Indonesia is pinning their future energy plans on Geothermal Energy. The country is said to be sitting on the world’s largest geothermal source which could theoretically supply 21,000 MW of power. Wow if that’s the case, they should think about stringing some undersea cables and selling power to other ASEAN countries.

They are also in the process of passing laws which will make foreign investment for Geothermal Development more suitable. Foreign investors have been turned off from investing in Indonesia’s Geothermal Energy due to legal uncertainties, financial risks and government bureaucracy

Original Article here

Google plans to install solar panels at it’s Silicon Valley Campus, or more affectionately known as the Googleplex. The 1.6MW that will be generated from their panels will be used to supply 30% of the electric needs of their office. The data centers however, which holds the monstrous data of it’s popular search engine will be excluded from tapping this power source.

Way to go Google! Thanks for going Green!

Original Article here

Researchers of the famous beer company, Asahi Breweries Ltd, have developed a new strain of sugarcane that gives thrice as much ethanol than normal varieties.

Dubbed Monster Cane it stands 3 meters tall and can grow even in poor soil. This variety is expected to produce 37.4 tonnes/ha (less water) which can output 7.1 tons of sugar/4.3 kiloliters of ethanol and 24 tons of bagasse. Conventional varieties can yield 17.4 ton/ha which outputs 6.9 tons or sugar/1.4 kiloliters of ethanol and 7.8 tonnes of bagasse.
Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, great and pleasant news from SunPower. They have developed new solar panel cells which can get 43% conversion as compared to the 25% norm in conventional solar cells.

In effect this lessens the ROI of investing in a solar assembly. Thanks for raising the bar SunPower!

Original Article here