June 27, 2008

Talk of the graying utility workforce is starting to get old. Now the language is focused more on pending opportunities -- the need to fill futuristic energy jobs.

It's a critical period in the utility sector. Investment in infrastructure and new technologies has been lagging but is expected to catapult in the coming years. That type of capital influx is now increasingly driven by environmental regulations, necessitating the development of clean generation and smart grid technologies that create energy efficiencies. But labor shortages are looming that could lead to project delays.

June 25, 2008

Record high gas prices are firing up new research. The goal is to commercialize electric vehicles capable of going long distances before they would need fuel.

Hybrid vehicles that run on both electricity and gasoline are now a reality. If the price of gas remains historically high and with the appropriate government incentives, such transportation could become a lot more pervasive and lead to a possible reduction in carbon emissions. Clearly, soaring energy demand and technological advancements have given the all-electric vehicle added potential.

By Tom Raum, Associated Press

June 24th, 2008 WASHINGTON — Like two rival filling-station owners across the highway in long-bygone price wars, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain keep putting up flashy signs and offering new incentives in hopes of attracting customers battered by $4 gas prices.

McCain is offering a summer break from the 18.4-cent federal gasoline tax, and holding out the promise of more offshore drilling to help you drive more cheaply to the beach. He wants to build 45 new nuclear reactors to generate electricity. On Monday, he proposed a $300 million government prize to anyone who can develop a superior battery to power cars of the future.

He may even wash your windows.

If you pull into the Obama station, he'll promise you cash back from the windfall-profits tax he plans to slap on Big Oil. Check the tires? How about promises to go after oil-market speculators who help drive up prices as well as big subsidies for solar, wind, ethanol and other alternative-energy projects? The Illinois senator likens his energy package to the Kennedy-era space program.

Oil and gas prices that have doubled in the past year have squeezed aside the war in Iraq as the No. 1 issue this election year and both parties are blaming each other for the price spike -- and for apparent congressional paralysis.

NEWARK, N.J., June 23, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ ----In the first proposal of its kind to be filed under New Jersey's new legislation that addresses regional greenhouse gases, Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) today unveiled a new program designed to curb customers' energy consumption, resulting in lower customer bills and a meaningful reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

The innovative filing with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) was made today under the recently enacted Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) legislation, which encourages utilities to invest in conservation and energy efficiency programs as part of its regulated business. The legislation, signed into law on January 13, 2008, requires the BPU to review and act on the filing within 180 days.

March 6, 2008

Imagine if homeowners could print out plastic sheets of solar cells on inexpensive printers. Imagine further that the solar sheets could be plastered over the roofs of houses and generate electricity – acting in a sense like mini-power stations for the houses. Such a technology would be an enormous boon to American’s growing environmental movement.

And that is the aim of Somenath Mitra, a professor of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences, who is experimenting with a solar cell derived from polymers that could one day power not only houses but cars, laptops and other consumer computers. Mitra’s solar research was featured in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry,

The company says that its coater can produce up to 1 gigawatt of solar cells each year, potentially cutting manufacturing costs by two orders of magnitude.

June 18, 2008

Nanosolar said Wednesday it has created the industry's largest solar production tool: a thin-film coater that has the capacity to produce up to 1 gigawatt of solar cells annually.

That compares with 10 to 30 megawatts of annual production capacity for most solar production tools, CEO Martin Roscheisen wrote on the company's blog.

The tool, which uses the Nanosolar's nanoparticle ink, costs $1.65 million and - at the speed at which it's currently running, 100 feet per minute -- produces cells for a hundred times less than a high-vacuum process, he wrote.