MORE SUNDAY WORLD, 1-11 (PORTUGAL STARTS UP SOLAR POWER PLANT; NEW ENERGY IN INDIA; ETHANOL APALLS AUSTRALIA; S. AFRICA’S WIND MAP)

PORTUGAL STARTS UP SOLAR POWER PLANT
Acciona Energy Connects $367 Million PV Power Plant in Portugal
December 30, 2008 (Clean Edge News)

“ACCIONA Energy has put into service its photovoltaic power plant in Amareleja (Moura, Portugal). The Company has invested around 261 million euro ($367 million) in the 46 MWp plant. Amareleja is capable of producing 93 million kWh a year equivalent to the electrical consumption of over 30 million Portuguese households and will avoid the 89,383 tons of CO2 emissions a year that would have otherwise been produced by the coal-fired power stations…The plant was constructed in just thirteen months…"

Acciona's Amareleja 46 megawatt installation. (click to enlarge)

“The Amareleja PV plant is 100 percent owned by ACCIONA…the plant covers a total area of 250 hectares, located in the parish of Amareleja in the municipality of Moura, in Portugal's Alentejo region, not far from the border with Spain. It has 2,520 Buskil trackers (ACCIONA in-house technology)…Each tracker has 104 polycrystalline silicon modules with a capacity of 170 and 180 Wp, and the trackers support a total 262,080 PV modules. The trackers follow the sun…

”The first 3 MW were installed at the end of 2007, and were connected provisionally in March 2008. This year has seen the installation of the remainder of the plant's solar field and the construction of the evacuation line, and last week the plant was finally connected to the grid…An average 150 workers worked on the plant's construction, with a peak of almost 500 workers at certain moments.”


NEW ENERGY IN INDIA
Gujarat pushes green energy; Over Rs 80,000 crore investment lined up in solar, wind energy
Maulik Pathak, January 9, 2009 (Business Standard)

“Gujarat is all set to emerge as one of the greenest states in the country! The government has chalked out a massive plan to add about 7,000 Mw of renewable energy in the next three to four years, attracting investments to the tune of about Rs 80,000 crore.
Gujarat is already among the top four states using renewable energy, having an installed capacity of about 1,400 Mw…

“The state government has recently come out with a separate solar power policy under which it proposes to purchase 500 Mw of solar power every year at an agreed cost…

“AES Corporation, a US-based Fortune 500 company, has firmed its plans to invest about Rs 6,000 crore for setting up “world’s largest solar project in the state by 2010” after going through the new policy…The size of the plant would be about 1,000 Mw.

“Clinton Foundation, headed by former US president Bill Clinton, which has initiated trials in Kutch with the Tata Energy Research Institute (Teri), is mulling a 5,000 Mw solar project in the state at an investment of over Rs 70,000 crore…

“The state government offers tariffs of Rs 11 and Rs 13 per unit for solar thermal and PV cells, respectively. This tariff is given for a period of 12 years, after which a tariff of Rs 3 per unit is offered for another period of 13 years.

“In wind power, the state currently ranks third but is aiming to overtake Maharasthra and Tamil Nadu in the next two to three years by generating over 5,000 Mw of wind power…The state is expected to draw investment to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore in the wind energy sector…The players… include…Abellon Bioenergy…Suzlon…NTPC… and Enercon…”


ETHANOL APALLS AUSTRALIA
Ethanol as a biofuel - immoral, costly and stupid
Ron Leng, 07 January 2009 (ScienceAlert)

“…biofuel development in nearly every country in the world has intensified in recent years with potentially devastating consequences for the sustainability of the planet - let alone our food supply…

“…the NSW State Government mandated the inclusion of ethanol in transport fuel in a program that will cost the Australian taxpayer $200 million per year. The result will be no net gain in transport fuel, a massive increase in pollution and a huge demand on our critically scarce water supplies…

“… the USA… mandated 15 billion gallons of ethanol for transportation purposes to be blended with petroleum by 2015 at a subsidy of some $US60 billion dollars each year…[with] a subsidy of 46 cents per gallon and an import tariff of 51 cents per gallon to protect US farmers against ethanol from Brazil."



“This will use up around 40 per cent of US maize production and will virtually dry up net grain exports, inevitably forcing up the price of cereal foods and food products dependent on grain such beef, poultry and pork worldwide.

“The main victims of this will be the poor…This means that to the subsidy the taxpayer pays to the biofuel industry must be added the great cost of increasing pensions, the dole and other social support measures so people can feed themselves…The development of biofuel from cereals is an extremely damaging development because it does not yield any more transport fuel then is used…

“The misuse of water for biofuel crops alone should disqualify this particular use, given the location of Australia’s wheat growing areas and the critical water balance in these areas… “


S. AFRICA’S WIND MAP
Wind map opens way for clean energy
Tony Carnie, January 7, 2009 (IOL)

“The winds of change are starting to spin faster for the country's fledgling clean energy industry, with work about to start on the first comprehensive wind resources map of the South African coastline…one of the main obstacles to the growth of this technology is the lack of information about the most suitable sites for wind turbines.

”The four-year wind atlas research project, partly sponsored by the Danish government, will plot wind speeds and frequencies along the 3 000km coastline.

”Work is due to begin later this month and the first draft map is expected by early 2010…

”…Eskom confirmed plans to begin construction of a 100MW wind-energy farm at Koekenaap in the Western Cape later this year…The Koekenaap project and the existing wind farm in Darling will generate little more than 0.3 percent of Eskom's present capacity of 40 000MW of electricity.

”However, energy analysts suggest that the Koekenaap project could give the South African wind-power industry a significant boost - particularly if the successful supplier erects a domestic assembly line for wind turbines in South Africa…

”The wind atlas project will be conducted jointly by the University of Cape Town, the Royal Danish National Wind Resource Institute, the South African National Energy Research Institute and the Department of Minerals and Energy…”