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Thousands of new offshore wind turbines could power every home in Britain by 2020, the government announced today, as it set out new wind-energy plans. John Hutton, the business secretary, proposed the creation of up to 33 gigawatts of offshore wind energy. He called for companies to invest in large-scale farm development to generate enough power for up to 25m homes in the next 12 years. That would require around 7,000 turbines, or one every half-mile. He admitted that "tough choices" would have to be made if the UK wanted to respond to climate change and become more self-sufficient.

To be explored after we've fully exploited energy efficiency's potential, and all the onshore and offshore technologies we can think off. But the market will take care of this automatically, unless the EU comes up with the idea of a kite directive ...

The South African government has told millions of people left in the dark by rolling power cuts that have swept the country over the past week, and which are likely to go on for years, to look on the bright side. The blackouts are the result of surging demand for power caused by a booming economy, it says. But as the lights go off more frequently and for longer periods, the national mood has darkened.

In the spectrum of the simplest solutions (turning lights off) and the most complex (fusion), you've categorised this solution at the right end of the spectrum

Presently the issue of wind power is affecting communities throughout New York state. The lines have been drawn between the wind companies and those who support industrial wind power against those who object to this enormous threat to their quality of life.

When there is a blackout, your solar power system will probably go out too. That's because most systems are tied to the electrical grid.

Researchers from SRI International recently completed the first ocean tests of a system that uses a so-called artificial muscle to generate power from the motion of a buoy riding up and down on the waves. The prototype produces very little electricity but the researchers say that wave farms based on the technology could eventually rival wind turbines in power output, providing a significant source of clean energy. The SRI system is not much more than a sheet of rubber attached to a weight. It has "the mechanical complexity of a rubber band," says SRI senior researcher Roy Kornbluh.

American Electric Power annouced that it is expanding its use of large-scale battery technology on its electricity grid by installing six megawatts of sodium sulfur (NAS®) batteries for storage of electricity to enhance reliability, allow for continued load growth, provide support for weak sub-transmission systems, avoid equipment overload and to offset intermittent wind power. AEP will be adding stationary sodium sulfur (NAS®) battery technology in its West Virginia and Ohio service territories next year. The company will also work with wind developers to identify a third location for NAS battery deployment ...to help offset the intermittent nature of wind generation.

The paper itself is flawed suggesting that virtualisation can reeduce the number of servers required to 7% - enough to handle the average processing load. Webusers want instant reaction during the peak - for that you need spare capacity. Is this a surprise?

The Internet doesn't produce belching smokestacks or toxin-spewing drainpipes. Instead, the environmental impact of the data centers that power the Web and private networks is about as visible as the electrons moving around a company's servers. But visible or not, the ecological and economic costs of those servers are massive. A report released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that U.S. data centers (collections of computers used to power businesses' and government agencies' IT infrastructures and Web sites) consumed around 61 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006 at a cost of about $4.5 billion. That's about 1.5% of total U.S. electricity consumption, more than the electricity used by American televisions, or equivalent to the output of about 15 typical power plants

The world largest thin-film rooftop photovoltaic power plant was connected to the grid Wednesday after four months of construction. Over 37,000 First Solar thin-film modules have been installed on the 90,000 sqm large rooftop of a logistic centre in Ramstein, Germany. Three inverters convert the continuous current into alternating current. Under the supervision of COLEXON up to 40 mechanics and electricians were working at the construction site. Thorsten Preugschas, board member of RPSE AG, is proud of the success:" With this landmark project we were able to confirm our strong position as a project developer, demonstrating high product and service quality, a quick implementation and excellent price-performance ratio for our costumers." The solar power plant will produce about 2.4 million kWh per year. Based on a feed-in tariff of 46.3 cent/kWh the installation will earn over 1.1 Mio Euro per year. This also accounts for saving of 2 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.

A futuristic hydrogen-powered renewable energy research centre is being proposed for a site in Fife.

A futuristic hydrogen-powered renewable energy research centre is being proposed for a site in Fife.

This afternoon a power outage in San Francisco affected the 365 Main St. data center. In the process of 6 cascading outages, one of the outages was not protected and reset systems in many of the colo facilities of that building. - DNS servers lost power and did not properly come back up. This has been resolved after about an hour of downtime and may have caused issues for many GNi customers that would appear as network issues

It rains year round in Germany. Clouds cover the skies for about two-thirds of all daylight hours. Yet the country has managed to become the world's leading solar power generator.