From Renewable Energy Access:

Buildings in Rizhao, a coastal city of nearly three million on the Shandong Peninsula in northern China, have a common yet unique appearance: most rooftops and walls are covered with small panels. They are solar heat collectors.

A combination of regulations and public education spurred the broad adoption of solar heaters. The city mandates all new buildings to incorporate solar panels, and it oversees the construction process to ensure proper installation. To raise awareness, the city held open seminars and ran public advertising on television.

In Rizhao City, which means City of Sunshine in Chinese, 99 percent of households in the central districts use solar water heaters, and most traffic signals, street and park lights are powered by photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. In the suburbs and villages, more than 30 percent of households use solar water heaters, and over 6,000 households have solar cooking facilities. More than 60,000 greenhouses are heated by solar panels, reducing overhead costs for farmers in nearby areas.

In total, the city has over a half-million square meters of solar water heating panels, the equivalent of about 0.5 megawatts of electric water heaters.

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China is clearly very serious about implementing renewable energy. The growth rate of the economy coupled with the sheer size of the population really provides few other choices. One of our principals used to have staff in Beijing and in the winter when the coal plants were going full bore, one couldn’t see across the street to the next building the smog was so thick. It conjures images of Manchester, England during the industrial revolution.

Sometimes it seems like even small changes can be very difficult to realize. This image drives that concept home when we discuss something as simple as changing light bulbs. It’s a seemingly small change to switch an incandescent bulb for an energy efficient compact fluorescent or LED bulb, but for whatever reason, it’s difficult to buy the bulbs and make the change – even though the change provides direct benefit to the active party and to the world at-large.

We recognize that here at Montara Energy Ventures and we reveal a project to help make such small changes visible in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

Another great talk at the GEA Geothermal Financing workshop was given by Tom Fair of Sierra Pacific Resources. Tom reviewed what investor owned utilities (IOUs) were looking for when selecting independent power producers (specifically for renewable electricity, but there seemed to be nothing particular that would make it different for non-renewable IPPs either.)

One surprising fact Tom stated was that up to 40% of awarded power purchase agreements to renewable IPPs fail. As the power companies face renewable portfolio standards in their service areas, this failure rate exposes the IOUs to risks they’re not willing to accept. From the IOUs’ perspective, when they book megawatts to be delivered, they’re expecting that the megawatts will be there. In the renewable space, that has often not been the case.

In fact, Tom’s talk really could be labeled “get power purchase contracts by lowering the IOUs risk and delivering what you promise.” This is an important and basic lesson: don’t sign up if you can’t deliver.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

KAYSVILLE – Seeds planted Tuesday along a strip of Interstate 15 could someday fuel state trucks and snowplows, reduce the need for mowing, allow the use of less-harmful herbicides and grace otherwise weedy roadsides with blue, red and yellow flowers.

Utah State University and the Utah Department of Transportation are teaming up on an experiment to sow about a mile of grassy safety strips around the state with plants whose seeds can be crushed and processed into 100 percent biodiesel. UDOT will use the homegrown fuel to replace the conventional diesel in state vehicles.

The unusual idea came from Dallas Hanks, a 44-year-old biologist who is working on his doctoral degree at USU. With an initial $50,000 boost from UDOT, Hanks aims to prove the 2,500 miles of state-owned highway right-of-way could yield an annual average of 500,000 gallons of 100 percent biodiesel, also known as B100.

Hanks, a former Utah Valley State College biology instructor, said he conservatively estimates planting swaths of safflower, camelina, canola and perennial flax will save about $1.6 million per year in mowing costs. UDOT officials said they wouldn’t know the total taxpayer savings until the project’s first-year experiment is finished.

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This is an interesting approach to growing feed stock for biofuels that won’t displace current food crop capacity. We’ll see how it works, but the creativity in approach is to be applauded.

From Purdue University:

A Purdue University engineer has developed a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water for running fuel cells or internal combustion engines, and the technique could be used to replace gasoline.

“I was cleaning a crucible containing liquid alloys of gallium and aluminum,” Woodall said. “When I added water to this alloy – talk about a discovery – there was a violent poof. I went to my office and worked out the reaction in a couple of hours to figure out what had happened. When aluminum atoms in the liquid alloy come into contact with water, they react, splitting the water and producing hydrogen and aluminum oxide.

“Gallium is critical because it melts at low temperature and readily dissolves aluminum, and it renders the aluminum in the solid pellets reactive with water. This was a totally surprising discovery, since it is well known that pure solid aluminum does not readily react with water.”

The waste products are gallium and aluminum oxide, also called alumina. Combusting hydrogen in an engine produces only water as waste.

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Clearly this is a research project, not a commercial technology. But one has to wonder what the commercial applications for such a process are. Hydrogen is a great fuel if it can be produced sustainably and stored safely. We’ll monitor this work as it develops.