The Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Managment (346 million acres) and the Department of Agriculture, US Forestry Service (192 million acres.) I haven’t been able to find an overall reference to the US Department of Defense, but one installation, White Sands in New Mexico is approximately 2.5 million acres. No kidding, that’s alot of land. Some 45% of known geothermal resource areas are located on BLM managed tracts.


Technorati Tags: Land | US Government | Energy

A follow-up story from yesterday’s entry, there is a report out today that China intends to build the world’s largest solar electricity generation plant, 100MW. To put that in perspective, it’s about 1/2 the size of a traditional coal fired generation plant and about 10x the largest solar installations on the planet. If you’ve ever wondered why we don’t see more solar plants, the clues are in the report.

A year has 8,760 hours in it. In this report the selected site has an outstanding 3,362 hours of sunlight. That would yield a capacity factor of a little over 38% (good compared to the 25% normally achieved by solar.) To translate that into something more tangible, the system is rated at 100MW x the 38% capacity factor means that around 38MW output can be expected from the installation. Each MW provides enough electricity for about 600 households per year (US – I’m sure China is substantially different due to lower electricity demand per capita.)

The announced cost for this installation is $766M, or $7.6M per nameplate MW, or $20.1M per capacity factor constrained MW. Even amortized over decades, it’s difficult to see the economic payback from such an installation. To put solar cost in perspective, one would expect to pay $1M/MW for wind, $750k/MW for natural gas, and $3M/MW for geothermal. My sense is we’re still a technology generation or two away from economically viable solar electric generation at utility scale.

I think solar energy generation is great and I laud China for stepping up with an audacious plan, but I do believe there are more economically viable ways to achieve the same result. I’ll watch this project with interest as it unfolds.


Technorati Tags: Energy | Renewable | China

For whatever other shortcomings the government in China may have, I have to give credit where credit is due. Provided the investments are actually made and sustained, this signals an intent to stand in a leadership position with respect to renewable energy policy. I wonder if our political leadership is watching this? Renewable energy is one of those areas that could provide a win for both sides of the aisle. Hope you folks in Washington D.C. are paying attention.


Technorati Tags: Energy | Renewable | China

I had a fantastic day yesterday soaking up knowledge at the Geothermal Energy Association workshop on financing geothermal projects. This was a business workshop with the morning focused on politics, regulation, and government agencies (note to politicos – less interference would be more here…) and the afternoon dedicated to the attributes required for fundable geothermal projects. The speakers were mostly engaging, the content was rich, and the room was awkwardly laid out, but had windows.

One thing I hadn’t realized (naively) was just how politicized the issue of renewable energy is. That became quite clear at the workshop and the elections last week will help as soon-to-be-Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is a geothermal fan (Nevada is rich in geothermal resources.) Hopefully, Congress and the Administration will choose to collaborate on renewable issues extending the production tax credit and making leases of BLM land and NEPA environmental assessments more accessible and faster. I’ll believe that when I see it…

Technorati Tags: Geothermal | Finance | Workshop

I am delighted to see this joint program between Sun and PG&E:

Sun Announces First-of-its-Kind Energy Rebate With PG&E

Space, power, cooling and budget are the growing constraints for every datacenter. In August of this year, Sun announced a first-of-its-kind energy rebate for its Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers with California utility PG&E. As part of PG&E’s Non Residential Retrofit program, customers replacing existing equipment with these eco responsible servers can receive a cash savings between $700-$1000 per server or up to 35 percent when combined with the Sun Upgrade Advantage Program(3). This is the first time a public utility company has offered a rebate for server upgrades, helping customers move to more efficient technology and easing their datacenter constraints.

Not only that, the Tx000 series servers consume far less power than competing systems and provide many times the performance on multi-threaded work loads, what’s not to like? Kudos to PG&E and Sun, you’re making a difference.


Technorati Tags: Energy | Rebate | Server