Renewables-info.com

The fact that ocean winds are more frequent and lot more powerful than those on land is a common fact. However, there are plenty of work ahead before we start harvesting this tremendous ocean wind power potential.

The researchers have calculated that wind turbines in the open ocean could in theory harvest more than five times as much energy as wind turbines over land. The main reason why wind power production in the deep waters of the open ocean is in its infancy of commercialization is because of high construction costs.

Lowering down the construction costs is the key ingredient of future ocean wind power commercialization. In order to achieve this science needs to come up with the low-cost technologies that could be applicable to open oceans.

The current solar power systems are designed in a way that doesn't allow you to power your home during an outage. This is in order to comply with several safety standards. What this basically means is that devices that control your solar panels are powered down during an outage.

The current standards thus make it impossible for homeowners to draw on power generated by their own renewable energy resources. This significantly decreases the reliability of solar power systems.

The scientists at the University of California San Diego believe they have found the way to solve this issue. Their solution is to develop algorithms that would allow homes to use and share power from their renewable energy sources during outages by strategically disconnecting these devices, called solar inverters, from the grid.

Researchers believe that by using these algorithms they could improve reliability of solar power systems by 25-35 percent.

The former prime minister Tony Abbott basically did everything to stop federal investment into the Australian renewable energy sector. However, renewable energy sector still managed to survive and look strong, even despite the lack of federal support.

Luckily, the range of state government initiatives attracted investors, and Australia is currently well on the track to meet renewable energy target of 20% of total generation coming from renewables by 2020. According to the latest reports renewable energy sources currently provide 18.8% of electricity in Australia.

Hydropower is still the most important renewable energy source in Australia accounting for 40% of renewable electricity generation, followed by wind with 31%. This could soon change because of the fast growing solar energy sector, in fact in 2016 more than 150,000 solar systems were installed throughout the country which produce enough power to supply some 230,000 homes.

You only have to look as far back as six years ago to see the last time nuclear power had a devastating effect on the planet. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011 has been called the biggest environmental disaster in history, and the reactor continues to pump 300 tonnes of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean every day. Most recent estimates suggest that nuclear power accounts for around 11% of the world’s total electricity production. So why then, is the first waste management solution for nuclear waste still three years away from completion?

How is nuclear waste created?

Before understanding the reasons why a nuclear waste management solution is still so far away, you first have to understand how nuclear waste is created.

The future of wind energy is often said to be offshore because of more powerful and more consisted winds compared to those on land. But there is also one solution to generate more wind energy from wind farms on land, in form of taller wind turbine towers.

The current height standard for wind turbines is 80 meters (about 262 feet) from the ground.  However, if developers were to build higher projects it would generate more wind power and wind farms could expand into new areas and new states.

One interesting study from the Iowa University claims that the taller towers (of up to 140 meters) could enable wind energy production in all 50 U.S. states.  Winds at higher elevations, generally speaking, are considerably stronger and more consistent, even in wind-rich states such as Iowa and Texas.