Results: Calendar of Events
September 28, 2010
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL of the New York Times: TOCCO DA CASAURIA, Italy — The towering white wind turbines that rise ramrod straight from gnarled ancient olive groves here speak to something extraordinary happening across Italy. Faced with sky-high electricity rates, small communities across a country known more for garbage than environmental citizenship are finding economic salvation in making renewable energy. More than 800 Italian communities now make more energy than they use because of the recent addition of renewable energy plants, according to a survey this year by the Italian environmental group Legambiente. Read more
October 13, 2010
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Our Oct. 13 Forum will feature Austin Johnson, who will speak about his recent trip touring renewable energy facilities in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the UK. Throughout the presentation, Austin will discuss and show pictures of the most intriguing energy systems and sustainable ways of living that he experienced while traveling. Austin will also talk about his time driving the hydrogen highway in Norway – which features a line of hydrogen filling stations all creating hydrogen in different ways – and the new Statkraft Osmotic Power Plant (also in Norway) the sole facility in the world where electricity is being made by exploiting a difference in pressure between fresh and salt water. Austin will also delve into his tours of biogas facilities that produce methane insuring a sustainable mass transit future in Sweden, as well as Swedish lead BioDME research which produces diesel fuel from wood. More information here
Austin is a fifth generation Alaskan who has been interested in renewable energy ever since he took a class on the subject at the Atheneum School in Anchorage. Instead of attending college immediately after high school, he decided to travel and learn about Northern Europe’s huge lead – relative to America – in renewable energy technologies. In addition to his travels, he has been working on developing a prototype for an in-stream hydrokinetic device that would generate power from the flowing river current.
More information at 929-7770 or s.nowers@REalaska.org.
September 27, 2010
From Alaska Dispatch: According to the Associated Press (via the Kodiak Daily Mirror), Ocean Renewable Power Co. (which is working on installing a tidal turbine in Cook Inlet) has announced that the proprietary, 60-kilowatt, underwater power turbine that it installed off the coast of Maine is a success and will be connected to the power grid by 2011. The turbine in operation now (so far the largest in U.S. operation) has met or exceeded testing specifications, but is just a beta model; the company plans to refine its design and install a larger, 150-kilowatt turbine by the end of next year. Eventually, the company wants to install an array of the units that could produce as much as 100 megawatts. Read more
Incidentally, the most powerful tidal power generator ever built was unveiled in Scotland this month. The AK-1000, which has a different design than the Maine turbines, is expected to produce 1 megawatt of electricity when it’s installed between Orkney and Scotland’s mainland. Read more about it from Electronics Weekly, here.
September 26, 2010
By Christopher Eshleman of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner: A Fairbanks developer said Tuesday he hopes he can build a 25-megawatt wind farm near Delta Junction despite limited avenues for public aid. Mike Craft said his firm, Alaska Environmental Power, is working with Golden Valley Electric Association to study how to best feed wind power into Interior Alaska’s transmission grid. The work parallels planning by Golden Valley for a separate wind farm near Healy. Craft told a chamber of commerce audience Tuesday he hopes the integration studies will lead to power-sale agreements between his firm and the utility. He said Golden Valley previously agreed to a smaller, pilot sale agreement following construction of two smaller turbines at the Delta site.
“(It) made it possible for us to come on line with these two turbines. That helped us a lot,” Craft said. He said the turbines, the largest built with state aid, have produced 134,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Craft, a builder and residential developer, started looking to enter the wind power business roughly three years ago. He approached public officials last winter for help with his project and received lukewarm responses but said Tuesday he chose to continue and hopes to install 16 GE turbines near Delta. Read more
September 23, 2010
REAP note: REAP member Kodiak Electric Association has been getting quite a lot of press about the three GE wind turbines they installed on Pillar Mountain last July and deservedly so. The wind project is a true success story for Alaska where we pay some of the highest energy prices in the country and where our dependence on fossil fuels like diesel leaves us vulnerable because of our lack of control over the price of those fuels. The total cost of the Kodiak project was $21.4 million. In the first year, the utility saved more than $2.3 million in avoided fuel costs. That translates to a payback of just under 10 years, and potentially a lot quicker as the cost of diesel inevitably rises. In addition, the utility is much less reliant on diesel so officials don’t have to worry as much about future price spikes in the cost of diesel.
SCHENECTADY, N.Y., Sep 23, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) – Wind turbines supplied by GE are helping the city of Kodiak, on Kodiak Island off the southern coast of Alaska, reduce its use of diesel fuel and lower its energy costs while supporting the local utility’s vision to generate most of its power from renewable sources. The three GE 1.5-megawatt (MW) wind turbines were installed in 2009 by the Kodiak Electric Association (KEA), Kodiak Island’s electric utility, as a part of the Pillar Mountain Wind Project.
After a year of successful operation, GE’s wind turbines have enabled KEA to avoid the use of 930,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Read more
September 23, 2010
London, England (CNN) — The world’s largest offshore wind farm opened Thursday off the British coast, with 100 wind turbines capable of supplying enough electricity for 200,000 homes a year. The farm, off the coast of Kent in southern England, is part of a major renewable energy initiative spearheaded by the previous British government. Swedish energy company Vattenfall will operate the farm after having invested around 880 million pounds ($1.38 billion).
British waters are an attractive place for wind farm operators because they are so windy. As an example, an offshore turbine around Britain is estimated to produce 50-percent more power than a similar one in Germany. Of the 16 offshore wind farms now under construction around Europe, half are in Britain, according to the European OffShore Wind Industry.
In total, wind can supply energy to nearly 3 million British homes, according to RenewableUK, a trade group for the wind and marine renewables industry. Read more
September 23, 2010
By Steve Hargreaves of CNNMoney.com: Five miles off the coast of Shanghai, the Chinese recently completed the country’s first offshore wind farm. The project was completed before construction on the first American offshore wind farm has even begun. The Shanghai project is not just another wind farm. It’s the next generation in wind power technology and the latest example of how China is jumping ahead of the United States. Read more
September 22, 2010
By Robert Crowe for RenewableEnergyWorld.Com: Clean air mandates pushed the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to start developing renewable energy technologies. But the benefits of energy security and independence are what finally converted many military leaders into believers. “Renewable sources make us less vulnerable,” said Joe Sikes, director of Facilities Energy for the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. “Our goal is to take advantage of all available resources.” In combat zones, the Army is exploring mobile solar and wind generators to replace fuel trucks, which are frequent targets for insurgent attacks. More than 1,000 Americans have died while delivering fuel in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. The DoD hopes renewable energy can make military bases energy-independent and, ultimately, immune from threats to the utility grid. Read more
September 19, 2010
REAP note: REAP is the state facilitator for the Alaska Wind for Schools program mentioned in this article and led the effort along with the Alaska Center for Energy & Power in Fairbanks to have Alaska added to the national Wind for Schools program.
By Craig Giammona of the Sitka Daily Sentinel – An alternative energy project taking shape on Japonski Island will allow the city’s electric department to test wind as a viable power source in Sitka. In the process, Mt. Edgecumbe High School students will get hands-on lessons in math and science, and perhaps pick up ideas for bringing clean energy to their hometowns across the state. The U.S. Coast Guard could see benefits as well, namely a reduction in its power bill as the U.S. Coast Guard attempts to meet a mandate for federal agencies to reduce their use of fossil fuels.
“It’s really a collaborative project,” said Chris Brewton, Sitka’s utility director. “It’s an innovative way to approach it.”
The driving force behind the project, which will bring a 66-foot wind turbine to Japonski Island, is Matt Hunter, who teaches math and physics at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. Last winter, Hunter was brainstorming about projects for his students, when he came across a newspaper advertisement announcing grant funds for a program called “Alaska Wind for Schools.” Funded with federal stimulus money, the project seeks to “grow” a new generation of wind energy workers by giving them hands-on experience with a source of alternative energy. Hunter thought it would be a perfect fit for his students, with an opportunity to crunch data and perhaps learn about a clean energy source. Read more
September 17, 2010
By Molly Rettig of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Large rolls of black tubing sat like super-sized balls of yarn next to the playground outside Weller Elementary School Wednesday. The sun shined brightly on the south-facing hillside, where a bulldozer carved out a 12-foot hole.
The balls, which are actually polyethylene ground loops, were then rolled out and buried in the ditch, where they will harvest heat from underground to use in the school during the winter. In the summer, six solar thermal panels soon to be mounted on the school will replenish heat to the earth through the same tubes. The system will not only reap savings on heat for the school district but also will test a technology that is young in Fairbanks.
“I would like to see a system that would work well in the Interior and that the public can utilize and save dollars,” said Larry Morris, projects manager for the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. The project is an experiment to see how well the systems work in tandem and to collect data on ground source heat pumps, which are common in the Lower 48 but rare in Fairbanks. Read more
