Spanish solar power developer Acciona and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. are teaming up to work on solar and other renewable energy projects.

The two companies announced their first partnership Wednesday: Acciona is selling to Mitsubishi a 34 percent stake in a 45.8-megawatt solar farm in Portugal.  This marked Mitsubishi's first investment in a solar power plant, reported Bloomberg. 

Acciona invested €261 million ($330.25 million) to build the solar farm, which it says is the world’s largest, grid-connected solar project using solar panels. It began operation last December. Mitsubishi describes the farm as 53 times the size of the Tokyo Dome and twice the size of Japan's Imperial Palace. 

Acciona is a well-known solar energy project developer that has completed solar installations in various countries, including the United States.

 

Our government passed the $787 billion federal stimulus package to give a boost to a variety of clean energy sectors. But as many of you might have noticed, it can be darn confusing to figure out how and when the money will be distributed.

The California Energy Commission has created a Webpage that it hopes will make it easier for businesses and consumers to learn how they can benefit from the new spending plan. From the Webpage you can sign up for email alerts about programs and their funding. The commission also plans to hold a Webinar about economic recovery soon (date not set yet).

The commission said it expects to get about $295 million for energy efficient and renewable energy programs, including a block grant program to help cities and counties deploy projects to help reduce their residents’ energy use.

The stimulus package includes money for programs that are not under the commission’s jurisdiction, by the way. So check with other relevant state agencies or your own Congressional representatives to get more information.

Some provisions of the stimulus package require the U.S. Department of Energy and Treasury to figure out the rules for doling out the funding for various programs. That will take time. So you are not the only one who is wondering, at this point, how the government can help you out during this recession.

The United Kingdom needs a better electricity grid too, and it's going to cost £4.7 billion ($6.6 billion) over the next decade or so. That's the assessment of a report released Wednesday by the Electricity Networks Strategy Group, a government group looking at how to get 30 percent of the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2020. That means 45 gigawatts of renewable power, of which about 34 gigawatts will come from wind power both on land and offshore, the group said. (The 30-percent renewable goal cited by the group is higher than the U.K.'s overall goal of getting 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020). That, plus adding about 10 gigawatts of new nuclear power generation, will require about 1,000 kilometers of new transmission lines and a host of improvements to the grid, the group said. Integrating new wind projects will require short-term investment in subsea high-voltage transmission cables between England and Scotland, since Scotland is expected to produce more power than it will consume and existing transmission to the south is at maximum capacity, the group noted. Scotland has a goal of making renewable energy 31 percent of its power supply by 2011 and 50 percent by 2020, up from 20 percent today (see Scotland's Green Push Comes From Oil). The U.K.'s grid costs pale in comparison to those in the United States, however. The Edison Electric Institute, an association of investor-owned utilities, estimates the costs of upgrading America's aging electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure to surpass $50 billion by 2012. That estimate does not include the costs of "smart grid" improvements meant to bring two-way communications to the grid to monitor power usage and outages, curb peak demand, reduce blackouts and integrate renewable energy and plug-in hybrid cars into the system, the institute noted (see The Year in Smart Grid). The stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama this month contains $11 billion for smart grid improvements, with $4.5 billion set aside for matching grants for smart grid projects (see Clean Energy, Smart Grid Stay in Stimulus Bill and Obama Signs Stimulus Package). Companies in the smart grid business have said that this kind of federal investment will pay off in hundreds of thousands of new jobs (see Smart Grid Backers Push Investment for Job Growth).

One of the ongoing debates in the green building market is over the future of windows. Should building owners go with windows containing passive films that can keep heat in during the winter and the sun's heat out during the summer or should they go for fancier electrochromic windows that change their tint with the weather? Passive films are cheap and they don't require maintenance once installed. Companies like Denmark's Photosolar (see video here) say they can keep 50 percent of the sun's heat out by inserting a designer film between two sheets of glass. Serious Materials has a new line of windows that it says insulate better than most walls. (Shameless plug: Windows will be one of the several topics at our Green Building Summit in June.) But the problem? Tint, says John Van Dine, CEO of Sage Electrochromics, which makes electrochromic windows. Van Dine, naturally, is a little biased in the debate. He's been working on electrochromic windows since 1989 and the products are just now coming to market, but he makes some great points. Architects and builders put in windows because people want sunlight, he noted. Sunlight is a far higher quality light than comes out of light bulbs. (That's one of the many reasons you look better outdoors than under a florescent bulb in a hotel bathroom.) Passive windows remain in a perpetual shade of gray. Electrochromics go from clear to dark; electrochromics thus get points for quality-of-life. Putting sunlight into a building means running the air conditioner at higher levels. Heating and air conditioning account for about 16 percent of all energy consumed in the U.S. and most buildings are not heated and cooled efficiently, according to several experts. "We do a lot of things because glass is not energy efficient," he said. The energy balance on electrochromic windows is quite good, he says. Darkening a window (which is accomplished by electrically stimulating molecules in a film inside the window) takes only 0.28 watts per square foot of glass; maintaining the tint takes about a tenth of a watt. Controlling 1,500 square feet of glass takes about the same amount of energy as it takes to flip on a 60 watt bulb. You could run much of a building's window system on solar cells. In turn, building operators can turn down the air conditioner. It is also possible to turn down interior lights as the tint decreases. Orchestrating the symphony between sunlight, interior light and the tint of the windows isn't easy, Van Dine concedes, but several companies such as Tririga and Cimetrics are working on building management systems that will make this much easier in the future. And, of course, dynamic controls aren't really feasible with a passive window, he added. Passively tinted windows may also requiring wiring too: Photosolar, among others, wants to add transparent photovoltaic cells into their windows. Wiring? Doesn't this mean that electricians have to work with glaziers to run wires through windows? Yes, but they already are. Security systems that detect window break-ins are wired. The windows cost more than conventional windows right now, but the cost will decline. He admits it has taken a while to get to market. Although dating back to the late '80s, Sage only began very limited mass production in 2002. It recently raised another $20 million from its investors. Either way, we will likely see this debate played out over the next five years. The European Union, California and other jurisdictions have begun to pass more stringent building codes that will require better windows. It will be interesting to see what builders choose.

Aurora Biofuels, which wants to turn ponds of algae into diesel, has appointed Robert Walsh as CEO. Walsh was previously the president of LS9, which wants to use genetically engineered e coli to produce hydrocarbons. Before that he worked for years in the fuel business. Aurora is one of the 50 plus companies trying to turn pond scum into fuel. It was founded by UC Berkeley students in 2007 and says it has been making at least some algae oil since 2007. How much was not stated. The company claims it will be able to show that it's cost competitive with fossil fuels "in the near term" and that it should be producing commercial volumes of fuel in 2012. It raised $20 million last year. The company uses the method that seems to be most prevalent among the algae companies. That is, it grows select strains of algae in water, strains out the water, and the squeezes the oil out of the algae. An acre of algae can produce about 5,000 to 10,000 gallons of fuel a year, far higher than other feedstocks. Sound easy, yes? Acutally, it's pretty tough. There is only one useable cell of algae for every 1,000 parts of water, according to some researchers. Economically straining out that algae is proving extremely difficult. Some algae companies even admit that to make a profit, they will have to sell the meal -- the part of the cell that isn't oil -- to pet-food producers. Solix, one of the early biodiesel companies, says it can make algae oil right now. It costs about $33 a gallon, although in a few years Solix hopes to produce biodiesel at $3.50 to $1.57 a gallon. (Solazyme, which uses a completely different process that doesn't rely on water, says it will be cost competitive in two to three years.) Sapphire, which hopes to make biodiesel from genetically engineered algae, recently participated in a trial with Virgin Airlines. The algae oil, however, actually came from a Hawaiian company called Cyanotech which claims to be completely against genetic engineering. Could Aurora get there? Sure. Will it be tough? Most definitely.