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Wind Technologies Ltd, the result of a collaboration between Dr Richard McMahon at Cambridge University and Prof Peter Tavner at Durham University has developed the Brushless Doubly-Fed Generator (BDFG), a new maintenance-free generator which doubles the lifetime of generators in wind installations and significantly reduce maintenance costs and increase reliability.

NERC is the official electric reliability organization for the United States, and its latest 10-year outlook report, the 2008 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, notes that transmission lines must be sited, permitted, and built faster in the future to maintain the reliability of the U.S. power grid.

Large-scale power storage is crucial to our energy future: the Electric Power Research Institute, the U.S. utility industry's leading R&D consortium, says that storage would enable the widespread use of renewable power and make the grid more reliable and efficient.

What is needed in the meantime is the start of volume, mass-market trials of smart metering. The Government does hold some of the information needed, both from its own EDRP tests and from various private-sector projects, but not on the scale to provide reliable foundations for a nationwide launch.

There have been several pilots and there is a ten year roll-out plan. What more stimulus does a smart meter manufacturer need?

Two strong potential candidates for the Next Big Thing in cleantech venture capital are nuclear and carbon capture and storage. I've spoken with numerous VCs recently who are looking for innovative ways to play in nuclear power. Bets have already been made by VCs in small-scale nukes, hot fusion, and technologies related to big-scale nukes. The hope is to find a low-cost solution that is practically zero carbon emissions and also provides reliable "base load" power. So in other words, the hope is for a lower-carbon replacement for coal power. The challenges are also significant, however, not least of which being time to market for any new innovations, as this interesting article illustrates. With the recent news that the DOE will be putting $2.4B into carbon capture and storage, and its inclusion in emerging climate legislation, it's also clear that CCS will be leaned upon as a hoped-for way of making our existing coal-fired generation infrastructure less impactful on the atmosphere, while still preserving its value as low-cost baseload power. So in other words, the hope is for a lower-carbon "fix" for coal power.

wind -> birds & bats tidal -> fish pv -> squirrels

"ABB's broad scope of supply and in-house marine expertise helped us win these contracts. We will provide reliable power and energy efficiency to these new vessels," s

I'm ambivalent to this idea. It's better than nothing, but very far from grid-based electricity. Do these ideas block Africa's development. Are they patronising?