Alternative Energy News
Oh buoy! California decision a blow for wave energy, and a Canadian developer
Posted: 24 Oct 2008 09:06 AM CDT
Finavera Renewables, a Vancouver-based wind and wave power developer, has enough troubles these days. The publicly traded company has shares trading at 5 cents and as an untested newcomer to the developer scene it's considered much riskier than more established rivals when it comes to raising money, whether that be equity or debt. Not good when you're staring in the face of the worst credit-crunch and financial-sector meltdown in at least a generation.Nothing a prescription of Ativan can't deal with, right? But then the California Public Utilities Commission comes along and nixes a wave-energy power purchase agreement between Finavera and Pacific Gas & Electric, which agreed to buy electricity from the Canadian company's 2-megawatt wave project — the first commercial wave contract in the country, experts say. It was to use Finavera's AquaBUOY technology, devices that turn the kinetic energy of vertical wave motion into emission-free electricity.
Greentech Media has the messy details here. The bottom line is that the commission declared the power-purchase price too high and the technology too unproven to proceed. Finavera has since put on a brave face, saying it will focus its efforts on projects under development in Canada and Ireland. But as nobel or attractive or economic any of those projects could be, the sad reality is that in this market at this time there's not much wiggle room for setbacks.
UK and Australia Launching Electric Car Infrastructure
Posted: 24 Oct 2008 08:36 AM CDT
Great Britain and Australia are bent on giving this world a better plan by rolling out recharging infrastructure to support future electric cars. Both countries believe the immediate zero emissions future lay in encouraging consumers to buy electric cars when they first become widely available in the next 2 or 3 years.
On Monday, the UK is set to announce that it will be installing thousands of electric car charging points throughout the country. The UK Ministers will be announcing $158 million USD in tax breaks and corporate incentives to spur electric vehicles into the marketplace. Currently, there are only 3,000 such vehicles in the UK.
The Brits are well aware that the Renault-Nissan Alliance will be rolling out EV’s in 2011 that have over a 100 mile range. Cleaning up smoggy old London and other regions is still of great concern even after Mayor Boris Johnson cancelled an order of 60 hydrogen cars for his city this past August.
The UK is also keeping its eye on Israel and Denmark and the Better Plan program, which helps those who drive over 100 miles in their electric car swap out batteries at special stations in under 5 minutes. Australia has decided to be the third and largest nation getting in on the action with an investment of $676 million.
Both recharging spots and battery exchange stations will be added to the world’s sixth largest country. Getting the Aussies to give up their gas guzzlers may be a bit tricky, but the low cost incentives will be worth it in regard to the low recharging price and vehicle maintenance costs.
California has around 500 recharging stations that it has built up over the past decade or so, but the rest of the states are still pretty scarce when it comes to support for electric vehicles. What we need is “electric cities” to come onboard such as Lake Portland, Oregon that is putting up recharging stations in support of future EV’s and PHEV’s.
A little planning now will pay dividends a few years from now and won’t involve any nasty “crushing” incidents.
Former Imperium CEO Martin Tobias Going Kashless
Posted: 24 Oct 2008 06:45 AM CDT
We've been wondering what the former CEO of biodiesel company Imperium Renewables, Martin Tobias, was going to do next. When we interviewed the serial entrepreneur and angel investor back in May at the Future In Review Conference he said he was mulling over his options — including the intersection of Internet and green — and said he still had another company in him. Well, we caught up with Tobias this morning and he confirmed that he has founded and is running re-commerce company Kashless.org (noted here and here, and in this job posting).
Tobias won't say much about the company and the site is in private alpha right now. But Kashless is a return to the software/Internet side of green, and Tobias previously founded and ran streaming media company Loud Eye. And compared to running Imperium, which raised hundreds of millions and was at one time planning an IPO, Kashless sounds like a lot less capital-intensive way back into the entrepreneurial world.
According to the job listing sites Kashless is described as a:
ReCommerce community and platform enabling person to person product reuse, sharing, lending, trade and other “cashless” transactions. By increasing reuse, Kashless.org will divert a significant amount of waste from the landfill and extend the useful life of many products. The company is fully funded . . .Tobias writes on his blog about a formative experience of cleaning out his garage and trying to sell old, but still good, stuff that lead to forming Kashless:
In the end I got rid of everything but it was WAY TOO HARD and took way too much time/energy/effort. Heck, I was trying to give something away for free!As Tobias points out in his blog post, there are a variety of web sites out there that help sell and swap used goods online. Craiglist, Freecycle, lesser well known sites like SwapThing and several Facebook applications, come to mind. But it does still take a large amount of time and effort to get your stuff swapped or sold — perhaps Tobias has a better way.
The Conference for Video Entrepreneurs and Influencers (at special $450 rate)
Meet the creators of Heroes and CSI, the CEOs of Hulu and Netflix, and the digital VPs of ABC and FOX.
Posted: 24 Oct 2008 05:16 AM CDT
A Suzlon wind turbine in Wyanet, Ill., had one of its 140-foot long blades break off this week (via Environmental Capital). The Indian turbine maker is still investigating this turbine failure but it appears to be related to the blade recall announced in March which requires the retrofitting 1,251 (417 sets) blades, mostly in the U.S., because of a design flaw that leads to blade cracking. The recall problem has already cost the company millions in canceled orders.
Earlier this year, the dramatic self-destruction of a Vestas wind turbine caught on video prompted the Danish climate minister to launch an investigation into turbine failure rates. The wind industry is moving to remedy the increasingly high-profile problem with the formation of the Reliawind project, a consortium of wind energy companies who are working together to improve the reliability, availability and overall up-time of their turbines.
When we reported on the videotaped Vestas turbine explosion, the wind energy watchdog group Industrial Wind Action Group had a list of 36 turbine failures in the U.S. Today that list has grown to 51 recorded turbine failures. Across the pond, the British group Caithness Wind Farms, which tracks such global turbine accidents, says the number has jumped to
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