Articles Posted in the Renewable energy category

Cape school gets solar-powered computer lab

August 11, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

The Western Cape’s first solar-powered school computer lab was officially opened on Friday at Bernadino Heights Secondary School in Kraaifontein near Cape Town.

It is a pilot project of the Khanya Project of the Western Cape Education Department and, if successful, it holds great potential for bringing technology to schools in rural areas where power and energy supply is problematic or non-existent. Read more

Fossil fuel-free rally from Vic Falls to Cape Town

July 30, 2008
Posted in Transport

Are you the proud owner or developer of an electric, solar, hybrid, biofuel or hydrogen vehicle? Here’s a chance to show it off in a 4,000km rally from the Victoria Falls in Zambia, through the Caprivi and down through Namibia to Cape Town.

Zero Rally Africa says the event will be one of the “greatest demonstrations of sustainable transport in one of the most dramatic settings on Earth”. The route is certainly spectacular, besides the Vic Falls and Cape Town, the rally will go through the Caprivi Strip, which is rich in wildlife, particularly elephants, and has no fences so the animals roam freely between Namibia, Botswana and Zambia. It also crosses the Etosha National Park, and passes the Namib desert.

The aim of Zero Rally Africa is to highlight the importance of renewable energy and, in particular, carbon neutral transport. It is open to any non-fossil fuel vehicle and runs from January 28 to February 8 2009.

Interested? Go to Zero Rally Africa‘s website for more information on entrance requirements.

Via :: Treehugger

Solar windows could soon tap into sun’s power

July 22, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

Windows that not only let sunlight into buildings but also use it to generate electricity may be a commercial reality in as little as three years’ time, MIT reports.

A research team at the US university has found a way to concentrate solar energy onto solar cells situated around the edge of a pane of glass or plastic.

A mixture of dyes is painted onto the glass or plastic. “The dyes work together to absorb light across a range of wavelengths, which is then re-emitted at a different wavelength and transported across the pane to waiting solar cells at the edges,” the MIT report says.

Similar technology was developed in the the 1970s, but it was abandoned. But the research team has brought it back to life using techniques developed for lasers and organic light-emitting diodes.

The research team’s solar concentrator technology can increase the power obtained from solar cells by a factor of over 40, the university reports. Read more

Harvesting solar power in space

July 1, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

Solar irradiance in space is said to be five to 10 times stronger than on the ground, so it makes sense that space would be a good place to collect solar energy for electricity. Sounds like science fiction, but that’s exactly what researchers in Japan plan to do. Scientific American reports that by 2030 the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) aims to “put into geostationary orbit a solar-power generator that will transmit one gigawatt of energy to Earth, equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant. The energy would be sent to the surface in microwave or laser form, where it would be converted into electricity for commercial power grids or stored in the form of hydrogen.” How cool is that? Read the full story on Scientific American

Courses offered on solar electric systems

June 23, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

Want to learn more about solar electricity? Solar Con is offering training courses on how to market, design and install solar electric systems, using a solar trainer teaching kit imported from Germany.

The course costs R2400. A 50 percent deposit is required with registration.
It will be held at the Lapp Building, 51 Brunton Circle, Founders View, Modderfontein, Johannesburg. Read more

2010 launch set for GM’s all-electric car – and SA’s making one too

June 4, 2008
Posted in Transport

General Motors has announced that it’s all-electric car, the Chevy Volt, will be launched in 2010 and will be in showrooms (in the US, presumably) by the end of that year, Reuters reports.

The Volt will be powered entirely by an electric motor and have a lithium-ion battery pack that can be charged through an ordinary plug point. The car will be designed to travel for about 60km on its battery pack – which is apparently enough for the average daily commute in America. For longer trips, the Volt has a “range-extending power source” which “kicks in to recharge the lithium-ion battery pack as required”, says the Chevrolet.com website. This will last for around 1,000km, the site says. The car should also be able to reach a top speed of at least 100km.

Reuters says Toyota is also racing to market its own plug-in hybrid by 2010 using the same technology.

The full-charge cycle should take about three hours at 220V, gm-volt.com reports. It’s all very nice in theory, considering how the petrol price is rocketing, but the big question is whether South Africa’s power monopoloy Eskom would be able to cope with the demands electric cars would put on the grid – even if they were charged at night.

Peet du Plooy of the WWF was interviewed by summit TV earlier this year when the WWF’s report “Plugged in, the end of the oil age” was released. He said that electric vehicles cost a tenth of the price to run over time and an added advantage is that electricity is generated locally, whereas South Africa imports its oil. He also said that if you compared turning coal into electricity with turning coal into liquid fuel (as Sasol does), the electric car would go three times further with the same amount of fuel.

He also said, that in South Africa, Optimal Energy of Cape Town, which had received government funding from the Innovation Fund, was looking to go into production with an electric vehicle in 2010.

The deputy science and technology minister, Derek Hanekom, was reported in Saturday’s The Weekender as saying that the first prototype of the South African-designed car would be unveiled by early next year.

The reports says that the batteries will be imported from China and that the six-seater passenger vehicle would have a range of between 100km and 400km. And, here’s a bonus, “the roof would have solar panels to help charge the battery when it is parked in the sun”. Now, there’s a good idea for sunny South Africa.

How a locally made vehicle would compete with vehicles made by well-known car manufacturers’ on the market, is another matter.

New ‘climate bonds’ could help SA meet clean energy targets

May 29, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

The United Nations is considering a new type of bond to help developing countries finance renewable energy projects, Bloomberg reports.

Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, said yesterday that the idea was that “climate bonds” would be sold to investors by developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They would simplify the funding of wind farm and solar projects and encourage investment in nations struggling to meet their renewable-energy targets, de Boer said.

The plan had not yet been presented to countries or investors, de Boer said.

Simplifying the funding of renewable energy projects would be good news for South Africa which has got off to a slow start in meeting its renewable energy target of 10 000 GWh/year renewable energy consumption by 2013.

For example, Business Report recently reported that Eskom was struggling to find investors for its 100MW concentrating solar power demonstration plant in Upington.

The CSP plant will cost R5-billion, of which Eskom can put up R3-billion. It is looking for partners to fund the remaining R2-billion, the report said.

Eskom’s other renewable energy project, a 100MW wind farm in the Western Cape, received a R1.4-billion loan from the French Development Agency which will reportedly cover most of the costs. According to BR, it is expected to be operational in 2010.

The country’s first commercial wind farm, with a 5.2MW capacity, was officially switched on on Friday.

Read the full report on Bloomberg

Scotland’s solar water lilies

May 14, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

Solar power is inspiring all sorts of interesting ideas, the latest one, reported on the BBC’s website, is a giant solar water lily. Designed to bob quietly on a river – much like the real thing from which the designers got their inspiration – these giant lily-shaped discs would be tethered to the river bed and would be able to rotate to follow the sun.

Glasgow-based ZM Architecture has already won the International Design Awards Land and Sea competition for their solar creation. They are now hoping that the Glasgow city council will give the go-ahead for a trial project to tether the lilypads on the Clyde River so they can provide the Scottish city with clean electricity.

Toyota spends millions on solar power in Durban

April 29, 2008
Posted in Business, Renewable energy, Transport

Toyota‘s manufacturing plant in Durban is installing solar energy in a R3.5-million project that is expected to save the company R95,000 a month on energy costs, according a media release.

The car manufacturer had already installed 150 solar panels by June 2007 and has plans to install another 120 of them. So, by the end of 2008, Toyota will have installed 270 solar panels into its Durban plant, says the release.

It does not specify how much electricity the solar panels will generate or what percentage of the plant’s total electricity consumption the solar power will replace. But it does say that “the company’s Prospecton plant in Durban used electricity and gas to heat water, it will now use energy converted from the sun as a source of heat.”

The solar panels will allow the car manufacturer to lower its carbon dioxide emissions by about 1,350 tons a year.

It will also help to reduce the impact of Eskom’s “load shedding” on the company’s operations.

Source: Mediaweb.co.za

Positive energy HQ for Gulf solar city

March 22, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

Pictured is the headquarters of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City. The building will be the world’s first large-scale positive energy building – which means it will produce more energy than it consumes – according to the architecture firm chosen to design it. The building will also be the first in history to generate the power needed to build it because its huge solar roof will be built first. The building’s features will include integrated wind turbines, one of the world’s largest building-integrated solar energy arrays, and solar thermal-driven cooling and dehumidification system. The building will also use 70 percent less water than “typical mixed-use buildings of the same size”.