Three years ago, Danielle Fong, a PhD student at Princeton, hit on an idea for a better way to store clean energy.

Today, her clean-tech company LightSail has earned some heavyweight support from both venture capital firms and angel investors, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

The startup pulled in $37.3 million to deliver a better system to store energy generated through the wind and the sun. Holding energy for commercial use has been tricky — makeshift solutions include electrochemical batteries, mechanical devices, and liquefied air.

“The overall problem of how to store large amounts of energy is one we’ve been working on for a century without a lot of success,” co-founder and CEO Steve Crane told the Wall Street Journal.

“Since there is little capacity to store energy, green power is sold when available, instead of at the highest price,” the company’s website explains. To simplify the problem, the founders use the example of a “hot day in Texas.” Electricity prices typically sour — but what about green power? If solar farms could store energy cheaply, they could deliver it when needed.

The method that was dreamed up by Fong, LightSail’s young co-founder (she subsequently dropped out of her PhD program, which she enrolled in at the age of 17) involves a combination of water and compressed air. The technique is known as ”isothermal compression.” To test the idea, the founders built a system that stores and releases energy by compressing and expanding air in an old warehouse in Oakland.

Competitors include General Compression and SustainX, which are working on a similar technology and have pulled in government funding.

The challenge for all these companies will be to overcome investors’ reluctance to fund clean-tech startups. Return on investment (ROI) is choppy, if not a complete disaster. Many investors will point to solar company Solyndra, which raised close to $1 billion before declaring bankruptcy, as an example of what the clean tech sector can do to good money. Tax payer losses on that investment may be as high as $849 million. Last month, high-tech battery-maker A123 Systems, which under the Obama administration received almost $250 million in federal energy grants (note: it drew down $132 million of that grant), followed Solyndra into bankruptcy.

Investors include Bill Gates and Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, as well as Khosla Ventures. The three-year-old company has raised a total of $52.3 million in funding.

Image via Shutterstock

Record Hill Wind will also build an eight-mile transmission line between the farm and transmission equipment in a nearby town. A study by the U.S. Department of Energy found that building transmission lines to move the power once the turbine starts running is one of the major hurdles wind energy faces. It was one of the reasons wind energy production fell last year, according to a report by the Department of Energy.

“In the last 5 years, the cost of utility-scale wind had actually been going up because of those transmission costs,” Pike Research analyst Peter Asmus told VentureBeat. “But that looks like it’s reversing, my sense is that the market is leveling off, the costs are starting to decline.”

Maine previously hosted a fight between Vinalhaven Island residents and a wind power provider over noise pollution generated by the turbines. Wind power providers typically face “not-in-my-backyard” complaints from residents in rural areas. Residents argue sounds from the wind turbines are disruptive and that the turbines make for flickering lights because they block out the sun.

An independent study by the Maine Department of Environment Protection found the noise from the wind turbines on Vinalhaven registered somewhere between 46 and 47 decibels. The night-time noise pollution limit for areas in Maine is 45 decibels. A typical conversation registers in at around 60 decibels, while typical street traffic registers in at around 70 decibels.

A University of California Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy showed property values were, at worst, unaffected when wind power farms were installed near each home. While there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted, home sale prices as a whole were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area, according to the report.

A loan guarantee from the Department of Energy helps companies attract buyers and investors for new renewable energy projects. It means the government will foot part of the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to produce some kind of return for investors. It’s one of the ways the U.S. government is promoting renewable energy — though they are more important for less-certain projects.

“I think the loan guarantees are more critical for projects like concentrated solar projects than for large wind farms,” Asmus said. “If the loan guarantee program were to fade away — I think that’s possible — I think that would have a larger impact on other technologies than large wind.”

The loan guarantees are one of the financial engines powering many cleantech investments in Silicon Valley. The U.S. Department has invested more than $40 billion in clean technology projects like wind and solar power farms. Yale University Endowment also invested an undisclosed sum in the wind power project.

Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett-Packard, Clarkson University and a New York state energy research group have banded together to test the idea. All of the parties will deploy some of the data centers like this and study whether they can be sufficiently powered by either wind or solar power.

“We want to develop more renewable energy sources for future data center computing needs,” said Steven Kester, AMD’s director of government relations and regulatory affairs, in an interview.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the rest of the team will study critical questions of how to maintain reliable power for these data centers and how to automatically shift a computing load between the data centers. The study is being funded by a $374,000 NYSERDA grant and private funding sources. AMD engineers developed the proposal with Clarkson University.

Students will run experiments on effectively managing data through a distributed network powered by renewable energy, said a project manager at NYSERDA, in an interview. Then the second phase of the project will incorporate the hardware, including HP’s performance-optimized data center (POD), which uses AMD’s Opteron processor chips for energy-efficient cloud computing.

The whole point is to create cloud computing capability with distributed computing as well as distributed power generation, said Kester. The key challenge is to get enough power to the data centers with relying on a traditional power grid is a key challenge, particularly because these data centers are usually located in big cities. Wind power generators, on the other hand, are usually located in remote areas where the wind is plentiful.

Ultimately, the goal is to co-locate dynamic energy sources with dynamic computing sources to improve the economics, performance, and environmental benefits of wind power and portable data centers. HP created its POD data centers in a box to be modular, so customers can easily order more of them to deal with fluctuating computing demands. They can be quickly added to places with aging infrastructure, limited space and shrinking budgets — even as computing demands increase. The PODs are easily removed and serviced, and they have their own heating and cooling systems, as needed.

HP recently added a new POD solution, dubbed the EcoPOD, which can offer 95 percent greater energy efficiency compared to traditional data centers. HP will lend its expertise in energy-efficient design to the experimental project, which will take place in the Hudson Valley in New York.

“Electrical power demands for data centers are skyrocketing,” said Kester. “As demand for data centers goes up, we see a collision coming as the electrical grid hits its limit. The power consumption will be a restriction on the industry. The costs will be unsustainable. The question is how do we get to 100 percent independence from the grid.”

The company is finalizing its term sheets for the remaining $10 million of the round, which should be closed sometime later this week, Aquion Energy’s vice president of business and market development Ted Wiley told VentureBeat. He confirmed that Foundation Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers participated in the round.

“Everybody is just going through term sheets,” he said. “It’s not a question of if, just when it clears all the legal hurdles.”

The company creates batteries that can operate at a wide range of temperatures (between -10° C and 60° C) and use sodium ions rather than lithium ions to carry a current. The batteries cost less than $300 per kilowatt-hour of electricity stored, compared to between $500 and $1,000 per kilowatt-hour of electricity found in most modern lithium-ion batteries. The batteries are designed to last for more than 5,000 cycles — running from a full charge to a full discharge.

Aquion Energy strings the batteries together into arrays of 8 or more batteries that carry 15 volts. The company can also stack those arrays together in a circuit in series or parallel configurations to create a battery fixture that carries 100 volts. Aquion Energy plans to introduce strings that can carry 1,000 volts by the fall.

Batteries like those produced by Aquion Energy are useful because they can store electricity generated by non-conventional sources — such as wind turbines or solar panels — and release the electricity gradually. That helps alleviate strain on a power grid that might be overloaded if too many sources of energy feed electricity into the grid all at once. The batteries can also release additional electricity in peak-demand times, such as hot days or in the future when there are thousands of electric car chargers on the grid.

“We are electron source agnostic, these are batteries for any kind of grid, any stationary energy storage,” Wiley said. “We would be interested in telecom backup markets, off-grid renewables, all the way up to peak shaving and grid-level services.”

The company has raised $5 million from a mix of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a loan from the Department of Energy. It has a production plant in Pittsburgh, Pa., that is producing demonstration models of the batteries. The company plans to create a high-volume production facility sometime next year that will produce enough batteries to store 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The average cost of installing new wind power held steady in 2010, while the cost of other forms of electricity fell, according to the report.

The cost of installing wind turbines and transmission lines also hasn’t yet caught up with the declining prices of wind turbines. Most wind turbines produced today use a three-blade design, but a number of companies are experimenting with two-blade designs and other designs that are cheaper to manufacture and generate an equivalent amount of electricity.

“Over time everybody coalesced around the same design, but we’re starting to see a lot of diversity again,” said Peter Asmus, a senior analyst with clean technology research firm Pike Research. “We’re seeing lots of vertical axis machines, which a lot of people are skeptical of, and we’re also starting to see some two-bladed machines coming back in.”

The key problems remain building and maintaining new transmission lines, according to the report. It’s easy enough to generate electricity from a wind turbine, but more difficult to move it from point A to point B. It’s a problem that all new types of renewable energy face, Asmus said.

Wind power providers also face concerns about “not-in-my-backyard” complaints from residents in rural areas. There are concerns from a lot of rural residents that the sounds from the wind turbines are disruptive, and that the turbines make for flickering lights because they block out the sun. That has a lot to do with the location of the turbine, because on paper the turbines should not generate that much noise, Asmus said.

“Generally what I’ve heard is that the sound of the wind itself drowns out the sound of the turbine,” Asmus said. “It’s about terrain, the residents get reflections of sound, or they live in something like a valley where the sound ricochets off rocks.”

An independent study by the Maine Department of Environment Protection found the noise from the wind turbines on Vinalhaven registered somewhere between 46 and 47 decibels. The night-time noise pollution limit for areas in Maine is 45 decibels. A typical conversation registers in at around 60 decibels, while typical street traffic registers in at around 70 decibels.

A University of California Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy  showed property values were, at worst, unaffected when wind power farms were installed near each home. While there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted, home sale prices as a whole were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area. Recent complaints show that wind power companies are not doing a good enough job showing the overall impact of wind power turbines on local property taxes.

The United States fell far behind China in terms of wind power added last year as well. China added 18,928 megawatts worth of wind power last year, compared to 5,113 megawatts worth of wind power in the U.S. That means China now generates more electricity from wind power than the United States as of the end of last year. China now generates 44,781 megawatts worth of wind power, compared to 40,267 megawatts worth of wind power generated in the United States.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led venture capital firms in the number of fundraising rounds. The venture capital firm participated in a total of 12 rounds, including those of electric bus manufacturer Proterra and iControl Networks. Draper Fisher Jurveston had the next highest number of investments at six fundraising rounds.

Companies that produce technology that helps increase energy efficiency through the use of more advanced computer algorithms that plug into the “smart grid” led the clean technology sector in the second quarter. Those companies brought in $428 million in investments, including efficient lighting systems Bridgelux’s $80 million round led by Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital.

Most firms invested in North American-based companies. Those companies raised $1.42 billion in the second quarter this year, down 10 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. Californian companies led the region by bringing in $611 million in venture capital investments.

Nearly a dozen companies made their debut in public trading in the second quarter this year, bringing in about $2 billion in funding. Algae-based biofuel maker Solazyme made the biggest splash in U.S.-based markets after making its debut on the NASDAQ stock market. That company raised $227 million in its initial public offering.

Here’s a breakdown of the clean technology sectors that received funding:

Energy Efficiency: $428 million across 38 deals, led by Bridgelux’s $80 million funding round.

Solar Power: $363 million across 27 deals, led by solar panel manufacturer Suniva’s $94.7 million funding round.

Biofuels: $237 million across 12 deals, led by trash-to-fuel company Enerkem’s $60 million funding round.

Transportation: $176 million across 9 deals, led by luxury hybrid electric car maker Fisker Automotive’s $100 million funding round.

Typical wells extract oil by flooding the well with water to increase pressure and push the oil out of the well. Glori Energy is able to extract an extra 30 to 45 percent of oil left over in existing oil wells by flooding the wells with nutrients that encourage microbes to grow in the wells. Those microbes alter the flow of the oil temporarily, making it easier to extract oil from the wells.

That removes the risk of having to drill additional wells to capture more oil. Oil drilling — particularly offshore drilling — came under fire last year after an explosion destroyed an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the well to spew millions of barrels worth of oil into the Gulf.

Energy Technology Ventures is a financial venture-backed by General Electric, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips. All three companies are known for investing in clean technology projects and providing the technology for renewable energy sources like wind and solar power projects. For example, GE is the top supplier of wind turbines for some of the nation’s largest wind power farms. But the three companies are still also investing in traditional energy sources like oil and natural gas.

There are subsidies that bring the cost of electricity produced from renewable energy sources closer to that produced by fossil fuels. But energy generated by fossil-fuel burning methods is still cheaper than energy from renewable sources like solar and wind power.

Aggressive spending and expansion in clean technology would generate 1.1 million new jobs by 2030 and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent, according to a new report by Google. If the U.S. employs more federal mandates and provides funding for clean technology projects, those projects will generate 1.9 million jobs and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent, the report states.

By 2050, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by 55 percent without federal mandates and funding for clean technology projects. The U.S. will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 63 percent if the government introduces aggressive clean technology policies.

Google’s report focuses on two ways to increase the funding for clean technology projects. The first is a model in which the U.S. government aggressively expands its clean technology policies and increases the amount of nuclear power deployed. That model also assumes that there are additional carbon-capture projects deployed in the U.S.

The second model, which would have less of an impact than government intervention, involves taxing carbon emissions at $30 per ton. That would bring up the cost of power produced by plants that use coal, natural gas and other types of fossil fuels. It would bring the cost of electricity and power from those plants to something comparable with renewable energy sources like wind power and solar power.

With government intervention, clean technology spending would increase the United States’ GDP by around $244 billion per year and reduce household costs by $995 annually. With carbon taxes, the United States’ GDP would increase by $155 billion per year and U.S. consumers would save $942 annually.

Google has thus far invested $780 million in clean energy projects, $700 million this year alone. Google’s clean energy investments don’t come out of the company’s traditional investment arm, Google Ventures. Instead, the money comes from the company’s main treasury and is invested by the company’s Green Business Operations team. Google typically makes financial investments in clean energy projects that will generate some kind of return, but it has also made investments that have resulted in power purchase agreements — meaning Google uses the renewable energy to power its own data centers.

France will also commit €1.3 billion to renewable energy projects. Sarkozy said that the moratorium on nuclear power did not make any sense and that there were no alternatives to nuclear power that were cleaner than fossil fuels available today.

Germany recently announced that it would shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. But that country is also one of the countries most advanced in deploying solar and wind power. Germany was the largest investor in clean technology projects in Europe in 2010, investing $41.2 billion in clean technology startups, double what it invested in 2009. Switzerland, too, has said it does not plan to replace its nuclear power plants when they are no longer functional, according to The Guardian.

Concerns about nuclear power hit a crisis point when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan in March. The quake cut off power to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and a tsunami that followed took out diesel generators designed to keep power going to the plant. That meant clean water was no longer pumped into the reactor, causing the whole system to overheat.

The crisis in Japan also did not change the investing thesis about clean technology, according to a number of leading venture capitalists and researchers. Fears of a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan sparked a rally in clean-energy stocks — particularly solar power stocks. But that brief surge quickly waned and never touched the private investment community, because venture capitalists typically focus on longer-term plays.

Despite the Fukushima situation, the US government plans to continue funding nuclear power projects as part of a push to promote energy that is cleaner than that produced by fossil-fuel-burning plants. President Barack Obama and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu have also lobbied hard to bring nuclear power to the forefront as a potential alternative to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

[Photo: Guillaume Paumier]

Google previously invested in the Alta IV project, which would generate 102 megawatts of power. This time the company is investing in the Alta V project, which will generate an unannounced amount of power. The deal does not involve a power purchase agreement — meaning Google is only investing money in the project because it believes it will generate some kind of financial return. The first several projects in the Alta Wind Energy Center are already complete, and the wind farm is generating 720 megawatts of power.

Google has thus far invested $780 million in clean energy projects, $700 million this year alone. Google’s clean energy investments don’t come out of the company’s traditional investment arm, Google Ventures. Instead, the money comes from the company’s main treasury and is invested by the company’s Green Business Operations team. Google typically makes financial investments in clean energy projects that will generate some kind of return, but it has also made investments that have resulted in power purchase agreements — meaning Google is the company that is using the renewable energy to power its data centers.

Google and Citi are purchasing the Alta V site from Terra-Gen, the original manufacturer of the project, and will lease it back to Terra-Gen as part of the deal. Terra-Gen will operate and manage the wind farm under a long-term agreement.

This wind farm might bring California more in line with other states in terms of wind energy usage. Though the state is known for its leaning toward renewable energy, it only harnesses the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Iowa is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

The Alta wind farm will be one of the largest of its size, generating a gigawatt of power when all scheduled projects are completed by the end of the year. The Alta Wind Energy Center will generate 1.55 gigawatts of power when every project is completed and the wind power farm is fully online.

The wind farm will be located in northern New Hampshire, a rural area around 110 miles north of Concord. The project could generate enough electricity to power 20,000 homes, but it could also draw resistance from local residents.

Other wind power projects have been slowed or killed after nearby residents complained that the turbines generated noise pollution and hurt property values. In Wisconsin, regulators delayed a proposed wind power project long enough to compel the operating company to back down. Connecticut killed a 3.2-megawatt wind farm after complaints about noise and flickering lights compelled state regulators to strike down the plan. And a wind farm in Maine may soon shut down because of a similar argument.

An independent study by the Maine Department of Environment Protection found that noise from wind turbines on Vinalhaven, a rural island off the state’s coast, registered between 46 and 47 decibels, just above the nightime noise pollution limit of 45 decibels. A typical conversation registers in at around 60 decibels, while typical street traffic registers in at around 70 decibels.

A University of California, Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy showed property values in general didn’t decline when wind power farms were installed near homes, although it noted that individual home prices could be affected.

While some states are fighting tooth and nail to keep wind farms away from populated areas, others are welcoming them as a source of renewable energy. California produces the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Ohio is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

The Energy Department offers loan guarantees to help companies attract buyers and investors for renewable energy projects. Under the guarantee, the federal government will foot the bill if the project does not take off or is unable to get some kind of return for investors.

The batteries can quickly store energy brought in from solar power and wind power projects and release that electricity during peak load times. The batteries work by flowing a conductive solution that has free-floating ions by an electrode in an electrochemical cell. That causes a chemical reaction, inducing a current that can transfer electricity across a power grid. If the process is reversed, the battery stores electricity.

Primus Power is one of several companies funded by the U.S. government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E). It’s a part of the U.S. Department of Energy that provides funding for companies that are working on green technology projects that don’t have the same market appeal of more mainstream projects — such as solar power and electric cars. The ARPA-E said it would inject $130 million into green technology companies this year.

Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital also participated in the most recent funding round. The company received funding from ARPA-E as part of the agency’s GRIDS project last year, which was created to fund technology capable of improving large-scale power grid energy storage. The U.S. Department of Energy also awarded Primus Power a $14 million grant as part of a $47 million wind energy storage project in California in 2009.

The Hayward, Calif.-based company was founded in 2009 and has 30 employees.

That means Maine could be the next state in a growing list of states that have summarily killed proposed wind power projects due to “not-in-my-backyard” complaints. Wisconsin regulators caused enough delays in a proposed wind power project to compel the owning company to back down from the project over concerns that the wind turbines would damage home property values. Connecticut became the most recent state to kill a wind power project after complaints about noise and flickering lights compelled state regulators to strike down the plan for a proposed 3.2-megawatt wind farm.

An independent study by the Maine Department of Environment Protection found the noise from the wind turbines on Vinalhaven registered somewhere between 46 and 47 decibels. The night-time noise pollution limit for areas in Maine is 45 decibels. A typical conversation registers in at around 60 decibels, while typical street traffic registers in at around 70 decibels. Fox Island Wind has actually had to increase its electricity rates by 1 cent per kilowatt-hour to pay for the legal scuffle.

This is a familiar argument for wind power companies — many residents complain that the large wind turbines can be an eyesore and will bring down property taxes. The Maine residents complained the noise from the turbines and the flickering sunlight as a result of the turbines blocking out light would end up damaging property values and are causing harm to local residents. Other states have argued that placing wind turbines too close to a home or neighborhood will damage property values.

A University of California Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy  showed property values were, at worst, unaffected when wind power farms were installed near each home. While there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted, home sale prices as a whole were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area. Recent complaints show that wind power companies are not doing a good enough job showing the overall impact of wind power turbines on local property taxes.

At this point, wind power companies need to change their plan of attack — the “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) complaints are not going to go away any time soon.

Companies like Fox Island Wind (the company responsible for the turbines in Maine) need to find some new way to address these complaints or make the environmental benefit of wind turbines more obvious if they want to win over residents like those in Maine. The land that wind turbines occupy can also be used for agricultural purposes, such as for crops or grazing land. Wind turbines are also a bit of an iconic image for renewable energy — that’s something that these companies can stress when proposing the plans to local residents.

While a number of states are fighting tooth and nail to keep wind farms away from neighborhoods, many states have embraced them as a source of renewable energy. California —which is known for leaning toward renewable energy — harnesses only the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Ohio is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

The farm is located in Tehachapi, Calif., “where the Mojave sands meet the Tehachapi Mountains,” according to a blog post by Google’s renewable energy guru Rick Needham. The deal does not involve a power purchase agreement — meaning Google is only investing money in the project because it believes it will generate some kind of financial return. The first several projects in the Alta Wind Energy Center are already complete and the wind farm is generating 720 megawatts of power.

This wind farm might bring California more in line with other states in terms of wind energy usage. Though the state is known for its leaning toward renewable energy, it only harnesses the third most wind energy in the United States at 3,179 megawatts of power, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Texas is the largest provider of wind power, generating 10,135 megawatts of power, while Iowa is the second largest with 3,675 megawatts of power worth of wind turbines.

Google’s clean energy investments don’t come out of the company’s traditional investment arm, Google Ventures. Instead, the money comes from the company’s main treasury and is invested by the company’s Green Business Operations team. Google typically makes financial investments in clean energy projects that will generate some kind of return, but it has also made investments that have resulted in power purchase agreements — meaning Google is the company that is using the renewable energy to power its data centers.

“It’s from the founders, they have a keen interest in clean energy and making sure we’re moving toward a clean energy future,” Needham aid. “It bubbles up from the bottom too, there are a lot of people at Google sensitive to resource use — it’s part of our ‘don’t be evil’ strategy.”

Google is specifically investing in the Alta IV project — which will generate 102 megawatts as part of the Alta Wind Energy Project — as part of the deal. Google and Citi are purchasing the Alta IV Terra-Gen, the original manufacturer of the project, and will lease it back to Terra-Gen as part of the deal. Terra-Gen will operate and manage the wind farm under a long-term agreement.

This is a familiar argument for wind power companies — many residents complain that the large wind turbines can be an eyesore and will bring down property taxes. The Connecticut residents complained the noise from the turbines and the flickering sunlight as a result of the turbines blocking out light would end up damaging property values. Connecticut is the latest addition to a group of states that have summarily killed proposed wind power projects due to “not-in-my-backyard” complaints.

In reality, those complaints are more ethereal. A University of California Berkeley study funded by the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy showed property values were, at worst, unaffected when wind power farms were installed near each home. While there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted, home sale prices as a whole were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area.

Instead of facing regulators head on, wind power providers might have to alter their strategy to be able to combat the “NIMBY” argument. That could include making the impact on local property values much more obvious when lobbying local regulators to install wind turbines. The land that wind turbines occupy can also be used for agricultural purposes, such as for crops or grazing land. Wind turbines are also a bit of an iconic image for renewable energy — that’s something that these companies can stress when proposing the plans to local residents.

Most of these local governments still want wind power, which includes the Connecticut Siting Council that just rejected the project. Each new wind farm creates jobs for the area because they are mammoth turbines that require some effort to install and maintain.

BNE Energy, the company that proposed the wind farm, also has another proposal on the table for a wind farm in Connecticut that will be decided on in June.

[Photo: Rural Learning Center]

The report is called the “Renewables Bible,” and will serve as a reference guide  for renewable energy growth. The report indicates that there’s enough potential for the six renewable energy sources — which also include geothermal power, biomass fuel, hydropower and power harnessed from oceanic waves — can grow 20-fold over the next decade. The United Nations examined 164 scenarios to come to the conclusion in a comprehensive survey of the current renewable energy environment.

But in reality, only around 2.5 percent of that potential growth will happen based on the current growth trajectory for renewable energy, according to the report. That’s because a complete shift to renewable energy sources will cost global markets around $12.3 trillion by 2030. Global markets will have to invest around $5.1 trillion over the next decade and an as much as an extra $7.1 trillion between 2020 and 2030 to complete the shift.

Most of the scenarios examined by the United Nations still pointed to a substantial increase in the amount of renewable energy deployed by 2020 and 2030. Global markets added around 140 gigawatts of power from renewable sources between 2008 and 2009, bringing the world total up to around 300 gigawatts. That’s mostly dominated by biomass energy sources, which account for around 10 percent of renewable energy generation.

Paris-based International Energy Agency said that a total of $20 trillion needs to be spent on energy infrastructure to expand it and meet demand by 2030. Right now, renewable energy sources account for around 13 percent of global energy usage. In some of the best scenarios, renewable energy would account for up to 77 percent of global energy usage by 2050.

[Photo: s-ariga]

Wind power ventures were still able to attract nearly $45 million, or 14 percent of investments made in clean technology in April, despite the technology already being far along. LED lighting systems, which are more efficient and last longer than typical lighting systems, brought in about $62 million in funding and was the second-most-funded group in April.

Clean technology ventures raised $2.6 billion in the first quarter this year, with most of the funding going into late-stage companies that are already preparing to go public. Solar power ventures will still the hottest companies in the first quarter, bringing in $641 million across 26 deals.

The list was composed by Greentech Media, a Massachusetts-based news and research firm that focuses on clean technology. There were 26 investments made into clean technology ventures in April. Here’s a breakdown of all the funding in specific sectors:

Solar Power $147 million

Fuel cells and energy storage $38.4 million

Smart Grid $25.3 million

LED Lighting $61.5 million

Biofuels $15 million

Wind Power $44.8 million

Power conversion and efficiency $12.2 million

Transportation $700,000

Tidal power $6 million

Clean fossil fuel burning $2 million

[Photo: Jimmy_Joe]

GE is the top supplier of wind turbines for some of the nation’s largest wind power farms — huge swathes of land dotted by giant windmills that use the wind to generate anywhere from 1 to 3 megawatts of power per windmill. Each turbine and wind farm typically carries enormous upfront capital costs that can take several years before the power company can recoup its costs.

Wind turbines also carry a certain stigma with them — they can be an eyesore for some residents, who fear it will reduce property home values. Several wind power companies have thrown up their hands when trying to develop wind power farms due to a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. The “not-in-my-backyard” argument is pretty common among renewable energy sources, even if wind farms and other kinds of renewable energy sources don’t negatively affect property values.

GE said it was committed to developing wind power regardless of the downturn in denabd in the U.S. Wind power companies have begun manufacturing farms that can generate around 5,600 megawatts as of the beginning of 2011, according to reports.

Wind power deployment in the U.S. stalled last year after growing for 3 years consecutively. The U.S. only added 5,116 megawatts’ worth of wind turbines, down from more than 10,000 megawatts in 2009. The U.S. has so far deployed wind turbines that can generate around 40,200 megawatts of electricity — enough to power around 10 million homes.

California recently passed a law requiring around a third of California’s power to come from renewable energy sources. The law could prove to be a major incentive for clean technology companies in the state to begin ramping up their production of clean energy sources. That might lead to more companies buying additional turbines from GE and other wind power turbine manufacturers.

The study found that homes with solar panels sold for an extra $5.50 per watt of solar power installed, for an average of $17,000 more per house.

Both solar power and wind power sources typically face resistance from communities due to a “not-in-my-backyard” mentality — meaning residents do not want large obtrusive pieces of equipment within line of sight. The argument is especially true for wind power because wind farms typically require massive turbines that are hundreds of feet tall that might become an eyesore for some residents.

But the Berkeley study, and an additional study conducted by the government in 2009, found that home prices were either unaffected or rose based on proximity to renewable energy sources like wind power turbines and solar panels. The space that wind turbines and solar panels occupy can also be used for other purposes — such as agriculture, in the case of wind power, or roofing, in the case of solar power.

Both reports suggest that the not-in-my-backyard argument doesn’t carry a lot of weight. After all, both of these renewable energy sources are rather iconic images of green technology — they’re supposed to carry a mentality of environmental conscientiousness with them.

The wind farm should be completed later this year thanks to a direct commitment from Google Energy. The new wind farm follows Google’s 114-megawatt purchase from an Iowa wind farm last year. In 2007, the company pledged to become carbon neutral and has made several pushes to improve the efficiency of its buildings and fund clean energy projects.

Google has invested $350 million in renewable energy projects to date. The majority are philanthropic and don’t serve as strategic investments for the search engine giant.

The company recently invested $168 million in a solar thermal power project in California, which uses mirrors to focus sunlight that heat water and powers a conventional steam turbine. Google also invested $5 million in a German solar power plant in its first clean tech investment outside of the United States.

On Monday, Google announced that it would invest $100 million in a wind power farm in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in  Oregon. When completed, that wind farm will generate up to 845 megawatts of power, or enough to power more than 200,000 homes. The electricity produced at that wind farm will be sold to Southern California Edison.

NextEra has more than 9,500 wind turbines across 85 wind farms in the U.S. Its wind farms appear in 17 states in the U.S. and also in Canada, and generate enough power to provide energy for more than 2 million homes each year.

The projects the DOE plans to fund are riskier than their solar and wind power counterparts, focusing on the research and development of technologies that are not yet commercially viable.

The funding will come from the Advanced Research Programs Agency — Energy (ARPA-E). President Barack Obama created the agency in 2009 as part of the stimulus package. The agency has so far received $363 million in federal funding, with an additional $650 million requested by the President in his budget proposal for next fiscal year.

So far, six projects funded by ARPA-E have received around $100 million in funding from private investors.

Here’s a list of the types of projects that are eligible for funding:

1. Plants Engineered to Replace Oil (PETRO, $30 million) These projects focus on genetically engineering plants to be more efficient at capturing sunlight and producing energy to drive down the cost of biofuel.

2. High Energy Advanced Thermal Storage (HEATS, $30 million) Projects that develop new techniques to store thermal energy from sunlight and other sources and transfer it across large distances are eligible under this category.

3. Rare Earth Alternatives in Critical Technologies (REACT, $30 million) This type of research aims to eliminate reliance on rare-earth metals for electric vehicles and wind turbines. Prices for rare-earth materials that are found in electric motors and wind turbines have increased between 300 and 700 percent in the past year.

4. Green Electricity Network Integration (GENI, $30 million) These projects focus on developing smart grid technology that efficiently distributes electricity produced from wind and solar power.

5. Solar Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (Solar ADEPT, $10 million) This category covers research on reducing power conversion costs and increasing energy efficiency for solar power, specifically companies that develop semiconductor switches and solar energy storage.

[Photo: jurvetson]

The new law is a major incentive for clean technology companies in the state to begin ramping up their production of clean energy sources. Previous laws required power companies to fill 20 percent of their output with renewable energy sources by 2010 with a 3-year grace period.

Interest in cheaper, cleaner energy has focused recently on solar power because of innovations in increasing the amount of sunlight a single photovoltaic cell can capture. Most wafer-style cells today are around 6 inches across and capture 30 percent of the sunlight shining on them and convert it to electricity. There are also more flexible thin-film panels that can be placed on more surfaces but are less efficient at capturing sunlight. But both types of power have attracted a lot of investing interest from companies like General Electric and Google. Individual wafer-style solar panels can usually generate around a watt of power.

Wind turbines typically carry large capital costs — meaning the upfront cost of building and operating a turbine will take a long time to break even with the money saved by using wind power. Most wind turbines generate anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 megawatts of power, and the costs vary from state to state. For example, wind power turbine manufacturer First Wind has a 30-megawatt wind farm in Hawaii that cost $125 million to build and a 57-megawatt wind farm in Maine that cost $140 million to make. Wind power only accounts for around 2 percent of all power generated in the U.S.

In California, concerns about the impact of nearby wind turbines on property values has led to a “not-in-my-backyard” complaint about the renewable energy source. The power source is much more popular in states like Texas, which boasts 10,085 megawatts, nearly triple the next closest competitor. So far, there are still around 10.4 million megawatts that can be generated by onshore wind farms, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

China added 18,900 megawatts’ worth of wind turbines in 2010, bringing the country’s total deployment up to about 45,000 megawatts. The U.S. only added 5,116 megawatts’ worth of wind turbines, down from more than 10,000 megawatts in 2009.

The U.S. has so far deployed wind turbines that can generate around 40,200 megawatts of electricity — enough to power around 10 million homes. Wind power companies have begun manufacturing farms that can generate around 5,600 megawatts as of the beginning of the year, according to reports.

That’s still only 2 percent of all energy produced in the United States. Wind power became more popular in 2009 as a renewable energy source, largely because China began rapidly deploying several wind farms to help meet the country’s massive energy needs. Chinese households consumed about 4.2 million gigawatt-hours in 2010. But a slowing economic climate made wind energy less viable when compared to other cheaper forms of energy, such as natural gas.

That’s because wind turbines typically carry large capital costs — meaning the upfront cost of building and operating a turbine will take a long time to break even with the money saved by using wind power. Most wind turbines generate anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 megawatts of power, and the costs vary from state to state. For example, wind power turbine manufacturer First Wind has a 30-megawatt wind farm in Hawaii that cost $125 million to build and a 57-megawatt wind farm in Maine that cost $140 million to make.

There are also some concerns about whether the wind turbines create a bit of an eyesore — leading to a “not-in-my-backyard” complaint about the renewable energy source. The power source is much more popular in specific states — such as Texas, which boasts 10,085 megawatts, nearly triple the next closest competitor. So far, there are still around 10.4 million megawatts that can be generated by onshore wind farms, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

[Photo: Theo R]

The new plant will manufacture thin-filmed solar power panels — photovoltaic cells that are more flexible and can be placed on most surfaces — that capture around 13 percent of the sunlight shining on the panel and convert the sunlight to electricity. The production process uses a cadmium-telluride crystal compound in the photovoltaic cell, which is a cheaper material than the polysilicon materials used in other thin-film solar cells — although it’s less efficient at capturing sunlight.

Most thin-film solar panel manufacturers make photovoltaic cells that capture 15 to 20 percent of the sunlight shining on the panel. Those panels typically use polysilicon materials or some combination of copper, indium, gallium and selenide (CIGS). SoloPower, for example, employs CIGS in its panels and recently closed a funding round worth $13.5 million. GE’s new plant will produce less efficient solar power cells, but they will theoretically be cheaper to produce and the production will be on a larger scale than other, smaller thin-film solar panel manufacturers.

GE recently acquired Converteam, a company that specializes in efficiently converting mechanical power to electricity. Converteam’s technology gives GE a way to improve conversion rates for its oil and natural gas power plants. But the technology can also be applied to renewable energy sources like solar power and wind power, which GE highlighted in today’s announcement.

First Solar would be affected the most by GE’s strong move into the thin-film solar space — it’s a large publicly-traded company that also specializes in manufacturing thin-film solar panels. Shares of First Solar were down 1.2 percent in regular trading today, while the market as a whole only edged down slightly. That could indicate some concern over whether the move by GE could impact First Solar’s market share in the thin-film solar space.

[Photo: Pure3d]

Investors poured the most money into late-stage ventures that accounted for $2.39 billion of the investments in the first quarter this year. More than half of the deals were late-stage investments, but they accounted for 93 percent of the funds. That’s because just a handful of companies are spearheading innovation in various industries.

Solar power ventures received the most money, bringing in $641 million across 26 deals. That includes a $72 million investment in Alta Devices that involved storied investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — even though the company was still in a half-stealth mode. The next best performer was the transportation industry, with $311 million across 8 deals. That includes electric and hybrid vehicles that have less of an environmental footprint than internal combustion engine cars. Biofuels came in last, only receiving $148 million across 13 deals.

There’s still a lot of room for innovation in solar panel technology, which captures sunlight and converts it to electricity. That includes improving the efficiency of light capture and creating flexible displays that can be placed on any surface — a technology that SoloPower, which also received a late-stage investment of $13.5 million, develops.

The U.S. led the world in investing in clean technology startups, according to a report by Pew. But cleantech companies in the U.S. aren’t spending a lot of money deploying the technology — such as buying solar panels and wind turbines to generate renewable energy sources. North America accounted for 85 percent of all investments in clean technology startups, according to Cleantech Group.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was the most active among clean technology investors, dropping money into nine companies, according to the report. VantagePoint Venture Partners invested in five companies, and General Electric Financial Services invested in four.

The country’s previous goal was to create nuclear plants capable of producing 80 gigawatts of electricity by 2020 and enough solar power and wind power farms to generate 20 gigawatts of electricity. The new plan involves reducing the power target for nuclear power and increasing the amount of power produced by renewable energy sources like solar and wind power — though there wasn’t a specific wattage target. To put things in perspective, Chinese households consumed about 4.2 million gigawatt-hours in 2010.

Solar power farms use flat photovoltaic panels that absorb sunlight and convert it to electricity. Typical wafer-style solar panels can capture around 30 percent of the sunlight shining on them and convert it into electricity. Flexible, thin-film photovoltaic cells that can be placed on most surfaces can only capture 15 – 20 percent of the sunlight shining on them. One photovoltaic cell typically generates around a watt of power. Solar panels that are seen throughout the world are large collections of photovoltaic cells, usually around 6 inches across each.

The new plans came after a 9.0-magnitude quake struck off the northeast coast of Japan and spawned a massive tsunami that exceeded the damage threshold of the Japan’s nuclear power plants. The quake cut off power to the plants, and the tsunami that followed the earthquake destroyed diesel-powered generators that were providing backup power to the plant — meaning there was no clean water pumping into the reactor to keep the fuel rods cool. That set off a chain of events that led to reports of leaking radiation.

The crisis in Japan set off a large amount of increased interest in solar power stocks, but it was short-lived as those companies quickly came back to reality. But the nuclear disaster has opened up an opportunity for solar power companies to garner some interest from venture capitalists and other investors over the next several months as the disaster’s backlash has produced a pretty large public response.

The deal is not specifically a clean-technology play because it is focused on improving the efficiency of transmitting power from oil- and other fossil-fuel-based power generation methods. Companies like GE have had to rely on less conventional sources for oil and other fossil fuels, so there’s a lot of potential to save power companies money by improving the amount of energy it can ship from one place to the next without losing any.

Converteam, for example, manufactures power drivers for low- and medium-voltage power sources — which convert electricity into some kind of mechanical energy, like a turbine or a motor. That’s only a small part of Converteam’s massive portfolio, which is why GE was willing to pay $3.2 billion for the company, said Steve Minnihan, an analyst with clean technology firm Lux Research.

“They can help smooth out the small imbalances and a lot of the unhealthy levels of reactive power that come out of a solar farm,” he said. “GE stressed the importance of this acquisition for its oil and gas sector, but looking beyond that, it can work for wind turbines and solar panels too.”

That’s because most researchers and companies have already figured out how to pick up energy from renewable sources like solar and wind power, said Matt Feinstein, an analyst with Lux Research. There’s still a lot of room to improve the efficiency of energy capture devices like the photovoltaic cells in solar panels — but the most commercial opportunity lies in actually getting that energy to consumers.

“You can look at GE overall being an energy player, look at renewables and we’ve mostly figured out how to get energy from renewables.” he said. ”We’ve got all the sources of energy, we’re not harnessing new things, it’s about the management and the more efficient harnessing.”

The culture gap became clear at a recent smart -grid event held by the IEEE, a global professional association for engineers, which focused on the European grid. In the U.S., the smart grid mostly means smart meters (the country is ahead of the rest of the world in metering) and features to improve the reliability of aging transmission and distribution infrastructures. The European grids don’t have any major reliability problems but they are rapidly integrating renewables, which poses a different set of smart-grid challenges.

Ralf Christian, the CEO of Siemen’s power distribution division, told me that the US-centric view of smart grid is also not shared by the rest of the world. China, for example, has single hydroelectricity sites which can produce power equivalent to 10 nuclear plants. Therefore the Chinese are very concerned with smart technologies for efficient, long-distance transmission of power to the cities.

One of the reasons for Europe’s emphasis on renewables is the European Union’s 20-20-20 targets. By 2020, EU countries must cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 percent compared with 1990 levels, increase renewables by 20 percent and cut energy consumption by 20 percent. Renewables already have priority in the power mix, so utilities must use any available hydroelectric, wind or solar power available before ramping up power plants burning fossil fuels. Much of the EU and government grants related to energy have gone to technologies like offshore wind power and carbon capture rather than smart metering.

To give an idea of the scale of renewables already deployed in Europe, Ireland’s grid hit a wind penetration rate of almost 50 percent at one point this year, Germany has gone from almost zero to 25 gigawatts of solar generation in under 3 years on top of its 25 gigawatts of wind power (at minimum demand the entire German grid consumes 31 gigawatts) and Denmark has, at times, had negative electricity prices because the amount of wind power available exceeded demand. All this means that the technology priorities of European utilities are very different to those in the U.S.

Traditionally, power was transported from a fossil-fuel burning power station via a high-voltage transmission network and then distributed to homes and businesses over a medium and low voltage distribution grid. Renewable energy is generated in multiple sites from utility-size wind farms to home solar panel installations.

High volume renewable generation sites like large wind farms are connected to the high-voltage transmission grid. Smaller generation sites, including home solar generation, connect directly to the distribution grid. Electricity generation in parts Europe is starting to move from a centralized to a distributed model more like that of the Internet. This places different demands and stresses on the grid.

Renewable power sources are intermittent, unpredictable and produce asynchronous power (conventional power is synchronous). They cause voltage rises and grid elements age more quickly because of the thermal stresses caused by load fluctuations. Crucially, grid network operators must be able to counterbalance major dips in renewable generation with flexible conventional power or storage. If 30 percent of your power is generated by wind and solar, what do you do when there’s little sun and no wind?

Grid operators with access to hydropower can store power by pushing water up behind dams and releasing it as required to generate electricity. Operators in flat countries like Denmark don’t have this luxury and have to come up with creative solutions like highly controllable conventional power plants which can be ramped up and down quickly, CHP (combined heat and power) installations which store power as heat, and even electric-vehicle batteries. Even home heat pumps could become “batteries”  for storing energy. Dong Energy in Denmark is starting a project with Better Place to test using EV batteries as a storage mechanism for its copious wind-power resources.

Electric transportation is another big upcoming issue for the European grid. If electric vehicles achieve 25 percent market share in a local area and they all charge overnight, this is enough to cause transformers to collapse (based on Germany’s grid layout). Since EVs are likely to occur in clusters, this is not too outlandish a figure. The solution is either to add expensive new transformers or develop smart charging programs to stagger charging. Smart charging requires a high level of communication with the customer and car. Flexible charging (and maybe discharging) must be set up on a particular schedule taking price and expected mileage into consideration. And obviously EVs are not very sustainable if the power is generated by a coal-burning power plant; another reason to ramp up renewables.

The economics of energy is a crucial factor in the move to renewable energy. Electricity generators are currently paid based on the assumption that fuel is the main generation cost. This is obviously not true for renewables where the upfront capital costs are high but there is no fuel cost. Ralf Christian from Siemens also maintains that electricity policy in Europe has been driven by the goal of keeping electricity low-cost and since renewables will always be more expensive, this needs to change.

Generators are also not paid for services like storage, contributions to maintaining voltage stability, dispatching down generation when necessary or other services. In the utility world, services like this which help maintain security and reliability of supply, are called ancillary services. Klaus Baggesen Hillger from Dong Energy, one of Europe’s biggest utilities, argued that ancilliary services including reserve are very real-time and markets which allow grid operators to trade them don’t exist right now. Neither are consumers compensated for services like storage or reducing demand at peak times.

Finally, grid operators are looking for financial support from governments before they make big investments. I talked to Miguel A. Sánchez Fornié from the Spanish utility Iberdrola. He maintains that grid operators still need to be convinced that there will be a return on their smart grid investment. This requires large demonstration projects (tens of thousands of homes) of the type already been conducted in the U.S. with funds from the stimulus package. Such projects allow the operator to see what efficiencies are possible. The European commission has a plan for such large demonstration projects and is expected to invest 2 billion Euros in rolling them out.

There may be a feel-good factor in going green but electricity grid operators are still motivated by another type of green — the type in their bottom lines.

In Dublin recently for the first time in years, I heard some good news in the midst of all the gloom. The country has a head start on most of the world in capitalizing on one of its few plentiful resources: renewable energy.

Renewable energy could be Ireland’s new pot of gold. According to a recent book by John Travers, 100,000 jobs could be created from harnessing renewable energy and applying energy efficiency, and 20 percent of Ireland’s future GDP could come from exporting its renewable energy. The wind and wave power available on Ireland’s Atlantic coast is one of the biggest renewable resources in the world and can be supplemented by biomass. To put this in context, the nation’s peak electricity demand is approximately 6,000 megawatts (MW) while the wind blowing over the island contains 8,000 megawatts of power. Ireland already has 1260 MW of installed wind capacity. The country also aims to put 500 MWs of wave power online by 2020.

As a result Enterprise Ireland‘s cleantech unit is concentrating its resources of a limited set of niches, among them energy efficiency and renewables. According to Marina Donohoe, who heads up the unit, these areas were chosen because of Ireland’s strengths in IT and construction (that property bubble was useful for something) in addition to the large supply of renewable energy.

I talked to Professor Orla Feely from University College Dublin, who recently reviewed Ireland’s smart grid research, about the areas in which Ireland is ahead of the rest of the world. She told me that universities are taking a multi-disciplinary approach to the energy problem, looking at not just the technical aspects like modelling high levels of integration of renewables, but also collaborating with economists and behavioral scientists since customer and electricity generator behavior needs to change.

This was a point echoed by Eirgrid‘s Jon O’ Sullivan (Eirgrid manages Ireland’s electricity transmission network), who is adamant that the economics of energy generation must be updated in order to ramp up renewables. Energy generation pricing is currently based on the assumption that fuel is the main cost of generation. This is obviously not the case with renewables, so he suggests that generators should also be paid for services they provide such as reactive power and power storage. Feely also pointed to Ireland’s experience in areas like building research and smart sensors. No less important, she says that Ireland has a very supportive policy environment and a small number of key players, which gives it a flexibility and agility in smart grid that is hard to match. Ironically, Ireland’s “two degrees of separation,” which caused many of its problems in banking and politics, could actually be an advantage in this case.

Ireland’s power grid is rather unique in that it’s an island grid with very limited interconnection to the rest of Europe. Mainline Europe’s grid, for example, is very closely connected, which means that an individual country’s grid can effectively “trade itself out of trouble” using supplies from neighboring countries. Ireland’s grid operates largely independently. It also has an unusually high penetration of wind power. On one day in April this year 42% of the Irish grid was powered by wind. This is the highest worldwide wind penetration on a power grid to date. The average is closer to 15 percent of power supplied by renewables, but the Irish government has a target to increase this to 40 percent by 2020 (37 percent from wind power). As a result, Irish grid operators are already tackling problems caused by the integration of high levels of renewables that will hit other grids later.

Ireland’s power grid is managed by two entities. Eirgrid operates the high-voltage transmission network, while ESB runs the medium and low voltage distribution network and deals with consumers. Jon O’ Sullivan is Eirgrid’s Operations Policy & Performance manager. He told me that there are several aspects to integrating high levels of renewables. New connection infrastructure is needed to connect the generation sites to the network. There are operational challenges involved in managing the high levels of non-synchronous, intermittent power of the type generated by wind farms (conventional power is synchronous and constant) and optimizing portfolio performance.

The latter covers non-technical issues like figuring out how to make renewables economically viable without subsidies (unsustainable at 40 percent of generation), setting standards for new power generators, changing the pricing structure for generation and identifying investment gaps.

O’Sullivan filled me in on some of the technical tools that Eirgrid is pioneering to manage a transmission grid with high levels of renewables. One of these is a wind stability assessment tool that is used to maintain voltage stability (wind farms cause voltage rises) and is the first such system in the world installed in a national utility control room. The tool and other research have indicated that grid stability can be maintained at up to 70 percent wind penetration, if certain measures are taken. Eirgrid will soon start to use the tool for forecasting up to 48 hours ahead in addition to real-time operation.

Another innovation is the wind dispatch tool that controls 60-70 percent of the country’s wind farms in real-time. Wind turbines can be ramped up or down within 10 seconds. Quite often farms need to be ramped down when more wind power is being fed into the grid than is manageable. A new connector will also be in place by 2012 that will allow 500 megawatts of power to be exported from the country. Exporting renewable power can help with grid stabilization since it helps to achieve a better balance between conventional generation and renewables.

Teresa Fallon is in change of smart networks at ESB. She told me that Ireland’s wind generation is unusual in that it’s quite distributed. Over 50 percent of wind generation will be done at multiple, smaller wind sites connected at distribution voltage levels (38kV, medium and low voltage) rather than to the high-voltage transmission network. To minimize the amount of new equipment and infrastructure required to connect these sites and to avoid negative impact on the rest of the grid, ESB is trialing some innovative new techniques. One of these is using voltage regulators to drop the voltage coming from the wind farms (wind power causes voltage rises) thereby allowing the power generated to be carried on existing power lines rather than new lines built specifically for renewable power. Voltage regulators are traditionally used to boost voltage rather than drop it.

A trial is also taking place where wind farms are being managed as a group, rather than individually, to do voltage-var control. Var is reactive power, which is drawn by many modern electronic devices. High levels of reactive power makes it harder to stabilize grid voltage and result in power loss, so software is needed to balance voltage and var. Grouping voltage-var control across wind farms reduces the amount of new equipment needed to enable Eirgrid and ESB to manage wind farms on the network. Finally, ESB is looking at a new distribution substation design specifically adapted for wind generators. Fallon said that many of the problems with renewables that other countries are looking at now in terms of developing a co-coordinated approach to renewable connections, Ireland went through 10 years ago. The challenges are broadly the same whether the energy source is wind or solar.

My final stop was Andrew Parish, the CEO of wave power company Wavebob. One report estimates that the Irish wave energy resource could generate more than 6,000 megawatts of power. Parish is convinced that Ireland could be the Saudi Arabia of wave power, since it has access to the best wave resource on the planet. The industry is still in its infancy though and is quite dependent on government support since the up-front capital costs are considerable. That government doesn’t have to be Irish, however. Wavebob recently received a grant of $2.4 million from the US Department of Energy to to prepare for a commercial-scale wave energy demonstration project planned for US waters in 2013. More generally, the early wave power markets will be in Europe in places like Ireland, Portugal and the UK. The Irish government has a target to bring 500 megawatts of wave power online by 2020.

The problem with unlocking Ireland’s renewables “pot of gold” is that it requires major upfront capital investment, and cash is exactly what the Irish government doesn’t have right now. In spite of this, the 4-year austerity plan introduced as part of the recent bailout does include investing €4.5 billion in the electricity grid to develop renewable resources. So who knows? Maybe green can mean gold for Ireland.

Wind farm developer First Wind Holdings is planning a $300 million IPO for this week, Reuters reports. Look for more on this story on the GreenBeat today.

Subsidies for ethanol are slowly losing federal support– instead, the government is looking to boost next-generation biofuels by supporting infrastructure like biofuel pumps and flexible-fuel vehicles, the New York Times reports. The current tax on imported ethanol would also be phased out under new plans.

The utility-scale solar photovoltaic market will grow five times faster than the rest of the industry, according to a new report by IMS Research. First Solar, a thin-film solar giant that specializes in utility-scale projects, is set to benefit. The company recently announced plans to expand production capacity  to 2.7 gigawatts by the end of 2012. IMS predicts the company’s shipments will grow 25 percent and its market share will shrink to around 8 percent.

BMW is offering hourly rentals of its car in a pilot program that looks to take advantage of the popularity of Zipcar-like services, Earth2Tech reports. If it’s successful, the carmaker will expand the program across Europe.

San Antonio, Tex. has become the first water district to use a sewage-to-biogas system, CleanTechnica reports. The city will channel the methane produced in sewage systems to a commercial gas pipeline, where it can be used as a power source.

Are you a green executive or entrepreneur? If so, sign up now for GreenBeat 2010 — the year’s seminal conference on the smart grid — November 3-4 at Stanford University. World leaders in smart grid initiatives will debate how the new “Super Grid” is creating huge opportunities in cars, energy storage, and renewables. GreenBeat 2010 is hosted by VentureBeat and SSE Labs of Stanford University. Go here for full conference details and to apply for the 2010 Innovation Competition.