Green Energy News | November 28, 1999

November 28, 1999 – Vol.4 No.35

ENERGIES... week of November 28, 1999

MICRO-HYDRO NEPAL. Villagers in Bhujung, two hundred or so kilometers west of Kathmandu, have been using forests for energy at rate of 250 tons of firewood each each year - until now. With Japanese help the 350 families in the mountain village now have access to renewable energy generated from a 80 kilowatt micro-hydro power plant.

The Tokushima-Nepal Friendship Association provided seventy percent of the $1.5 million tab for the project with the remainder coming from the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation.

WIND POWER AUSTRALIA. With the Australian government aiming to boost the nation’s stock of renewable energy two percent by 2010 - and $1.26 billion in government funding to back up the plan - two new wind farms have been announced.

Pacific Power will build a 10 megawatt farm at Blayney in central western New South Wales. The site will have 15 turbines and should supply electricity needs for 3500 average Australian households. The site will still be used by local ranchers for grazing .

Pacific Hydro Ltd will build a 18 megawatt facility near Codrington on the southwest Victorian coast. The site will have 14 turbines and construction should begin by the middle of 2000.

Australia’s current electricity mix is 10.5 percent renewable, with most of that from hydroelectric power. Visit Pacific Hydro at http://www.pacifichydro.com.au/ .

SOLAR PURCHASE EQUALS NEW BUSINESS. The City of Chicago and Commonwealth Edison will be buying $8 million worth of photovoltaic systems from Spire Corporation, and as part of the agreement Spire has opened Spire Solar Chicago to produce and install systems in the Windy City and the State of Illinois. Initial systems will be grid connected and the new production facility should be up and operating by the summer of next year. Visit Spire at http://www.spirecorp.com/ .

LOCALLY MADE SOLAR. Solar power products company AstroPower of Newark, Delaware has teamed with Atersa (Applicaciones Technicas de la Energia, S.A.) of Spain, a solar module and equipment manufacturer, to create AstraSolar. The union will provide solar cells, system components and manufacturing equipment as well as management, process and marketing expertise to independent regional module assembly companies (MODCOS) worldwide. AstraSolar feels that MODCOS familiar with local markets can better serve the potential growth in the solar industry.

AstraSolar will also manufacture AstroPower’s APex (tm) solar cells. Visit AstroPower at http://www.astropower.com/ .

COAL TURNS TO WIND. GreenMountain.com has begun construction of the largest wind farm in Pennsylvania and one of the largest on the U.S. east coast. Built at the site of a defunct coal strip mine, the 10.4 megawatt Green Mountain Wind Farm should supply enough power for 2500 homes. Installation of the eight 95 foot diameter turbines should be complete by Earthday 2000 - April 22. Visit GreenMountain.com at http://www.greenmountain.com/ .

HYBRIDS IN THE SPOTLIGHT. With the market introduction of Honda’s hybrid Insight, the sales success of the Toyota Prius in Japan, and the forthcoming introduction of the Prius into other markets, hybrid-electric vehicles are the first round of vehicles from the world’s automakerswith much improved fuel economy .

Given the expected growth of the technology, Toshiba Battery has signed a licensing agreement with Energy Conversion Devices (ECD)/ Ovonic Battery to manufacture Ovonic’s spiral wound nickel metal hydride batteries. Toshiba will be allowed to market the batteries worldwide for use in hybrid and non-road vehicles.

EcoVia International of Toronto, Canada, a merger of Microvel Technologies and Ecovia Inc., is newcomer to the hybrid vehicle market, yet little is known about the company. The new company claims to have developed a 25 kW steam generator which would be used in hybrid-electric form to drive buses and trucks or as a stand-alone generator.

Visit ECD at http://www.ovonic.com/

DISTRIBUTED HYDROGEN PRODUCTION. Unless hydrogen is produced via a liquid fuel reformer, pure “fuel cell grade” hydrogen for Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells must be produced then transported and stored a number of times before it finds it way into a fuel cell to produce energy.

Proton Energy Systems would like to skip a step and produce hydrogen at refueling stations or decentralized distribution centers. To do so the company has developed its HOGEN (tm) hydrogen electrolyzer which would produce hydrogen from water by electrolysis with power coming from a grid or hopefully a distributed renewable energy connection, such as solar panels. The HOGEN generator system produces hydrogen at 2000 psi which the company claims is enough for PEM use.

AGGRESSIVE MICRO-TURBINES. Hardly a week goes by without news from Capstone MicroTurbine. This week the young company announced a marketing alliance with the Takuma Company of Japan that will open Capstone’s products to Asian markets. For its part Takuma, has engineered a cogeneration package for the MicroTurbine Model 330 for heat recovery and hot water heating. Later Takuma plans to introduce an absorption chiller/heater and steam generation package for the small turbine.

Capstone has also introduced another product, the Simple Cycle microturbine, specially developed to generate power from waste gases normally flared-off from gas and oil production.

The MicroTurbine, too, is showing up in products from other companies. Williams Distributed Power Services has developed the WILLIAMS Energy Conversion Unit (ECU) which both generates electricity, stores and conditions it. The ECU (tm) was developed for markets in off-grid generation or grid connected peak shaving. The Capstone driven system is offered in 100 kilowatt modules and can be scaled up to several megawatts by adding more units.

Visit busy Capstone at http://www.capstoneturbine.com and Williams at http://www.williams.com/ .