On January 29, I spent a day inside a ballroom on The Ohio State University campus in Columbus serving as a judge for the Ohio Clean Energy Challenge, presented by the University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio and NorTech. This contest pitted student teams from universities and colleges across Ohio pitching their clean energy business [...]
The transition to cleantech – some would call it a revolution – inevitably entails change, which implies risk. In turn, this implies that some things will fail. We’ve already seen more than a few failures, and we’ll no doubt see many more. As long as the successes outweigh the failures, that’s all that ultimately matters. [...]
Happy new year everyone. As we reflect upon the year now past us, it’s also that time of year to look ahead. For the cleantech sector, Dallas Kachan from Kachan & Co. recently put his neck on the line with his “Predictions for Cleantech in 2013”. It’s a good read, well-reasoned. The sound-bite version: Cleantech [...]
Our firm, Kachan & Co., has just published its latest annual set of predictions for the cleantech sector for the year ahead. To our analysis, 2013 is shaping up to be something of a year of backtracking for the cleantech industry, a year that calls into question some of its traditional leading indicators of health, and [...]
In recent months, I’ve come across more work being done in flow batteries than I’ve seen in the prior decade. I’ve been known in the past to say that fuel cells are kinda like fueled batteries. Well, flow batteries really are fueled-batteries. A traditional chemical battery is one sealed system that charges and discharges chemical [...]
Last week, I attended a ceremony to dedicate the commissioning of a wind turbine at the corporate headquarters of Lincoln Electric (NASDAQ: LECO) in Euclid just east of Cleveland. It’s not just any wind turbine. For those who have driven on I-90 lately, the turbine is impossible to miss: a 2.5 megawatt unit manufactured by [...]
Late May, the wind industry flocked to Anaheim for its annual gathering, Windpower, hosted by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). For the first time in quite awhile, attendance was down from the previous year – estimated at 14,000, compared to a reported 25,000 in Dallas in 2010. At least part of the reason was geographic: [...]
Our Promising Future of Renewable Energy The cleanest solutions to global warming, air pollution and energy security are wind, water, and solar power (WWS). As Dr. Mark Jacobson walks me through the numbers of his, Dr. Mark Delucchi, and their teams’ multi-year study, the renewable energy solution stands out as the clear winner. Dr. Jacobson [...]
If there’s one segment of the energy sector that you’d think might be beyond significant technological innovation, it would be power transmission poles. And you’d be wrong! As profiled in a recent article in The Economist a novel transmission tower design called the Wintrack pylon has been co-developed by TenneT, the operator of the Dutch electricity grid, and KEMA, [...]
It had been on my nightstand for awhile, but I finally got around to finishing Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce. According to his own bio on the book jacket, “Bryce has been producing industrial-strength journalism for two decades” –whatever “industrial-strength” is supposed to [...]
This week I’m going to break one of my self-imposed ‘blog’ rules and dip into last week’s news. My reasoning will become clear. On Thursday I attended Envirolink North West’s Developing New Technologies for off Shore Wind event at the Met in Leeds. Apart from gaining a new respect for gearboxes (not to mention the [...]
I had a fascinating presentation today from John Robertson, managing director of BiFab, one of the first movers in offshore wind platform fabrications. They just rolled off doing a 31 unit, 14 month project for Vattenfall’s 150 MW Ormonde project (which still counts as large in the offshore wind business), and built the original Beatrice [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi This past week in New York, at its annual East Coast investor forum, the Cleantech Group released its 2010 Global Cleantech 100, profiling the private cleantech companies that a set of panelists thinks has the most promise for large long-term impact. Some highlights from the list and the report: In the [...]
By John Addison (4/29/10) The United States now has a new source of clean electricity for homes, buildings, and industrial stationary power and also for the growing use of electricity in rail and electric cars. Wind power is especially available at night when we hope to eventually charge millions of vehicles. Global wind energy capacity [...]
(4/12/10) The U.S. wind energy grew in 2009, despite a severe recession. There are 36 states that have utility-scale wind projects and 14 states are in the “Gigawatt Club” with more than 1,000 MW of installed wind capacity per state. In state rankings, Iowa leads in terms of percentage of electricity from wind power, getting [...]
Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1997) delivered this speech “Meeting the Energy and Climate Challenge” at Stanford University on March 7, 2010, where he was formerly a professor. Dr. Chu called on the students and faculty to take part in a new Industrial Revolution. At the [...]
By John Addison The U.S. wind industry broke all previous records by installing 9,922 MW installed last year. This expanded the nation’s wind fleet by 39% and bring total wind power generating capacity in the U.S to over 35,000 MW. The five-year average annual growth rate for the industry is also 39%. U.S. wind projects [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Every two years, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) holds a major conference on offshore wind energy. The last time EWEA convened its offshore event, in December 2007 in Berlin, the mood was relatively somber. Several major offshore wind projects had been completed, but had run into unforeseen technical and economic [...]
by Richard T. Stuebi Despite all the optimistic talk about green jobs in the advanced energy economy of the future, many manufacturers from the industrial heartland are deathly afraid of the potential passage of climate change legislation, concerned that cap-and-trade will increase their electricity costs and thereby make their operations less profitable. A poster-child of [...]
Short and sweet. Boone Pickens announced this week that his mega wind farm was icing an eventual 4,000 MW windfarm this week. Apparently he’s looking for buyers for $2 Bill in turbines. A far cry from a year ago when your credibility as a wind developer hung in part on whether or not you had [...]
