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Insensys, the leading provider of fibre optic load measurement systems for blades and Garrad Hassan the leading developer of pitch control algorithms have combined forces to develop an integrated package which enables turbine manufacturers to achieve significant reductions in rotor, shaft and tower loads. The collaboration is non exclusive and both organisations will continue to offer products and services independently of each other.

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.

The Green Building Exchange [Its a shop!] held its grand opening Saturday in Redwood City, Calif. It is the first shopping and meeting center of its kind serving home buyers, builders and nonprofit groups. Products on display include solar panels, recycled renovation materials and low-toxic furniture.

WTC, a Munich, Germany-based consulting company, has tracked down more than 130 international manufacturers which are involved in the thin-film solar cell production process-from the cutting edge pilot lines to the major manufacturing plants-and has created a solar cells database listing.

Transport group Arriva is trialling B20 biodiesel - a blend of normal and plant-derived diesel - for the first time on its buses. The 75 buses in the innovative trial will run from Arriva's Blyth Garage in Northumberland and carry around 130,000 passengers every week. Minimal engineering changes will be required to the fleet as part of the scheme. The company is aiming to reduce total carbon emissions by around 14 per cent by using Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) as a 20 per cent blend. The FAME will predominantly be a mixture of sustainable soya products, along with used cooking oil and tallow.

Jeff Vail has started a series looking at what I've long called the "EROEI hole" problem - making sure we don't leave the transition to renewables too late and find ourselves stuck in a situation where we have shrinking production of fossil fuels which are produced at ever lower EROEI values, thereby making constructing an alternative energy infrastructure a lot more problematic than it would be today - The Renewables Hump: Digging Out of a Hole. In the first post in this series, I introduced the general notion that renewable energy requires an up-front investment of energy, and that this may dramatically impact our ability to transition to a renewable-energy economy because the transition effort will initially exacerbate the very energy scarcity that is its impetus. Beyond this general notion that the transition to renewables first requires exacerbating our current energy scarcity, the time that it takes a renewable source of energy to return the up-front energy invested in it becomes especially critical. Here's a quick example (for the simplicity of these examples, I'm assuming that 100% of energy requirement is up-front with no maintenance requirement):