The first U.S.-built Service Operation Vessel (SOV) is being constructed by Gulf Island Fabrication, and will focus on servicing and supporting US offshore wind farms . The SOV will efficiently support and maintain offshore wind operations off the US East Coast, equipped with advanced technologies and features including even a helideck for helicopter operations and accommodations for 60 technicians. Imagine […]
Geothermal energy typically uses natural geothermal heat reservoirs under the ground. But can we create artificial underground reservoirs for geothermal energy? A research (by the Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) has validated that we can use old gas wells as geothermal reservoirs. Well, what is this all about? Essentially, you identify an abandoned gas well that has a suitable infrastructure – […]
This detailed analysis in Energy Monitor analyzes an important domain within energy storage – thermal storage. While storage brings to mind batteries (electrochemical storage) most of the time, there are many other energy storage avenues – mechanical storage (think hydroelectric power plants and pumped storage, or even flywheels), chemical storage (power can be converted to hydrogen which can then act […]
Yara, a European chemicals & fertilizer firm, and Northern Lights, a firm developing CO2 transport & storage infrastructure have signed the world’s first commercial agreement on cross border CO2 transport and storage. What does this rather complex sounding pact mean? It refers to a plan in which Northern Lights would capture CO2 emitted from Yara’s Netherlands fertilizer factory transport it […]
So, some of the largest corporates in the world are collaborating to buy sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). But what is SAF, and why is it important? Aviation accounts for about 2% of all global CO2 emissions. Being a sector where green branding is perhaps a bit more important than for many other sectors, airlines have been trying to significantly reduce […]
Floating solar panels have been in the limelight for the past few years, with a recent news analysis from Smithsonian wondering if these will represent a large part of the future renewable energy sector. What are floating solar panels? These refer to solar panels that are installed on water bodies – reservoirs, lakes, irrigation canals… Now, why would someone want […]
Here’s a news item about a hospital in India installing a large solar concentrator that helps in generating steam to cook 2000 meals a day and also sterilize hospital equipment. What is a solar concentrator? Solar concentrators, also called solar thermal concentrators or concentrating solar thermal, represent a technology that uses the concentration of sunlight to produce a temperature much […]
China has so far dominated the production of solar panels, but with the importance of solar power plant being recognized all over the world, prominent countries are hastening to ensure that they have a robust domestic solar cell and panel manufacturing ecosystem. Here is a news item about a research study in the context of “reshoring” solar panel manufacturing to […]
Here’s a news item about scientists in Belgium announcing the development of bifacial perovskite solar panel being introduced. Hold on. What is a perovskite solar panel? And what are bifacial solar panels? We will answer the latter one first. Solar panels – until recently – had solar cells arranged only on one side of the panel with the backside covered […]
Here’s some news about a lovely solar lamp being brought to the market by Ikea in partnership with Little Sun. What such an interesting product shows is the exciting applications to which solar power can be put use to. This is something that is quite unique to solar, amongst all renewable energy sources. Because of its modularity, solar panels can […]
