Just in time for Al Gore’s major renewable energy challenge Florida’s Public Service Commission has “unanimously and enthusiastically” approved plans to build USA’s largest commercial solar-power plant (so far, we hope). Two other facilities also got the green light by the committee and are due to go online around 2009.

SunPower has been chosen to construct the three solar plants in the state of Florida. Howard Wenger, senior vice president, global business units for SunPower, said that “these agreements confirm the growing trend in the U.S. to build solar power plants at a scale rivaling those in market-leading countries such as Germany and Spain.”

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Yesterday the 15 year old Swedish wind power station Matilda was demolished. Matilda wasn’t an ordinary wind turbine. She was a record-holder.

Since she was constructed 15 years ago on Gotland she has supplied 15000 homes with electricity. Her wind turbines rotated for 61.469 hours and she produced a total of 61,4 GWh. That is more renewable energy than any other single power plant has ever produced.

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Sweden has approved Universal Wind Offshore’s plans to construct Scandinavia’s largest offshore wind farm.

The wind farm will be built in the Kattegatt strait about 30 kilometres off Sweden’s southwestern coast and cover an area of about 60 square kilometres. Once completed the wind farm will be one of the largest in Europe.

The wind farm will consist of a maximum of 108 wind turbines with a height of 200 metres and a capacity of 860 megawatts (MW). The wind farm is expected to produce three terawatt hours (TWH) a year and will double the Swedish wind power output.

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Will your house be solar-powered by “rose-tinted” windows in the future? At least that’s what professor John Bell from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia hopes.

He has worked with Dyesol, a Canberra-based company, trying to develop affordable transparent solar cells that act as both windows and energy generators in houses or commercial buildings.

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The video below shows a windmill in Hornslet, near Århus in Denmark, being ripped apart by… wind. Oh the irony. But it does show the power of renewable energy, and in this case wind power.

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It’s a brand new year for Europe, and for the European Union member states is has started with “tough” greenhouse gas emission targets being set. The new targets require that a certain amount of renewable energy will be installed in every member state. It’s different amounts depending on the size and ability of each and every country.

So how well are the different European countries doing? Well, that’s too early to say right now, but here is a list on the ten countries who have built the most wind plants in Europe last year:

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A Greenpeace campaigner from Spain has reported that wind power have broken all previous records in Spain.

A total of 13908 MW in wind capacity have been built in Spain. And because of good wind conditions wind energy in Spain reached 9563 MW of generated power. “Wind power met 25% of demand at that hour, well above coal (15%) and nuclear (16%). A new record may be expected today.”

As more investments is being re-directed from the fossil market to the renewable market and new technologies and improvements sprung up we will surely see more records and improvements in the efficiency of for example wind energy.

Image credit: Cjohnson7. Image licensed under a
Creative-Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works license.

Here is another clever advertisement. This one is a billboard/solar plant. Yes, you heard right. The billboard has been transformed to a solar plant and generates about 3.4 Kw of electricity during the day. According to Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the owners of the ad, says that is enough electricity for a family of four.

Jennifer Zelwer, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) spokesperson, said that “the energy that is collected by the solar panels actually exceeds the amount used by it on a day-to-day basis.” She proudly (I guess) stated that “this isn’t a billboard. It’s a power plant.”

If I say Mars, what do you think of then? No, the planet Mars is the wrong answer. The correct answer is Magenn’s Power Turbine MARS.

MARS is a new simple solution to produce wind energy, anywhere. According to Magenn their MARS has all advantages over current existing wind turbines.

But how does it work and why is it better than ordinary wind turbines?

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Today the government in UK unveiled plans to build around 7000 wind turbines off the coast of Britain. According to John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, these wind turbines would generate enough electricity for every home in the UK by year 2020.

The new wind farms would not just create 33 gigawatts of clean electricity it would also create jobs and boost the economy by making the UK’s wind industry two times the size of any other countries.

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