shown progress in technology, with innovative designs and a major push towards bigger wind turbines, capable of generating 6+ MW of power at peak generation times. Even bigger machines have been announced, reaching 10 MW of capacity. Solar energy has had tremendous success in improving conversion efficiencies for photovoltaic solar power, reducing the cost of PV solar significantly, as well as improvements in solar thermal energy conversion, with new heat storage technology, and better efficiencies in converting sunlight into heat. Even more importantly, solar energy has become a competitive alternative to traditional energy sources.
All these developments, along with renewable energy plan commitments by many countries around the world, lead to a very promising new year. Even if these plans are deemed unrealistic by sceptics, and are prone to changes, the big picture sill remains – renewable energy is on its way to become a major source of energy in 2010, and beyond.
Together with the industry, we at Renewbl.com have also had an exciting year. We've put in great efforts and long hours on building a website that is useful and informative to our readers. We have experienced growth, and would like to use this opportunity to thank everyone who has visited our site over the past year. In the new year, we are planning to introduce more interesting content sections on the site, but we won't stop there – there are plans for further developments which we hope will be interesting.
We hope Renewbl.com will remain a useful source of information for you in 2010.
All the best in the new year!
Artists concept of the USP. (Image: OPT)
Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) has successfully completed trials of its Underwater Substation Pod (USP), according to the company's announcement. The USP has been developed by OPT to facilitate the collection, networking and transforming of power and data generated by up to ten of its PowerBuoys for transmitting to a share-based electricity grid by one subsea cable. Having been built as an open platform the USP can provide plug-and-play connectivity for any offshore energy device connected to it.
The trials included pressure testing, running electric power to and from the system, and verifying data communication abilities. OPT claims the USP to be a unique product on the market for offshore applications, and creates a new revenue stream for the company from sales to third party client companies engaged in marine power development and other offshore projects.
All offshore energy generation technologies require that the low voltage generated power be converted to medium or high voltage before cable transport towards the shore. Additionally, numerous devices offshore need to be networked at the location in order to be able to export generated power through a single power cable to the shore. OPT has analyzed these requirements and created USP as an answer to these performance demands.
