Author: Anela Dokso

Green Lantern Solar and Bee the Change have joined forces on a second New Haven solar project to plant and maintain pollinator-friendly ground cover.  The roughly 4.5 acre site will feature dozens of species of plants designed to attract species of pollinator insects and other beneficial bird species. “The accelerating rate of species loss is a crisis that threatens our future food security. The most forward-thinking solar developers, like the team at Green Lantern, are seizing the opportunity to make their land doubly useful, addressing pollinator habitat loss and climate change.”Dr. Mike Kiernan, who started Bee the Change. Green Lantern…

Bank of America has partnered with Duke Energy to expand its renewable energy commitment by powering its headquarters and other Charlotte, North Carolina operations with solar energy. Through a renewable energy-sleeved power purchase agreement (PPA), the company is participating in Duke Energy’s Green Source Advantage (GSA) program. The bank is the first company and financial institution to sign a 10-year agreement for electricity and Green-e-certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) through this program.   The purchase of a 25 megawatt (MW) solar project’s electricity output and RECs will cover 45% of Bank of America’s electricity load in the state. “These unique…

13 Tesla community batteries have been installed on the Western Power network in Western Australia. Premier Mark McGowan and Minister for Energy Bill Johnston visited one of the newly installed batteries at Salamanca Reserve in Port Kennedy. The 464kWh community battery will provide immediate benefit in that part of the network by balancing demand, maintaining the power quality to local homes and businesses, and allowing more homes in the area to install solar panels. The battery also provides the foundation for unlocking future benefits for individual customers such as the solar storage PowerBank product being trialed by Western Power and…

ASCO has marked the launch of a transformative industrial waste disposal service by announcing a contract award for its Waste Division from Serica Energy. The contract represents a milestone in ASCO’s Zero Waste to Landfill initiative, which has been created to support clients in the reduction of waste production by implementing locally-assisted sustainable solutions for the onshore management of offshore waste. Designed in response to Scottish regulatory requirements which will ban the disposal of general waste to landfill by 2025, the initiative aims to divert industrial waste, currently bound for landfill sites, to sustainable facilities in North East Scotland where ‘waste-to-energy’…

Ocean Power Technologies has launched its newest product, the hybrid PowerBuoy. The hybrid PowerBuoy utilizes solar panels and a clean-burning Stirling backup engine to power topside or subsea payloads. Power is generated independent of wave activity. The hybrid PowerBuoy can be utilized across many industries and applications, including emergency and short-term power and communications support for maintenance, testing and repair services. It can be configured with OPT’s marine surveillance solution for security monitoring of offshore areas. Customized solutions are also available, including the addition of subsea sensors to monitor for acoustic signatures, tsunami, and other environmental conditions. Data from the hybrid PowerBuoy is…

Minesto and SEV’s joint tidal energy demonstration project in Vestmannasund, Faroe Islands, is moving forward with the installation work at full speed to connect Minesto’s DG100 kite system to the electricity grid. Earlier Minesto completed the first offshore installation phase of the project, when the gravity-based foundation for the power plant was installed at the site. In 2018, Minesto signed an agreement with SEV to install two DG100 units in Vestmannasund. The agreement also included a power purchase agreement through which SEV committed to purchase the electricity generated by the tidal energy converters. “The team is doing a terrific job and…

European Energy has signed the divestment of Viertkamp wind farm, which consists of four 3.6 MW Vestas V126 turbines in Northern Germany, with Hamburg-based Encavis. With a total capacity of 14.4 MW, Viertkamp will generate approximately 50.000 MWh per year, delivering green electricity to more than 12,500 German households. “Encavis is one of the leading independent power producers in Europe and we greatly appreciated our collaboration with them. We have a common focus on delivering green energy from wind and solar, and we hope that we can build on this collaboration in the coming years.”Knud Erik Andersen, CEO of European…

Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has, on behalf of the Australian Government, provided $5 million in funding to TransGrid to conduct a detailed feasibility study to develop the proposed Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) in New South Wales (NSW). The $16.2 million study will assess the technical and commercial options for the development of new high voltage transmission lines to enable Australia’s first coordinated REZ and demonstrate a pathway for future REZs across the National Electricity Market. The Central-West Orana REZ will unlock more than 3,000 MW of new electricity generation by the mid-2020s, enough to power around 1.3…

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has conducted an analysis proving that hydrogen has the greatest potential among technologies for seasonal energy storage in the future. Seasonal energy storage can facilitate the deployment of high and ultra-high shares of wind and solar energy sources, according to Omar Guerra, a research engineer at NREL and lead author of a new paper, ‘The value of seasonal energy storage technologies for the integration of wind and solar power.’ Guerra’s co-authors, all from NREL, are Jiazi Zhang, Joshua Eichman, Paul Denholm, Jennifer Kurtz, and Bri-Mathias Hodge. They developed a multi-model approach that considers both the…

 ZeroAvia has conducted the first ever electric-powered flight of a commercial-scale aircraft carried out in the UK. The company completed the first flight of the new version of its powertrain from its  base at Cranfield Airport.​ ZeroAvia is focused on developing a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain. Hydrogen-electric offers the same zero-emission potential of battery-electric, but has a much more promising energy-to-weight ratio, making it viable for commercial operations at a much larger scale and in a shorter time frame, the company explained. ​Beyond HyFlyer, ZeroAvia plans commercially relevant, certified 10-20 seat configurations ready to go within three years, and 50-100…