A new solar power plant is coming to Nevada and the project will use two unlikely sources, the sun and salt, to create green energy in a brand new way. On not-so-sunny days, Las Vegas could only wish for some way to bottle up the sun and save it for a day in the future. And therein lays the challenges with solar energy. Enter SolarReserve, a California-based company that says it has the answer: technology that uses salt to store the sun’s energy. And it is making its debut in the form of a solar plant just outside of Tonopah, Nevada. NV Energy’s Director of Renewable Energy Procurement David Hicks explains why salt is one of solar power’s key ingredients. ‘It can store heat and it could store it efficiently. And by efficiently I mean the retention of the heat is for a long period of time. So once you heat that salt up, it loses that heat content on a very slow basis. It doesn’t lose it quickly so it allows you time to shift that energy.’ So even on a not-so-sunny day, Hicks confirms that the technology will still work. ‘When a […]
Santa better check his compass, because the North Pole is shifting-the north magnetic pole, that is, not the geographical one. New research shows the pole moving at rapid clip-25 miles (40 kilometers) a year. Over the past century the pole has moved 685 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Arctic Canada toward Siberia, says Joe Stoner, a paleomagnetist at Oregon State University. At its current rate the pole could move to Siberia within the next half-century, Stoner said. ‘It’s moving really fast,’ he said. ‘We’re seeing something that hasn’t happened for at least 500 years.’ Stoner presented his team’s research at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting last week in San Francisco. Lorne McKee, a geomagnetic scientist at Natural Resources Canada, says that Stoner’s data fits his own readings. ‘The movement of the pole definitely appears to be accelerating,’ he said. Not a Reversal The shift is likely a normal oscillation of the Earth’s magnetic field, Stoner said, and not the beginning of a flip-flop of the north and south magnetic poles, a phenomenon that last occurred 780,000 years ago. Such reversals have taken place 400 times in the last 330 million years, […]
CHICAGO — The Illinois Commerce Commission has approved a plan that would allow the agency that buys electricity on behalf of utility customers to seek proposals for long-term wind-power contracts. The commission on Monday voted 3-1 to allow the Illinois Power Agency to negotiate the long-term deals with renewable power developers for up to 3.5 percent of the utilities’ electricity needs. But the commission also wants the Illinois Power Agency to meet with interested parties to discuss concerns that renewable energy contracts could drive consumers’ electricity bills up. Wind power developers have pushed for the contracts even though wind power is currently pricier than more conventional sources of energy.
The scriptures refer to reaping the whirlwind. That certainly describes Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson after the first state-wide poll since the controversial deal he cut in exchange for his deciding vote on the Senate health care bill. A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that if he were running for re-election today, Mr. Nelson would lose to Nebraska’s GOP Governor David Heineman by a stunning 61% to 30%. Only three years ago, Mr. Nelson won his current term with a solid 64% of the vote. Clearly, the senator’s fall in public esteem is a direct reaction to his having voted for the health care bill as part of a deal in which Nebraska was exempted from the costs of new federal Medicaid mandates. The ObamaCare bill was already unpopular enough in Nebraska but became even more so when state residents discovered they would be saddled with it anyway, plus exposed to national ridicule over Mr. Nelson’s sweetheart deal. Now 53% strongly oppose the bill, while another 11% somewhat oppose it. Only 17% favor the deal that Mr. Nelson struck in order to vote for the bill. But the poll also shows a path to redemption. Asked how they […]
The world’s largest solar-powered building have been built in China, precisely in the area of Dezhou, Shangdong Province, northwest of China. This magnificent office building known as the Sun and the Moon Altar micro-row buildings will serve 95 percent of energy needs for the building itself. The building have area of 75,000-square-meter and equipped by 5000 square meter of solar panel array that located on the building complex. The building that have architecture of Chinese characters for sun and moon only use 1% of steel to the Bird’s nest with the roof and wall insulation system that consume 30% less energy than the national energy saving standard. To show the impression of clean energy and green, the building exterior has been painted with white color of the entire building so that the impression of green would look at the entire building complex. The office building have modelled after the sun dial structure and has a complete facilities that is supported by green energy. It has facilities such as space for exhibition centers, scientific research facilities, meeting and training facilities and a sustainable hotel also equipped with the solar hot water, a solar desalination plant and a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
