China , This article from RenewableEnergyWorld.com, talks about the continuing explosion in China's deployment of windpower and its rapidly growing manufacturing capacity. China was in fifth place worldwide in installed base at the end of last year with 6 GW, heading to 20 GW by 2010, and 100 by 2020. The current global wind installation is 94 GW.
This sort of growth rate for putting windpower in place obviously conduces to manufacturing. The article says "According to Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, by 2009 China will become the world's largest producer of wind turbines." The article covers a lot of ground on the companies, the financing and the components involved.
Micro Wind , The same issue of RenewableEnergyWorld has a piece written by Jim Fugitte, a manufacturer of micro wind. While stipulating that large-scale renewable projects are important, he says that "The U.S. government, and the renewable energy industry in general desperately need to reexamine the utility-scale solutions that many see as the only answer." He points out, for one thing, the difficulties in routing and building transmission lines. His pitch: "The new generation of wind turbines makes distributive wind solutions feasible in urban areas and other settings where wind power is just not an alternative today. And micro-wind research is enabling applications and sites never before considered; meaning consumers, no matter where they’re located, have the potential to harness a new energy resource for themselves."
The American Wind Energy Association does not seem to disagree. See this area of their website devoted to "small wind." See also this informative article from CleanTechnica.
Big Solar , Going back to the macro, see Large-Scale U.S. Solar Power Facilities Becoming Commonplace from the excellent weekly newsletter "EERE Network News" (from DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division). According to the article, "relatively large-scale systems are becoming commonplace" with the trend "most apparent in concentrating solar power (CSP)." The article talks about plans for facilities in California, New Mexico and Florida. Plenty of sun in those places!
CSP, not incidentally, is discussed at some length in the terrific EDF book, "Earth: The Sequel". CSP, as you no doubt know, relies on a solar thermal approach, rather than photovoltaic. These big projects are all thermal. (Photovoltaics, which are also burgeoning, are applicable much more for distributed generation.)
PV Windows , While we're on the subject, here's a promising take on PV, from "DailyTech" – MIT Designs Solar Power Producing Windows, Coming Within 3 Years. Definitely micro and hugely interesting. Excellent article.
DG , So let's revisit distributed generation (aka distributed energy) or, as the Europeans call it, decentralized energy. It's simply locally generated power; not generated by an enormous plant and transmitted over long distances. DG has a big contribution to make. It should be, at least in the medium term, complementary to the utility-scale, central-power model. However, there is nothing but potential for locally generated power. Here are a couple of good videos: this from the National Renewables Energy Lab (short and to the point), and this from Greenpeace UK. It's 18 minutes but it's a great survey of DG and combined heat-and-power (CHP).
Smart Grid , What do you need to make DG work? The smart grid. The DG power is available to the local user but also needs to be taken up by the local utility if there's a surplus. Conversely, the consumer needs to be able to draw on the utility when necessary. The importance of the smart grid also lies in the self-monitoring capacity embedded in the system that will help optimize it. I've written about the smart grid concept at Green Building, Smart Grids and Renewables. See also this on Boulder, Colorado from WorldChanging and this from the Gristmill. (The comments here, as is often the case, are as interesting as the article.)
SuperSmart Grid , So now it's time to join the micro and the macro. I wrote the other day about the $5 billion infrastructure upgrade in Texas to bring windpower to the cities. I also wrote in March about an " exciting prospect: the idea of supplying virtually limitless amounts of power from solar arrays in the Sahara Desert. The Europeans and some of the North African and Middle Eastern states are working on precisely this. See the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) project. See also this informative UK website on this concept. Solar power for massive desalinization projects? Why in the world not?!" See this recent article from "The Guardian" too.
Well, you need High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology to bring all that juice to Europe and, when it gets there, you need to integrate it into the grid. If there's a simultaneous building out of new infrastructure to accommodate DG, then you need, what else, a SuperSmart Grid. Some very smart people from places like the European Climate Forum and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are working on this. Here's a fascinating paper that lays out the rationale for, the shape of, and the obstacles to the SSG in Europe.
