At nearly every electric vehicle or smart grid conference, someone in the audience asks the question about just how clean electric vehicles are given that they are probably fueled by coal power […]
PI News Feed
Construction of the Largest U.S. Geothermal Heat Pump System Underway
A groundbreaking geothermal heating and cooling project shows that these super-efficient heat pumps are gaining traction. Construction of the largest ground-source geothermal heating and cooling system in the United States is now […]
Solar Power for Your Shower! Business Models for Third-Party Ownership of SWH
Earlier this week I discussed the market penetration of solar water heating (SWH) in the United States and how states and utilities are incentivizing these systems. This article discusses how the private […]
Top Three Reasons Cheap Natural Gas Won’t Kill Renewable Energy
I’ll be the first to admit that cheap natural gas prices are one of the biggest short-term threats to deployment of renewable energy in the U.S. today. With a glut of gas […]
Negative prices in wholesale electricity markets indicate supply inflexibilities
Wholesale electricity markets sometimes result in prices below zero. That is, sellers pay buyers to take the power. This situation arises because certain types of generators, such as nuclear, hydroelectric, and wind, […]
New Financing Models have Potential to Revolutionize Commercial Solar Water Heating Market
Last month, SEPA released a new study titled, “Heating Up: The Impact of Third Party Business Models on the US Market for Solar Water and Space Heating.” The report profiled the emergence […]
Germany: 36 per cent of electricity in to be generated from renewables by 2020
The energy market in Germany will see dramatic changes during the next few years. With the nuclear energy capacity halved, the landscape to 2020 will look very different with renewable energy to […]
NRC Approves Two New Georgia Plants: Is Nuclear Back?
For the first time in 34 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the construction of new nuclear plants. Southern Co. and subsidiary Georgia Power have received approval to move forward with […]
The Quest for ‘Hydricity’
In the 1980s and ’90s, hydrogen fuel cell technology seemed like a strong candidate for use in cars and stationary applications, converting hydrogen to electricity with no emissions beyond a puff of […]
Ontario leads Canada with installation of geothermal heat pump or “geo-exchange” systems, but residential lags commercial market
Wind and solar technologies may hog the spotlight (and subsidies) in Ontario, but behind the scene geo-exchange heating and cooling systems are being quietly deployed by the thousands across the province every […]
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