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PowerSwatch Is in the House |
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We received early production units from our supplier of both the PowerSwatch and PowerPlus2 expansion unit. The PowerSwatch solar charger is a tremendous step forward in liberating mobile electronics from the inconvenience of wall power AC chargers and clunky cigarette-plug car chargers.
We are actively marketing PowerSwatch products to all users of handheld electronic devices, including cell phones, smart phones, GPS units, iPods, cameras, games, iPads, tablet and laptop computers. PowerSwatch is perfect for recreation, travel, sporting events, students, police and military—or any other application where wall power isn't available.
As you know, PowerSwatch users can increase power output in a snap, literally. PowerPlus2 connect to the PowerSwatch via proprietary, patent-pending ZapSnap™ connectors. By snapping the units together, you are also connecting the electrical circuits. There are no cables or wires to plug in, store, break or lose.
In addition to PowerSwatch and PowerPlus2, we will be offering a rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack. This is the perfect solution for after-dark charging and is fully compatible with Apple products like the iPhone and iPad, which are notoriously fickle when it comes to charging devices. In addition to standard and one-amp USB outputs, this new PowerSwatch battery pack also features a handy LED flashlight, making it the perfect emergency power unit.
To reserve your PowerSwatch, simply visit www.PowerSwatch.com. There is no obligation to purchase by pre-ordering. A representative will contact you once the units are available for shipping. You can decline to purchase or order multiple PowerSwatches (while supplies last).
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The Marines Go Renewable |
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The following is an excerpt form an article that ran in Outside Magazine on November 15, 2011 by David Roberts.
The Solyndra solar debacle has some in Congress arguing that government needs to get out of the renewable-power business. Don't tell that to the Marine Corps, the bravest new recruit in the clean-energy revolution.
"It isn't about global warming," says Colonel Bob Charette. "It's about saving lives."
In September 2010, a company of U.S. Marines entered Sangin District, an area in Afghanistan's Helmand province that had seen some of the most intense, protracted fighting of the war. Their mission was to relieve British forces and launch an aggressive effort to clear and calm the area, which was, as the military is wont to say, "highly kinetic." India Company, from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, lost more than two dozen soldiers in the first four months of combat.
Early on in the fighting, First Lieutenant Josef Patterson, India 3/5's second platoon commander, took a small force south to clear a route into the Sangin River Valley. They established a patrol base, but for two months the area remained so volatile that fuel convoys couldn't reach it. Without fuel or battery resupply, the team could have been left with no way to run generators or power radios or computers—a potentially crippling situation. Even in smaller numbers, today's -Marines are considerably more lethal than their predecessors, mostly due to the flexibility enabled by constant connectivity. As Patterson later explained, "If I don't have comm with my troops and my higher-ups, I am lost."
But the soldiers of India 3/5 had another source of power: the sun. Specifically, they had a ground-renewable expeditionary energy system (Greens): four portable modules that fold out into two large solar panels each, all connected to a power cell to store the energy overnight. During field operations away from the patrol base, each Marine also carried a solar portable alternative communications energy system (Spaces), an eight-square-inch flexible solar panel lightweight enough (about 2.5 pounds) to be rolled up and stowed in a pack. Normally, a patrol carries enough batteries to last three or four days—20 to 35 pounds for each grunt—and is dependent on frequent and dangerous resupplies. But with the packable solar panels, says Patterson, his patrol of 35 soldiers shed 700 pounds. "We stayed out for three weeks and didn't need a battery resupply once," he says.
Two of India 3/5's forward patrol bases, in fact, were powered entirely by solar for the duration of the seven-month mission. "We were the only company that had sufficient energy the entire time," says Captain Stephen Cooney, the mission's commanding officer.
At a moment when renewable-energy development faces stiff political and economic headwinds, Marines are making a powerful case for the practical benefits of going green. "To the Marine Corps, it isn't about money or global warming," says Colonel Bob Charette, the hard-charging head of the Marines' two-year-old Expeditionary Energy Office. "It's about saving lives."
THE TACTICAL NEED to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is not new to the Pentagon. In 2003, at the outset of the second Iraq war, General James Mattis commanded the 1st Marine Division during the initial drive to Baghdad. He found himself repeatedly outrunning his own fuel resupply lines, forcing him to slow down to remain fully powered. In a post-combat report that has since become a touchstone for military analysts, he called on the Department of Defense to "unleash us from the tether of fuel."
Mattis's plea served to highlight the extraordinary costs of fuel to the military in Afghanistan and Iraq—in dollars and lives. By some estimates, fully 70 percent of the convoys crisscrossing the theater of war are involved in "liquid logistics," the delivery of fuel and water. In Afghanistan, fuel reaches the front lines via tankers and planes that cross the ocean, trucks from Tajikistan or Russia, and (sometimes) helicopters from forward bases. By the time it gets there, the fully burdened cost can reach anywhere from $30 to an astounding $400 per gallon. Then there are the casualties: one for every 24 fuel convoys, according to a 2009 report by the Army Environmental Policy Institute.
Some 30,000 Marines leave the service every year to reenter civilian life. Soon, every one of them will carry the core conviction that dependence on fossil fuels is a source of risk and that smart energy strategy can be a source of competitive advantage. They will find their way into positions of influence in the private economy and in government, spreading the gospel of sustainable energy into communities where environmentalist is an epithet.
"I was skeptical," India 3/5's First Lieutenant Patterson says of his feelings on renewable energy before his experience in the Sangin District. "But I'm completely sold on it."
Source: http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/natural-intelligence/Natural-Intelligence-Charge.html
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Solar Draws Top Investment Dollars in 2012 |
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By Ucilia Wang, Contributor | January 5, 2012
SAN FRANCISCO -- Venture capital investors put solar on top as the sector that received the most dollars globally in 2011, but a lack of stellar initial public offerings means investors have to pump in more money while waiting for their companies to exit, said Sheeraj Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group, on Thursday.
Investments in solar totaled $1.81 billion in 111 deals in 2011, followed by energy efficiency with $1.46 billion in 150 deals and transportation with $1.12 billion in 61 deals, according to preliminary numbers from the Cleantech Group. Money that solar companies received accounted for about 20 percent of the overall venture capital raised worldwide in 2011, Haji said during a press conference to discuss venture capital investments for 2011.
Two themes have remained true for solar and overall venture capital investments throughout 2011: more money for later-stage deals and fewer attempts to go public.
The top three solar deals of the year went to BrightSource, which raised $201 million, Stion with $130 million, and MiaSole with $106 million. All three California companies already had raised multiple rounds before lining up more funding last year, and BrightSource is waiting to go public.
Solar inverter maker, Enphase Energy, also filed to go public last year but began raising a private round in late 2011.
The focus on late-stage investments means "big investors like Kleiners and Khosla have big companies that require capital that are still private and haven't tapped into the public market," Haji said.
The IPO window narrowed and then was essentially closed in the second half of the year as Europe faced sovereign debt crisis and the U.S. grappled with a weak economy. Many public solar companies saw the values of their shares dive last year. First Solar, the industry bellwether, saw its shares plummet more than 70 percent. Investors aren't likely to feel bullish about any solar IPOs if they don't see the public companies regain their footings, Haji said.
The fact that two of the top three deals involved thin film technology developers also continues what is now a familiar waiting game to see when thin films will gain broader market acceptance and produce hopefully good returns for their investors. Both Stion and MiaSole, along with several other companies working on copper-indium-gallium-selenide thin films, are pushing to either enter mass production or scale up manufacturing significantly. They are using this method in order to compete with companies, particularly those making silicon solar cells and panels, that run factories with hundreds of megawatts of capacities (or gigawatts for the top 10 players).
CIGS companies are pushing the efficiencies of their thin films to rival the silicon variety. But until they do so, they will have to sell their wares at lower prices to entice buyers. Paula Mints at Navigant Consulting has said thin films have to cost on average 12 percent lower than the lowest-cost crystalline silicon panels in order to be competitive.
Corporate investors have played a key part in helping these startups stay in business. Korean companies, in particular, have taken a keen interest in a few American CIGS companies. Part of the $130 million round for Stion came from AVACO, a factory equipment maker. SK Group injected $50 million into HelioVolt. Stion also received $50 million from contract chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., in 2010.
Overall, cleantech companies raised $8.99 billion worldwide in 2011, a 13 percent bump from 2010, according to the Cleantech Group. The number of deals fell seven percent, however. China was the place to be for IPOs: 28 of the 51 took place in China last year. Sinohydro, Sinovel Wind Group and Huaneng Renewable Energy were among the big exits
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Source: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/01/solar-draws-top-investment-dollars-in-2011?cmpid=rss
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GE on Jump Into Solar: 'We're Confident and We're Scaling Up'
—Steve Leone, Associate Editor, RenewableEnergyWorld.com, October 14 |
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Excerpted from a story By DIANA S. POWERS in the New York Times
PARIS — Solar photovoltaic systems have long been painted as a clean way to generate electricity, but expensive compared with other alternatives to oil, like nuclear power. No longer. In a "historic crossover," the costs of solar photovoltaic systems have declined to the point where they are lower than the rising projected costs of new nuclear plants, according to a paper published this month.
"Solar photovoltaics have joined the ranks of lower-cost alternatives to new nuclear plants," John O. Blackburn, a professor of economics at Duke University, in North Carolina, and Sam Cunningham, a graduate student, wrote in the paper, "Solar and Nuclear Costs — The Historic Crossover."
This crossover occurred at 16 cents per kilowatt hour, they said.
While solar power costs have been declining, the costs of nuclear power have been rising inexorably over the past eight years, said Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and Environment.
Estimates of construction costs — about $3 billion per reactor in 2002 — have been regularly revised upward to an average of about $10 billion per reactor, and the estimates are likely to keep rising, said Mr. Cooper, an analyst specializing in tracking nuclear power costs.
From 1943 to 1999 the U.S. government paid nearly $151 billion, in 1999 dollars, in subsidies for wind, solar and nuclear power, Marshall Goldberg of the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a research organization in Washington, wrote in a July 2000 report. Of this total, 96.3 percent went to nuclear power, the report said.
Still, these costs pale in comparison with the financial risks and subsidies that are likely to accompany the next wave of nuclear plant construction, Mr. Cooper said.
A November 2009 research report by Citigroup Global Markets termed the construction risks, power price risks, and operational risks "so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility to its knees."
Those risks were mentioned in a 2009 report by the credit rating agency Moody's. "Moody's is considering taking a more negative view for those issuers seeking to build new nuclear power plants," the report said. "Historically, most nuclear-building utilities suffered ratings downgrades — and sometimes several — while building these facilities. Political and policy conditions are spurring applications for new nuclear power generation for the first time in years. Nevertheless, most utilities now seeking to build nuclear generation do not appear to be adjusting their financial policies, a credit negative."
Adding to the risks facing any reactor construction program, only one of five proposed designs under consideration by U.S. utilities has ever been built, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
"No one has ever built a contemporary reactor to contemporary standards, so no one has the experience to state with confidence what it will cost," said Stephen Maloney, a utilities management consultant. "We see cost escalations as companies come up the learning curve."
"Of the 19 applications at the N.R.C., 90 percent have had some type of delay or cancellation, run into a design problem, suffered cost increases and/or had the utility bond rating downgraded by Wall Street."
For Mr. Cooper, the core issue at stake is one of opportunity cost. "While the cost estimates of nuclear power continue to rise, the potential for energy efficiency measures to reduce the need for energy are far cheaper," he said.
Lower-cost, low-carbon technologies are already available, and cost trends for several others indicate that a combination of efficiency and renewable technologies could meet projected power needs while also achieving aggressive carbon-reduction targets, Mr. Cooper said.
In a June 2009 report drawing on several earlier studies, Mr. Cooper said that energy efficiency, cogeneration and renewable sources could meet power needs at an average cost of 6 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with a cost of 12 cents to 20 cents per kilowatt hour for nuclear power.
Mr. Cooper said it would make sense for policy makers, standing in the place of the market, to choose the least costly alternatives first.
"In an attempt to circumvent the sound judgment of the capital markets, nuclear advocates erroneously claim that subsidies lower the financing costs for nuclear reactors and so are good for consumers," he said. "But shifting risk does not eliminate it. Furthermore, subsidies induce utilities and regulators to take greater risks that will cost the taxpayers and the ratepayers dearly.
"The risks that have dismayed Wall Street should be taken seriously by policy makers because they would cost not just hundreds of billions of dollars in losses on reactors that are canceled, but also trillions in excess costs for ratepayers when reactors are brought to completion by utilities that fail to pursue the lower-cost, less risky options that are available
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"The frantic effort of the nuclear industry to increase federal loan guarantees and secure ratepayer funding of construction work in progress from state legislatures is an admission that the technology is so totally uneconomic that the industry will forever be a ward of state, resulting in a uniquely American form of nuclear socialism."
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/business/global/27iht-renuke.html?pagewanted=all
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