But it’s the type of thin-film solar panels and where the photovoltaic power plant will be built that foreshadows a potentially sizable business opportunity as well as a way to maximize renewable energy production.

Energy producer Invenergy will build the Grand Ridge Solar project in Illinois adjacent to its 210-megawatt wind farm. (Powered, not coincidentally, by GE wind turbines.)

By pairing wind and solar farms, Invenergy makes more efficient use of the transmission system, given that both sources of electricity are intermittent and tend to hit peak production at different times of day. That helps power grid operators balance supply and demand.

“You put those two together you have a much more dispatchable and local renewable system,” Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s renewable energy business, told me Thursday. “We’ve built 30 gigawatts of wind farms so adding solar is a good utilization of assets.”

Abate says it’s too early to tell how big a market that could be but notes that installing solar at just 10% of those wind farm sites would sell out GE’s solar panel production for the next five or six years.

The company is building the U.S.’s largest solar panel factory in Colorado, which will annually manufacture 400 megawatts of cadmium-telluride thin-film photovoltaic panels. (That poses a competitive threat to First Solar, the industry leader that dominates the market for cadmium-telluride solar panels.)

But GE will be supplying a different type of thin-film solar panels made by Japan’s Solar Frontier to the Invenergy project in Illinois. It’s the second win this week for Solar Frontier’s CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) technology.

On Monday, renewable energy developer enXco announced that it would build a 150-megawatt solar farm in the Southern California desert using Solar Frontier panels near its wind farms in the Tehachapi Mountains. Those wind and solar farms will share a 4,500-megawatt renewable energy transmission line under construction in the Tehachapi.

That is by far the biggest deployment of CIGS technology, which a number of Silicon Valley startups have been working on for years to commercialize as it promises cheaper solar electricity through by lowering production costs.

Source: www.forbes.com

The GE unit would invest USD 50 million – its first renewable energy investment in India – to support the development of 500 MW of wind projects out of Greenko’s planned development of 1 GW of wind projects in India.

Greenko has committed USD 65 million for the venture, a newly created subsidiary of Greenko, known as Greenko Wind Project Private Limited.

This investment expands GE’s presence in one of the world’s fastest growing power markets with a local, proven renewable energy developer,” Raghuveer Kurada, Managing Director and leader of India at GE Energy Financial Services, said.

Greenko is currently developing a pipeline of wind projects in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan, which the new venture, an Indian holding company and Greenko subsidiary specifically set up to develop wind projects, would own.

The first project, the 65-MW Ratnagiri wind farm in Maharashtra, is planned for completion in December and would use GE’s 1.6-MW turbines. The wind turbines, specifically designed for low and medium wind speeds, would be assembled at GE’s facility in Pune.

“Once operational, a 500-MW wind portfolio could generate enough renewable electricity to power 8,75,000 average Indian households and displace 7,00,000 tonnes per year of greenhouse gas emissions,” a GE statement said.

“Wind power is an increasingly important part of the Indian energy market, and through our partnership with GE, a global energy leader, we are well positioned to play an important role in helping to meet the country’s energy needs with clean power using advanced technology,” Anil Kumar Chalamalasetty, CEO and Managing Director of Greenko, said.

Source: www.artcles.economictimes.indiatimes.com

As renewable energy sources begin to supply a greater portion of electricity demand, utilities face the challenge of keeping the lights on when passing clouds idle solar farms or a sudden stillness slows wind turbines. That problem will only grow with the decentralization and distribution of power production among millions of rooftop solar panels and pint-sized photovoltaic power plants.

Standard natural-gas or coal-fired power stations are lumbering beasts that generate steady and reliable electricity but cannot be fired up or down with the flip of a switch. Those that can respond quickly to changes in demand are less efficient.

Enter GE’s FlexEfficiency 50, a 510-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant that is 61 percent efficient and can ramp up at the rate of 51 megawatts a minute, according the company.

“Our power plants will be designed from the ground up for the task of enabling greater uptake of renewable power sources,” Paul Browning, vice president of GE Thermal Products, said on a conference call from Paris, where the FlexEfficiency 50 was launched.

“It signals a future in which natural gas and renewables will work together to bring more clean, affordable and reliable energy onto the grid and into your homes,” he said.

Browning said GE tapped its jet engine technology to design a power plant turbine made from a nickel-based super alloy that can withstand the high temperatures needed to boost efficiency while being able to cycle on and off quickly.

“Think of yourself sitting on the tarmac at Charles de Gaulle airport on your way to Milan,” he said. “The pilot pushes the throttle and the aircraft engines immediately provide maximum thrust. As you climb to cruising altitude, the pilot reduces thrust and cruises to Milan very efficiently. When you reach Milan you do the same thing in reverse as the plane lands and this plane will do this several times in a day.”

“This is the way today’s power plants need to operate,” he added.

The FlexEfficiency 50 can power 600,000 European homes and GE estimates it saves enough natural gas to power an extra 4,000 homes. The power plant will save 1,200 metric tons of carbon annually, the equivalent of the emissions of 600,000 cars, according to GE.

In an interview, Steve, Bolze, chief executive of GE Power & Water, said the FlexEfficiency 50 would be cost competitive with a standard combined cycle natural gas power plant.

GE is launching the power plant in Europe, which has set ambitious renewable energy goals but Browning said the company is eying a global market.

“The number one wind market is in China, the number five is in India,” he noted. “Brazil and other South American countries are investing heavily in renewables and the Middle East is introducing new policy to encourage solar technology.”

“Customers are making 30 year investments with this power plant and renewables are coming to a grid near all of ourselves,” Browning added.

The technology probably will also appeal to utilities in the United States like California’s Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, which must obtain a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

But Bolze said GE doesn’t plan to immediately bring the FlexEfficiency to the U.S. because of a lack of demand for new power plants and uncertainty over renewable energy policy as well as new regulations governing emission of pollutants.

“The big question for the U.S. is what are going to be the EPA regualtions and how is that is going to impact the retirement of coal-fired power plants,” he said. “You do have states like California that are going to need to go with more high-efficiency flexible power and that trend will start to spread across the U.S.”

Source: www.blogs.forbes.com

Así lo detalla Mercury News:

Google and General Electric announced Wednesday that they would work together to push the development of renewable energy.

“We are trying to make renewable energy cheaper than coal energy,” Google co-founder Larry Page said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

The partnership was unveiled at Google’s annual Zeitgeist conference, a two-day think-fest where Google’s business partners are invited to Mountain View to discuss global issues with leaders such as former vice president Al Gore and Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, as well as celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Forest Whitaker.

Against a backdrop of continued financial turmoil, Google’s leaders said their business was in good shape and unlikely to experience a direct impact from the current crisis. “The company has a large amount of cash in very boring investments,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters. As of June 30, Google had $16 billion in cash and securities and other current assets.