Clean Energy's posts with tag: cheap
April 22, '08  (IsraelNN.com) The Infrastructure Ministry has announced a mammoth project that will supply Eilat with almost of its needed electricity by using a solar power station. Approximately 3,000 acres will be set aside for the project. Ministry officials said that there are very few cloudy days in Eilat that would require using electricity from the Israel Electric Corp. (IEC). The ministry also said that the Negev and Arava will be given first preference in other projects to promote solar energy. The generating capacity of IEC often is pressed to its limits, causing brownouts and blackouts in peak periods of demand during the hot summer months and during cold spells in the winter.
|  | September 30, 2007 The electric car is being resurrected. Amid the global threats of pollution, oil funded terrorism, and 'peak oil', the Western world is looking to replace fossil fuels with clean, renewable sources of energy.
| | | Cornucopians are becoming extinct; scientists, engineers, politicians, and oil tycoons have recognized that we have used 50% of the world's oil supply in less than 150 years, and with China and India ramping up their industrial economies we may run out of our most used energy source in far less time. A full circle energy solution would include fully renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric along with efficient machines to plug into those systems. In other words, the West desperately needs a futuristic approach to life without oil. Enter Israel.
A country minuscule in size and barren of natural resources, Israel has succeeded in defending herself from a barrage of existential military threats while becoming a leader in the global economy. Great in intellectual capital, Israel has developed the world's largest solar power plant (from which PG&E has agreed to purchase 553 megawatts of power, enough power for 400,000 Bay Area homes), as well as the world's largest water desalination plant. She has the greatest number of companies listed on the NASDAQ other than the United States and Canada, has raised the greatest amount of venture capital funds second to Silicon Valley, and has the greatest number of scientific research papers published per capita.
The latest project comes from an Israeli who wants to use Israel's 'gift of enterprising' to help humanity wean off of oil. Shai Agassi, former executive at German software enterprise company SAP AG, is leading a new team of minds into not-so-charted territory. Agassi completed military service in Israel as a programmer for the IDF, and then earned his bachelors degree in computer science from The Technion in Haifa. Venturing into the business world, he later sold the most successful of his software startups for over $400 million to SAP, where he continued working until March 2007.
What he was up to next was first reported in August by Reuters - holding company Israel Corporation agreed to invest $100 million in Agassi's new electric vehicle venture, pending due diligence, with several other investors; the first round funding is $200 million, bringing the total value of the venture to $300 million. The company is stealthily named BetterPLC, a reference to an automated method of manufacturing.
The electric car is a major component of the energy paradigm shift: one where the world relies mainly on renewable sources of energy, thereby reducing the human effect of global warming, shifting the currency balance away from Muslim terrorists, and declawing the menace of peak oil.
"Our goal is to get to 100,000 cars on the road in 2010," said Agassi. He believes that since Israel has an 89% tax on vehicles, and a 100% tax on fuel, if there were zero emissions and zero fuel, there would be zero taxes on cars.
"You tell an Israeli that Israel will be the first country to eliminate the use of oil, and they sign up," Shai said in a speech given at Stanford University. But he realizes that the electric car won't stop in Israel, "If we can do it Israel, and it works, we can create a repeatable model that maybe then works in London... and then we can hopefully do it 50 times in China."
And about powering the new fleet, "We actually think there is a missing entity in the automotive industry that would create, effectively, ubiquity of electrons. Ubiquity of charge. Somebody that will guarantee you that wherever you go, you can charge your car... [and] actually be cheaper for you than buying a fuel-based car."
President Shimon Peres has reportedly told Shai's company along with other vehicle manufacturers that the Israeli government would be willing to provide grants and tax-benefits for the construction of electric vehicle factories.
Every dollar generated by these clean energy plants is a dollar not spent on oil, and a barrel of oil not burned. This makes for a win-win situation for capitalists and for environmentalists.
Within 5 years Israel should be shipping the first electric automobile ready for mass adoption. If the Israeli car succeeds in the marketplace it will have potential to reduce anti-Semitism in the world, and further legitimize Israel's standing.
The reputations of German and Japanese automobiles have certainly diluted American memories of old wars; if the Israeli car is as reliable as its German and Japanese competitors, then maybe it can dilute Arab memories of past wars, and be the car we all ride towards peace.
And in the future people will no longer ask who killed the electric car. They'll ask who killed the internal combustion engine. And the answer will be: Shai Agassi, Israeli.
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| IsraGood Posted: 20 Sep 2007 12:54 AM CDT  (Hat Tip: Israel Times, Image Credit: Inhabitat.com)Hy (Chaim) Brown whose notable projects include constructing Disney World in Florida, as well as the World Trade Towers (that were sadly destroyed on 9/11, 2001) may be making yet another mark upon humanity by constructing affordable solar houses for "the rest of us." (Jerusalem Post) The model of the 70-square-meter houses, which he says can be added onto as families expand, was the brainchild of his engineering students at the University of Colorado, where he commutes to teach. They twice won a US government-sponsored competition to create a workable home that runs exclusively on solar energy, the second time for building one that families could afford.
The house, fully equipped with appliances - including dishwasher, washing machine, refrigerator, oven and tailor-made items such as a Shabbat heating plate (or, for Beduin needs, a courtyard for livestock) - costs $50,000, and can be assembled from start to finish in two weeks. All it requires to run efficiently, says Brown, is four days of sun per month. Though perfect for the climate of the Negev, the house can be erected anywhere.
"My idea is to dream big," he says. "Who knew we'd have Israel?" Although a 70-square meter house may not be a dream home for some individuals and families, this type of housing may appeal towards the lower income families, especially since they come with "free" electricity. | sss
By Judy Siegel September 05, 2007 Israel21C.org
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Prof. Arie Zaban: This will mark the beginning of a whole new path that combines independence from fossil fuels with a greener, more sustainable future.
| | A Bar-Ilan Univeristy nanotechnology expert has invented a photovoltaic cell - which produces electricity from the sun's rays - that could be dramatically cheaper to produce.
The cells, which are composed of metallic wires mounted on conductive glass, can form the basis of solar cells that produce electricity with efficiency similar to that of conventional, silicon-based cells while being much cheaper to produce, says Prof. Arie Zaban, head of BIU's nanotechnology institute, who has just patented the technology.
The design is based on nanotechnology, which makes use of microscopic structures, and originally involved cells with an area of less than one square centimeter. But, Zaban said, his research took a "giant" step forward when he increased the size of the cells to 100 square centimeters.
"Initially, we created linked arrays of very small cells, which led to a loss of efficiency because the sunlight hitting the space between the cells was not converted to electricity," Zaban explained. With much more surface area, the new array actively captures the sun's energy and becomes "a practical choice for solar energy production," he said.
Zaban's cells feature a sponge-like array of microscopic "nanodots" arranged on flexible plastic sheets. The key to his system is the use of standard semiconductor material injected with an organic dye, which makes it become energy absorbent. Orionsolar, a Jerusalem-based company that has entered into a partnership with Bar-Ilan, is developing commercial applications for inexpensive, dye-based photovoltaics based on Zaban's work.
"Given the state of the technology, I believe that the new solar cells will be available commercially within the next five years," he said. "This will mark the beginning of a whole new path that combines independence from fossil fuels with a greener, more sustainable future."
Another of his recent discoveries involves reducing the amount of platinum used in photovoltaic cells, another important step towards reducing production costs. "We've found a way to produce platinum nanodots ... [which] reduce the amount of platinum needed by a factor of 40," he said.
"Cost is an important factor in the success of any solar technology," Zaban explained. "To become widely adopted, solar cells must generate electricity at lower cost than what we now spend on fossil fuels. At the same time, we have to make the basic infrastructure extremely affordable - because the third-world countries that stand to reap the most benefit from solar power usually lack the money to invest in it. By making cells more efficient and keeping material costs down, nano-based techniques are moving us closer to that goal." |
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