Sci-Tech Energy

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New projects are underway that, if proved successful, could greatly expand the areas considered viable for solar power.

Until recently, it wasn’t considered possible to have a solar array on farmland where crops are grown. Solar arrays on farmland were relegated to grazing land or pollinator habitats, but, according to CleanTechnica, things are quickly changing.

The revolutionary new belief that crops and agrivoltaic arrays can live in harmony is in no small part thanks to the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program. The program provides funding for hundreds of projects, including a $713,000 grant for Talbott Farms, a peach farm in western Colorado, as reported by CleanTechnica.

Those funds will go toward building a one-acre, 420-kilowatt agrivoltaic array on a peach orchard and will power the farm’s entire peach packing and processing operation, according to the Daily Sentinel (via CleanTechnica). That’s significant for a family farm.

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Excerpt from news.google.com

An incredible sight has overtaken a field near Guazhou County in China’s Gansu Province: almost 30,000 moving mirrors pointed at two huge central towers. This is China’s new dual-tower solar thermal plant, Interesting Engineering reports.

Solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity are becoming a familiar sight all over the world. Solar thermal energy is a little different.

Instead of using solar panels, this new plant uses its thousands of mirrors — each reflecting up to 94% of the light that hits them — to focus a huge amount of sunlight onto the relatively small area of the towers, Interesting Engineering explains. That produces an incredible amount of heat — so much that similar solar-gathering methods can be used for smelting.

Like coal-fired and nuclear power plants, the solar thermal power plant uses the heat to turn water into steam. The rising steam then turns turbines, which generate electricity.

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Excerpt from www.ecns.cn

In the vast, semiarid region near Postmasburg, in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province, construction of one of the country’s biggest renewable energy power plants is nearing completion.

The Redstone Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Project is expected to begin trial operations soon, eventually generating enough energy to power 200,000 households in South Africa, and thereby greatly alleviating the country’s acute power shortage.

Energy has been a major area of cooperation between China and South Africa over the past years. During President Xi Jinping’s visit to South Africa in August, in the presence of Xi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the two countries signed a number of cooperation deals in Pretoria, including agreements on emergency power, investment in renewable energy and the upgrade of South Africa’s power grids.

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Excerpt from www.wvpe.org

The United States’ pivot to biofuels is releasing large amounts of hazardous air pollution into largely rural communities, according to a new report. The Environmental Integrity Project is calling for the end of biofuel subsidies and improved regulations of the industry’s emissions.

The report said biofuels — like corn ethanol and biodiesel from soybeans — released almost as much total hazardous air pollution as oil refineries in 2022. But unlike fossil fuel plants, biofuels have nearly twice the threshold before they’re mandated to install pollution controls.

Courtney Bernhardt is the director of research for the Environmental Integrity Project.

“It means that rural communities, largely across the Midwest, near biofuel manufacturing plants often suffer from unhealthy air quality,” Bernhardt said.

The report said lax regulations on these plants are harming the environment and communities they’re in, despite the industry’s “green-washing.”