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Tesla Model S Hits The European Market | CleanTechnicaTesla’s nearly universally lauded Model S is now finally available in the European market! The first deliveries of the award-winning EV began earlier this week. The first man on the continent to get his Model S was apparently a Norwegian man by the name of Frederic Hauge — who was also, apparently, the first man to have an electric car imported into Norway, all the way back in 1989!
Shortly after the delivery of his new Tesla Motors Model S Signature Edition car, Mr Hauge was quoted as saying: “As Europe’s first owner of the Tesla Model S, I am very proud to be a pioneer.” With such a nice car, who wouldn’t be?
The latest NPD Solarbuzz Module Tracker Quarterly has been released and shows that quarterly solar photovoltaic (PV) module shipments for the second quarter of 2013 exceeded 5.8 GW, a 21% growth over second quarter-2012 levels.
The figures released in the latest report represent the shipping levels for the leading 20 PV manufacturers around the world, and will finalised over the coming weeks.
It is expected that many Chinese tier-one manufacturers broke their quarterly module shipment records this most recent quarter, including companies Yingli Green Energy, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, Renesola, and Hanwha SolarOne.
Furthermore, it is believed that Yingli Green Energy have reached 0.8 GW of shipments in the second quarter, a figure which would represent a new world record for any one single PV provider.
Read more at Hybrids Take 7% of California Market, Tesla Outsells Buick, FiatArticles about sales figures are always weird, especially when they’re broken down into regions. Consider that Tesla’s Model S is out-selling Buick, Fiat, Land Rover, and Lincoln in California — the most populous state in the union and home to about 1 in 8 of all Americans. It’s a trend-setter, in other words, and had Ferraris named after it years before the Midwest knew what a Ferrari was. What do these numbers mean, then? No idea, but they’re neat to look at!
The state of California has just released its new vehicle sales numbers for the first half of 2013, and the big winner so far is the Tesla Model S, with 0.6% of the overall market share. That may not sound like much, but — in California — it’s more than Buick (0.5%), FIAT (0.5%), Land Rover (0.5%), Lincoln (0.3%), and Mitsubishi (0.3%) did in the same time, with stronger dealer networks, more existing customers, and a lower initial pricetag!
Also of note in the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA) report, hybrids accounted for just over 7% of overall sales for the first time, up from 6.2% in 2012 and 4.8% in 2011. TreeHugger writer Michael Graham Richard also noticed that, “Somewhat surprisingly, pure electric cars are doing better than plug-in hybrids with 1.1% of the market and 9,708 units vs 0.7% and 5,736 units,” giving more evidence to my claim that many EV buyers consider plug-in hybrids like the Toyota Prius and Chevy Volt as “half-measures” towards an electric-car future.
A BMW X5 hybrid has been spotted with a distinctive-patterned test vehicle paint job. It was known to be a hybrid because of the presence of a hybrid emblem and an electrical receptacle for charging, which also makes it seem likely the BMW X5 will be a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).
BMW intends to unveil the eDrive version of the X5 (the very first one at that) at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show. According to BMWBlog, the hybrid version of the X5 will be very similar to the gasoline and diesel versions. It has a turbocharged 4-cylinder engine and an electric motor. If production of this vehicle commences, it is likely to be available in the US next year, following the release of the BMW i3 and BMW i8 (which was also just recently spied testing) to become BMW’s third electric car. Below is one photo. For more, check out BMWBlog.
The rapidly changing nature of Australia’s coal-fired electricity grid has been highlighted by a new report from the Australian Energy Market Operator, which reports that all new electricity generation proposals received in the last 12 months have been either for large scale wind farms or solar facilities.
In its annual assessment of Energy market opportunities (known in the industry as ESOO, or Electricity Statement of Opportunities), AEMO notes the pivotal of renewable energy sources in the National Electricity Market, and in particular the influence of rooftop solar.
In the past year, the building out of residential rooftop solar totaled 774MW across the NEM (which includes the eastern states and South Australia, but excludes WA, the Northern Territory,Mt Isa and other isolated networks). Solar analysts expect a similar amount of rooftop solar to be installed in 2013/14, despite the removal of most subsidies.
A lot happens in America every four minutes. During that short time period, 30 babies are born, 4,080 McDonald's Big Macs are consumed, and 48,000 tons of CO2 are emitted.
And as it turns out, the U.S. is now installing one solar photovoltaic (PV) system every four minutes as well. If market growth continues at its current pace, the American solar industry could be installing a system every minute and twenty seconds by 2016.
That's a dramatic difference from 2006, when installers were only putting up one system every 80 minutes. Shayle Kann, vice president of GTM Research, documents the accelerating speed of solar deployment in the chart below:
Grocery merchants in Texas, California and New York will soon have ice cream, frozen foods and fresh produce delivered by tractor trailers whose refrigeration units are powered by fuel cells, a clean technology that makes energy silently and with dramatically reduced emissions.
Out in a parking lot by the San Francisco Giants' ballpark, KLD CEO Christian Okonsky explains that the basic electric motor, that used by automakers like Tesla in its electric cars, has not changed much in 100 years. Then he shows me a teardown of KLD's electric motor, this one employing radical features such as a stator broken down into multiple, modular components.
Okonsky's chief scientific officer, Ray Caamano, takes over, diving deep into electrical engineering terminology of which I can follow a bit before my brain starts humming the theme song from "Speed Racer." It's heady stuff but it seems to make sense.
KLD has not only developed a new electric motor, but also come up with a battery pack and power control module, tying the whole system together as a drivetrain for electric cars. This approach, developing battery, control, and motor together, is something I've also heard from Tesla engineers. In an electric car, the pieces are just too interdependent to develop separately, then mix and match.
And Okonsky thinks he has something more efficient than Tesla's, or any other automaker's, drivetrain.
To back it up, he says that KLD's electric drive system, called OneDrive, can get the same range from a 3-kilowatt-hour battery pack as other systems get off of a 5-kilowatt-hour pack. Because of this greater efficiency, KLD uses what Okonsky tells me are power cells, rather than energy cells, for the OneDrive battery.
Read more at Nearly 40,000 New Green Jobs Created Across America During 2Q 2013Clean energy and sustainable transportation projects launched this year created nearly 40,000 new green jobs in America during the second quarter (2Q) of 2013.
From renewables to energy efficiency and public transportation, America’s transition to a clean energy economy is well underway, reports the latest green jobs report from Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2).
Read more at The Next Prius Will Hopefully Achieve 55 MPGFor more than ten years the Toyota Prius has been the overwhelming champion of fuel-efficient cars, with no competitors coming even close to its 50 mpg combined mileage. But the competition among fuel-efficient cars has grown exponentially in the past few years, and in order to stay on top Toyota needs to deliver more efficiency for less money, with a goal of 55 mpg.
The new Toyota Prius has been hinted to arrive around 2015, and will be the first to roll on Toyota’s New Global Architecture platform that includes a lower center of gravity and better structural rigidity. To put it simply, this new platform is stronger, and less likely to roll over. The new architecture will also allow Toyota to lower the price of the Prius by spreading development costs over a wider range of models.
But who cares about safety when we can talk sexier advancements, like a smaller electric motor that makes more power, and a gasoline engine that could achieve 40% thermal efficiency. That would make it one of the most efficient engines in the world (many gas engines have around 28 to 30% thermal efficiency, losing a lot of energy via heat). Toyota is also said to be working on a new kind of electric motor that uses fewer rare earth elements, decreasing the automaker’s reliance on China.
Next Toyota Prius Will Hopefully Achieve 55 MPG
Read more at The Next Prius Will Hopefully Achieve 55 MPGFor more than ten years the Toyota Prius has been the overwhelming champion of fuel-efficient cars, with no competitors coming even close to its 50 mpg combined mileage. But the competition among fuel-efficient cars has grown exponentially in the past few years, and in order to stay on top Toyota needs to deliver more efficiency for less money, with a goal of 55 mpg.
The new Toyota Prius has been hinted to arrive around 2015, and will be the first to roll on Toyotas New Global Architecture platform that includes a lower center of gravity and better structural rigidity. To put it simply, this new platform is stronger, and less likely to roll over. The new architecture will also allow Toyota to lower the price of the Prius by spreading development costs over a wider range of models.
But who cares about safety when we can talk sexier advancements, like a smaller electric motor that makes more power, and a gasoline engine that could achieve 40% thermal efficiency. That would make it one of the most efficient engines in the world (many gas engines have around 28 to 30% thermal efficiency, losing a lot of energy via heat). Toyota is also said to be working on a new kind of electric motor that uses fewer rare earth elements, decreasing the automakers reliance on China.
The US solar photovoltaic (PV) industry just keeps shining, with rising demand across the country pushing installed capacity in second quarter (2Q) 2013 up 24% compared to first quarter (1Q) 2013.
America added 976 megawatts (MW) of new solar PV capacity in 2Q 2013, according to the NPD Solarbuzz North America PV Markets Quarterly report.
Solar PV demand is expected to continue growing through 2013, but roughly 75% of this new capacity is concentrated in just five states – evidence of the impact smart state policy can have on renewable energy.
In a recent announcement, the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Energy claimed that around 13,200 solar systems have been installed in rural Ethiopia over the past nine months. These systems are based on distributed power technology as there is no grid connectivity in those areas.
The program is a part of a project launched in December last year at a cost of about $11 million secured from the World Bank. The project aims to power a total of 25,000 households across the country by the end of November this year. With current installation of 13,200, the project has successfully crossed the halfway milestone.
The Ministry’s Director of Public Relations, Bizuneh Tolcha said that the installation “will provide enough power for lighting, mobile phones, computers and a solar fridge for each home.”
Ethiopia has suffered badly over the last few years from energy crises due to depletion of its oil and natural gas reserves. In 2009, less than 10% households had access to electricity. To overcome this situation, the government had come out with an ambitious dam building program which aimed to produce 1.18 GW from three dams. The current program of solar system installation in the rural areas will further improve energy access in the country.
Development of Tiny Thorium Reactors Could Wean the World Off Oil In Just Five Years | Popular ScienceAn abundant metal with vast energy potential could quickly wean the world off oil, if only Western political leaders would muster the will to do it, a UK newspaper says today. The Telegraph makes the case for thorium reactors as the key to a fossil-fuel-free world within five years, and puts the ball firmly in President Barack Obama's court.
Thorium, named for the Norse god of thunder, is much more abundant than uranium and has 200 times that metal's energy potential. Thorium is also a more efficient fuel source -- unlike natural uranium, which must be highly refined before it can be used in nuclear reactors, all thorium is potentially usable as fuel.
The Telegraph says thorium could be used as an energy amplifier in next-generation nuclear power plants, an idea conceived by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia, former director of CERN.
Read more at Nissan Leaf & Chevy Volt Both Break Their US Monthly Sales Records | CleanTechnicaThe month of August was a good one for plug-in electric car companies. Two of the three leading electric cars (in terms of sales) broke their US monthly sales records last month (we don’t have monthly sales numbers for the other one).
The Nissan Leaf’s new all-time best is 2,420, while the Chevy Volt’s new all-time best is 3,351
The August sales results also now put the Chevy Volt (14,994) ahead of the Nissan Leaf (14,123) in cumulative 2013 sales. The two cars have been trading places at the top for the past few months or so. It feels like the last stretch of an important race in a Hollywood movie, imho.
2013 Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt sales are leagues above their 2012 sales. As regular readers know, the US Leaf tantalized the market with a $6,400 price cut in January (thanks to the start of production within the US, which cut costs tremendously), while the Chevy Volt finally did the same last month with a $5,000 price cut (which may not have been as warranted as the Leaf’s).
Offshore wind took another major step toward becoming reality in America yesterday with the second-ever competitive lease sale to develop renewable energy in federal waters.
Virginia Electric and Power Company, a subsidiary of Dominion Virginia Power, won the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) auction to develop 112,800 acres about 23 miles from Virginia Beach with a final bid of $1.6 million.
Wednesday’s auction was the second successful DOI offshore wind lease sale held in a month, after a July 31st auction of 164,750 acres in New England, and could signal the start of a rush to develop new tracts of wind-rich areas off the Atlantic coast.
.potential breakthrough has been made with regard to waste heat recovery — potentially boosting vehicle mileage by around 5% and boosting power plant and industrial processing performance by up to 10% — thanks to new research from the University of Houston’s physics department and the Texas Center for Superconductivity.
The researchers there have found a non-toxic substitute for the lead that’s used in thermoelectric devices based on lead-containing telluride. Such devices — while possessing great thermoelectric properties — can’t be used on the commercial scale because of the significant health issues that accompany the use of lead. The non-toxic substitute — tin telluride, doped with the chemical element indium — is nearly as effective as the lead-containing telluride
