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What if I told you that often installing microgeneration equipment does not help the environment?

In times of oversupply from renewables, it would be far preferable to be ramping up consumption of energy using moveable loads, rather than shutting down production from renewables.

FloDesign Wind Turbine, a spin-off from the aerospace company FloDesign based in Wilbraham, MA, has developed a wind turbine that could generate electricity at half the cost of conventional turbines. The company recently raised $6 million in its first round of venture financing and has announced partnerships with wind-farm developers. The company's design, which draws on technology developed for jet engines, circumvents a fundamental limit to conventional wind turbines. Typically, as wind approaches a turbine, almost half of the air is forced around the blades rather than through them, and the energy in that deflected wind is lost. At best, traditional wind turbines capture only 59.3 percent of the energy in wind, a value called the Betz limit.

Small-scale wind energy (wind turbines <50kW rated capacity) is receiving increasing interest as one of a number of microgeneration technologies with potential to reduce carbon emissions. Recent years have seen new products being made available on the UK market, which a survey by the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) suggests is growing quickly.

However, the overall potential of small-scale wind energy to reduce carbon emissions, and the conditions under which maximum carbon reductions can be made, have not been entirely clear.

The first of 200 micro-CHP boilers was today put into service in the Apeldoorn suburb of Woudhuis as part of a large-scale field trial. Annelies van der Kolk, member of the Gelderland provincial executive responsible for climate and environment, today set the trial period officially in motion. "I am proud of this result of innovation and cooperation by so many parties. It's one of the ways we are working together towards a sustainable Gelderland", says Annelies van der Kolk.

A consortium of four electricity distributors is rolling out Echelon’s smart meter to 90,000 homes in France.Echelon’s Networked Energy Services (NES) meters allow the amount of electricity produced as well as that consumed to be measured. This allows the meters to be used with renewable microgeneration technologies as well.

From April 6, all homeowners in Britain will be free to install microgeneration equipment like solar panels without getting planning permission for them, as the government tries to cut climate warming gases emitted from coal and gas fired power plants in order to supply electricity.

Apport du microcrédit pour l’accès à des services énergétiques modernes en milieu rural et périurbain et rôle de la Coopération Décentralisée