Gigantic Wind Turbine With 650 Foot Blades Will Channel the Power of Hurricanes

Maddie Stone

The DOE wants to step up its wind energy game in a big way. And I mean big. Sandia National Laboratories has been tasked with the challenge of designing an offshore wind turbine that can spin out 50 megawatts of carbon-free juice—using 650 foot blades that harness the fiercest winds on Earth.

Take a second to try and picture that. 650 feet is just shy of two football fields. It’s a hundred feet higher than the Washington Monument. And it’s about five times longer than the rotor blades of most offshore wind turbines today, which produce power in the 1-2 megawatt range. (Japan is currently a leader in massive offshore wind structures, with a 7 megawatt beast of a turbine that sports 270 foot-long blades.)

It sounds damn ambitious, but if we want to start generating wind energy at scale, we need to dream big.

And nobody’s better equipped to take on the challenge than Sandia, where engineers have already fleshed out designs for a 13 megawatt turbine featuring 328 foot-long blades. The new “exascale” turbine would essentially be a bigger version of that model, which includes bio-inspired design elements aimed at channeling the world’s most powerful winds.

Fukushima nuclear crisis far from over, Kan says
KYODO
JAN 28, 2016

WASHINGTON – Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant is not over five years since a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered the meltdowns.

“There is no doubt” radioactive materials have been seeping into the sea after mixing with groundwater, Kan, who has been a vocal critic of nuclear energy since the crisis started, told the National Press Club in Washington.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has repeatedly said the issue of water contaminated with radioactive substances at the Fukushima plant is “under control,” including when he was making a pitch for Tokyo as host of the 2020 Olympic Games.

Kan disputes this. “The accident is still unfolding,” he said...

Doubling The Share Of Renewable Energy By 2030 Could Increase Global GDP By $1.3 Trillion

Federico Guerrini


Economic growth and environmental sustainability have often been seen as mutually exclusive. It seemed like countries could not really boost their GDP without sacrificing a bit of sustainability.

A recent report by the Abu Dabhi based International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), tells a different story. According to the research, doubling the current share of renewable energy in the global energy mix would increase global GDP by up to 1.1 per cent, roughly US$ 1.3 trillion, by 2030. And it would reach that goal while increasing, at the same time, global welfare and quality of life.

To better highlight the scale of the financial impact, researchers point out that the amount would be more than the combined economies of Chile, South Africa and Switzerland as of today.

“The recent Paris Agreement sent a strong signal for countries to move from negotiation to action and rapidly decarbonise the energy sector,” said Adnan Z. Amin, IRENA Director-General in a statement. “This analysis provides compelling evidence that achieving the needed energy transition would not only mitigate climate change, but also stimulate the economy, improve human welfare and boost employment worldwide.”...

Over the next five years, France will install some 621 miles (1,000km) of solar roadway using Colas' Wattway solar pavement.


© Wattways

Solar freakin' roadways! No, this is not the crowdfunded solar road project that blew up the internet a few years ago, but is a collaboration between Colas, a transport infrastructure company, and INES (France's National Institute for Solar Energy), and sanctioned by France's Agency of Environment and Energy Management, which promises to bring solar power to hundreds of miles of roads in the country over the next five years.

One major difference between this solar freakin' roadway and that other solar freakin' roadway is that the new Wattway system doesn't replace the road itself or require removal of road surfaces, but instead is designed to be glued onto the top of existing pavement. The Wattway system is also built in layers of materials "that ensure resistance and tire grip," and is just 7 mm thick, which is radically different from that other design that uses thick glass panels (and which is also claimed to include LED lights and 'smart' technology, which increases the complexity and cost of the moose-friendly solar tiles).

According to Colas, the material is strong enough to stand up to regular traffic, even heavy trucks, and 20 m² of Wattway panels is said to provide enough electricity to power a single average home in France, with a 1-kilometer stretch of Wattway road able to "provide the electricity to power public lighting in a city of 5,000 inhabitants."

More at: http://www.treehugger.com/solar-technology/france-pave-1000km-roads-solar-panels.html