Google.org made big headlines recently with a 10M USD investment into Enhanced Geothermal Systems. In 2006, MIT estimated that 100GW of EGS could be developed within the US over the next 50 years. The future for EGS looks bright, especially when you consider some of the other factors currently in play.
Apple has always put style of substance - and while there was always a few lacking aspects in terms of performance, Apple has pushed the envelope further (in my opnion, now too far) on the style and slacked too much on the substance at the price points.
Google unveiled an energy plan last week, hoping to run the US on mostly clean energy (depending on how you classify Nuclear power) by 2030. To say its extremely ambitious is an understatement. Lets take it apart and see what types of game changing events it takes to make it happen.
How big of an impact will Chrysler make in the EV and RE-EV market? So far, it looks pretty big. I wouldn’t want to be in Ford’s shoes right now.
Today, Chrysler announced three electric vehicles, one of which is set to debut at the end of 2010, about the same time as the Chevy Volt. So what vehicles are they offering and how will they go about getting to that extremely ambitious goal?
This week Chevy unveiled the Volt officially. Also, the Senate is set to take up the renewables and drilling bill this week.
Not much has been going on lately. So I’ve got a few small things to cover…
The Volt completed the EPA fuel efficiency course, and got a lower rating than GM wanted - below 50MPG. However, this completely misses the point of the range-extended electric vehicle, which is to provide a first set of miles on cheaper electricity, then switch to gas as needed. So what to do? How do we classify the vehicle? More importantly, how do you let consumers know how it works and compare this and other future RE-EVs.
A few days ago, Ener1’s CEO said that, given sufficiently large orders to enable mass production of Li-Ion cells, the prices could drop in half, and that the savings could be passed on to the users for use in vehicles. How much of an effect would this have on something like the Volt or a completely plug-in vehicle? Not as much as you might think.
On Thursday, Sunpower, Optisolar and PG&E agreed to a 800MW deal, with undisclosed financial terms. Its a big leap for Photovoltaic solar in terms of scale - previously, utility sized systems (100MW+) were the domain of solar thermal power and companies like Ausra, but with this project, PV systems scale up to utility scale. The question is how much does this really cost…