The Clean Energy Generation is making progress every day here in the Southeast, including innovative ways of integrating solar power in our public spaces, homes, and businesses. From picnic shelters with solar-powered chargers to craft beer from solar-powered breweries, our clean energy future is becoming a reality, one solar panel at a time.
Here are just a few stories that have been in the news in recent weeks showing innovative ways solar is being used in the Southeast.
Left photo of solar picnic shelter, courtesy of: Catawba College; Right: Solar Bar in Atlanta, photo courtesy of Rickman Architecture and Design
New picnic shelters give college students a solar-powered charge for their laptops
Catawba College in Salisbury, NC, installed two solar-powered picnic shelters with plans for three more. The shelters provide wireless phone chargers, USB ports, and electrical outlets. Batteries under the picnic tables store three days of energy for when there’s no sun. The picnic shelter roofs hold the solar panels and provide shade. Read more.
Nonprofit installs solar panels, plants flowers along 18 miles of west GA highway
Georgia-based nonprofit The Ray is putting “forgotten” green turf alongside highways to good use. 2,600 panels of solar power now run along an 18-mile stretch of Interstate 85 between LaGrange and West Point. Underneath these solar panels? A meadow of pollinator gardens, inviting endangered bees to pollinate. This win-win-win project is already inspiring similar ventures in Florida, Maine, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Read more.
Solar Bar opening in a converted shipping container
A new solar-powered outdoor bar opened May 20 along the Westside Beltline trail at Atlanta’s Lee and White complex. Powered by 10 solar panels, Solar Bar is housed in a converted shipping container. The panels store excess energy captured during the day in a battery system that keeps the bar up and running all night. Read more.
Right: Chris and Tara Goulet of Birdsong Brewing in Charlotte, photo courtesy of David Boraks, WFAE.
At Birdsong Brewing, climate and environment are part of the business plan
At Charlotte’s Birdsong Brewing, solar panels have been an integral part of the business plan from the start. 220 solar panels supply about 40% of the brewery and tap room’s electricity. As one of the city’s oldest craft breweries, Birdsong is an important case study in the roles environmental sustainability can play for small businesses, and how it can make the workplace happier and healthier. Read more.
Bees and electricity buzz at LaGrange solar power site
While solar panel sites have the potential to impact the open meadows and habitats that pollinators need to survive, Georgia Power’s pollinator project is helping ensure that both bees and butterflies can thrive on land used for solar by packing plants known to attract pollinators, like milkweed and beebalm, between rows of solar panels. Read more.
Classic Center project to be Georgia’s largest municipal rooftop solar energy system
1,600 solar panels are being installed on the rooftop of the Classic Center, a convention center and performing arts theater in downtown Athens, GA. This project will be Georgia’s largest municipal rooftop solar energy system when complete. Read more.
Untapped solar potential on warehouses
The U.S. must take advantage of untapped solar energy opportunities to quickly and sustainably move into a clean energy future. One of those opportunities is on warehouses. There are ~16.4 billion square feet of extensive, flat warehouse roofs across the country (and growing!) – perfect places for solar panel installations. States with the biggest potential in this area include Georgia and Florida, right here in the Southeast! Read more.
Follow along each week
These stories highlight just a few of the positive things happening in our area! Every day we see signs of hope. The Clean Energy Generation is creating a future powered by clean energy that leads to clean air and water, good jobs, and vibrant communities.
Would you like to see more stories like this? We’ve got just the thing for you! Every Thursday, we share the latest clean energy news on Instagram with #CleanEnergyNews. Join us as we celebrate the progress and signs of hope in the clean energy transition.
Join the Clean Energy Generation
Together, all of us who are taking action are part of the Clean Energy Generation movement. We’re coming together to create healthier communities and a more secure and sustainable environment, starting now. No matter your age, income, zip code, or abilities, you can play a role. You don’t have to have the answers, learning more is a great way to start. Join us, and we’ll share ideas, resources, tools, and practices to show how we can all be part of the transformation.
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The post From Breweries to Bees, Signs of Innovative Solar Integrations in the Southeast appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
From Breweries to Bees, Signs of Innovative Solar Integrations in the Southeast
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Vestas V236 Blade Fails, Japan Wires Wind to a Data Center
Allen covers the V236 blade failure at He Dreiht, Maine’s first full-size floating turbine, and Japan’s wind-powered data center.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Happy Monday Everyone
The V236 just had a bad week last week.
a blade failed on one of the turbines at ENBW’s [EN-bay-vay’s]
HE DREIHT [hay DRYT] offshore wind farm
in the German North Sea.
Nine hundred and sixty megawatts.
There are 64 of those V236 machines.
The project hit first power just last November.
ENBW says no one was hurt.
VESTAS says it has launched a root cause investigation.
But a blade failure on your flagship turbine …
at one of Germany’s biggest offshore wind farms?
That will be a headline.
And the industry is watching.
Now … from the North Sea … to the coast of Maine.
The UNIVERSITY OF MAINE has done something
no one in America has done before.
They put a full-size floating wind turbine in the ocean.
And it is delivering power to the grid.
The platform is called VOLTURNUS [vol-TURN-us].
It was assembled onshore … in Brewer, Maine …
then towed thirty miles down the PENOBSCOT [peh-NOB-skot] River
and out to sea.
No specialized heavy-lift vessels.
No deepwater pile driving.
The hull is made of concrete … sourced locally.
Not imported steel.
Eighty percent of the best offshore wind in America
sits over water too deep for fixed-bottom foundations.
Floating platforms like VOLTURNUS
could change that math entirely.
Meanwhile … in Japan …
wind energy just found a brand-new customer.
Data centers.
EURUS [YOO-rus] ENERGY and TOYOTA TSUSHO [TOY-oh-tah TSOO-shoh]
have broken ground on a wind-powered data center
in HOKKAIDO [hoh-KY-doh].
It is the first data center in Japan
directly connected to a wind farm.
The facility sits next to the KOBAOKO [koh-bah-OH-koh] Wind Farm …
forty-two megawatts …
with a private power line running straight to the servers.
And here is the bigger picture.
Japan has most of its data centers packed into Tokyo and Osaka.
HOKKAIDO has the wind … but not the demand.
So instead of sending the power somewhere else …
they are bringing the demand to the wind.
TOYOTA TSUSHO already operates ten wind farms in the region …
more than five hundred megawatts.
They are planning a much larger data center cluster by twenty thirty.
Ten to twenty megawatts of capacity.
And speaking of scale …
China just laid out its five-year plan for renewables.
The target?
A fifty-three percent jump in renewable energy consumption
by twenty thirty.
According to BLOOMBERG …
renewable power use should rise to about
one-point-eight billion tons of coal equivalent …
Wind and solar generation alone
should nearly double …
from two-point-three trillion kilowatt-hours
to four trillion.
And here is the part that matters for reliability.
China wants wind and solar … backed by storage …
to provide twenty percent of electricity
during peak summer and winter evening hours.
That is double the current level.
Three hundred gigawatts of peak generation from renewables.
That is not an aspiration.
That is a published national target.
Now … before we go …
a story from the other end of the scale.
In KONGIGANAK [KAHN-gig-uh-nak] … a village in western Alaska …
they built five wind turbines.
There is no grid connection.
No transmission lines running to the outside world.
For years … the village ran on diesel generators.
The turbines changed that.
But they created a new problem.
Sometimes … the wind made more electricity
than the village could use.
No grid to send it to.
No big battery bank to store it in.
So the engineers came up with something simple.
They put special ceramic heaters inside every home.
When the wind blows hard …
the extra power flows into those heaters.
Dense ceramic bricks soak up the energy as heat.
And when the wind dies down …
that stored heat slowly releases into the house.
In Alaska … where winter never seems to end …
surplus wind power now keeps homes warm
and cuts diesel bills at the same time.
There is a shift in the wind energy business at the moment.
It used to be utilities buying megawatts.
Now it is tech companies buying uptime.
Remote villages buying independence from diesel.
And entire nations buying credibility on their climate commitments.
Each of those buyers has a different definition of reliability.
And every one of them needs turbines that can run for years and years.
The wind industry has never had more demand.
The question is whether the hardware
can keep up with the ambition.
`That is the state of the wind industry
for the twenty-seventh of July … twenty twenty-six.
Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.
Renewable Energy
Examining the Huge Correlation Between Religion and Violence, Ignorance, and Misery
Bertrand Russell reminded us that the primary driver of religion is fear and encouraged us to look at life fairly and honestly. He urged us to try to resolve our mysteries with science, rather than superstition.
Examining the Huge Correlation Between Religion and Violence, Ignorance, and Misery
As shown here, we live in a society that glorifies the very worst traits of the human animal and seems to be on a rocket ride to its own destruction.
Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: Terraformation CEO Yishan Wong On Reforesting 3 Billion Acres
Cook Government must recognise risks posed by Woodside’s Scott Reef drilling plans
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