The Blog

Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com Solar power is all about the sun, right? Wrong. With next-generation solar technology, you won’t need the sun, only indoor lighting, to generate electricity, according to Rick Hess, CEO of privately-held Konarka Technologies in Lowell, MA, a company that builds polymer photovoltaic products, a material that converts light to energy. Think of it as “recaptured” energy, Hess said, indicating he …

Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com It was toward the end of a day-long investor conference two weeks ago that John Heathcote, CEO of Britain’s Pursuit Dynamics PLC, said something that made at least one audience member ask himself, “Did I really hear what I just heard?” When Heathcote and other CEOs on a biofuels panel were finished, the audience member asked Heathcote whether he …

Submitted by New Energy News Blog That’s the sun lighting up Canada’s manufacturing sector. And not a moment too soon.Tibor Urbanek, founder/president, Woodbine Tool & Die: “It [was] a very dark situation…” Woodbine Tool & Die lost a third of its workforce in the last 2 years. Urbanek: “We have no choice but to look for alternative work for our employees…If …

Submitted by New Energy News Blog Listen! That’s not thunder – it’s the sound of opportunity pounding on the U.S. door. The wind energy industry recently announced it will supply 20% of U.S. electricity by 2030. It supplied about 1% at the end of 2007. That means the wind industry will grow much more than 20-fold in the next quarter century …

Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com For every business sick of changing light bulbs and paying high electric bills, there’s a “new user experience” coming. Depending on the application, light bulbs either are already here or will be shortly that don’t have to be changed and that use only a fraction of the electricity that incandescent bulbs use. They will be called “light engines,” …

Submitted by New Energy News Blog In a widely praised article based on firsthand observations during a recent (pre-quake) China visit, EV and electric bike authority Forbes Bagatelle-Black lays out a new vision for the transition from oil-addicted transportation to a pedal-fueled, battery-assisted tomorrow. Bagatelle-Black: “I recently spent two weeks traveling all over China on business. The huge numbers of people …

Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com You just can’t keep a good man down. Or a fuel cell, apparently. No matter how many times fuel cells’ obituary is written, it keeps showing renewed promise as maybe the ultimate energy solution. As this story notes www.sciencedaily.com engineers at MIT have improved the power output of one type of fuel cell by more than 50%. They did it …

Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com A new record for solar cell efficiency has been set. www.sciencedaily.com/ The new record is 23.2%, up from, the previous record of 21.9%. The percentage refers to the amount of sunlight that the cells converted into electricity. Reportedly, the new record was set with so-called thin film materials that are relatively inexpensive. Until tomorrow.

Submitted by New Energy News Blog Solar energy installations are getting bigger and more efficient. A new Duke Energy/SunEdison project will reach for 16 megawatts of capacity to surpass the current biggest U.S. photovoltaic (PV) facility, a 14-megawatt installation at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Critics contend a change to New Energy will drive electricity bills up. This solar installation …

Submitted by New Energy News Blog The next generation of energy efficiency in commercial/industrial/residential buildings will come through a Smart Grid capable of Demand Response. The effectiveness of such programs depend a great deal on the power customers. (For more on this, see SMARTGRID and DEMAND RESPONSE AND THE ELECTRON CONSUMER) In pursuit of better serving its power customers, Xcel Energy, the huge and progressive …