Industrial Revolution 2

How to turn blueprints green

Open-source program developed at MIT allows architects and engineers to optimize a building’s energy systems early in the design process

via How to turn blueprints green.

GridPoint

Project Extends Xcel Energy and GridPoint Business Relationship

ARLINGTON, VA – Nov. 18, 2008 – GridPoint, Inc., a leading clean tech company whose smart grid software platform benefits electric utilities, consumers and the environment, announced today that Xcel Energy selected GridPoint’s software platform to control the flow of power between the grid and a NGK Insulators’ sodium-sulfur battery storing wind energy. When fully charged, the one-megawatt battery will hold approximately 7.2 megawatt-hours of electricity, potentially powering 500 homes for over seven hours. This is the first U.S. application of the battery as a direct wind energy storage device.

The GridPoint Platform applies information technology to the electric grid to provide utilities with an intelligent network of distributed energy resources that controls load, stores energy and produces power. It will allow Xcel Energy to explore using real-time grid conditions and energy pricing to determine when the battery charges or discharges. Based on system regulation and pricing signals received by the software platform, the battery’s charging behavior will be adaptively controlled. When the demand for electricity is high, as an example, stored wind energy could be automatically discharged to the grid, supplementing the power flow. When demand is low, the software platform could issue commands for the battery to store the available energy. (more…)

300 mpg. Top speed of 90 mph. Around $30,000. Check out this Popular Mechanics video.

Title: End-to-End Electricity Conference presented by Greentech Media
Location: NYC, NY
Link out: Greentech Media
Description: End-to-End Electricity will examine the fundamental ways that renewable energy is reshaping the power market today, and provide a close examination of where investment and innovation is succeeding and where critical gaps have emerged.
Start Date: 2008-11-17
End Date: 2008-11-18

Robert Pollin, Univ. of Massachusetts – Amherst Economics Professor:
To the house committee on pensions and jobs:

Energy efficiency (government) investments… Seems to be no brainers. We are dealing with known technologies. An example is retrofitting existing buildings… We can invest in retrofitting the public sector buildings starting tomorrow. There are 800,000 construction workers who have lost their jobs. We can put them back to work. We can get these projects going. They are relatively short term projects. And they will pay for themselves… on average, you’ll see a full return on your investment within about 5 years.

With respect to renewable energy. In regards will tax credits. We do know that renewable energy tax credits which you had stalled and now you’ve restored* are very effective. The market is very responsive… the last time you held back on the renewable tax credits and then increased them we saw a doubling, for example, in investments in wind energy. So those things are there before us.

I do think that the first priority… in the energy area … is energy efficiency. And you’ll get the most jobs. It will be done fast. The technologies are there. And you will fight global warming. You will increase energy independence. You will create a lever against future rises in the price of oil.

* He’s referring to the Renewable Energy Tax Credits extension that were blocked in the Senate after a republican filibuster.

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Sustainable Construction, Sustainable Economy, Green Jobs