Press Release, Tel Aviv University,  April 21, 2010

TAU demonstrates that UV light can zap unwanted "life" in your drinking water and save taxpayer dollars

Does your drinking water smell foul, or are you worried that chemicals might be damaging your family’s health? Water treatment facilities currently use chlorine that produces carcinogenic by-products to keep your tapwater clean, but Tel Aviv University scientists have determined that ultra-violet (UV) light might be a better solution.

Dr. Hadas Mamane of Tel Aviv University‘s Porter School of Environmental Science and Faculty of Engineering, Prof. Eliora Ron of TAU’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and their doctoral student Anat Lakretz of TAU’s School of Mechanical Engineering have recently determined the optimal UV wavelength for keeping water clean of microorganisms. Their approach could be used by water treatment plants as well as large-scale desalination facilities to destroy health-threatening microorganisms and make these facilities more efficient.

"UV light irradiation is being increasingly applied as a primary process for water disinfection," says Lakretz. "In our recent study, we’ve shown how this treatment can be optimized to kill free-swimming bacteria in the water — the kinds that also stick inside water distribution pipes and clog filters in desalination plants by producing bacterial biofilms."

This undesired "stickiness" of bacteria to surfaces is called "bio-fouling," which costs taxpayers and governments billions of dollars each year. "No one should be drinking microorganisms in their water. In addition, when microorganisms get stuck in the pores of the membranes of filters, they create serious problems," says Lakretz.

Not all UV light is created equal

Dr. Hadas Mamane

Irradiation could be used as a pre-treatment to inactivate suspended microorganisms in water, with the secondary goal of preventing bio-fouling. In their study, reported in the journal Biofouling, the researchers looked at targeted UV light wavelengths on the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, commonly found in drinking water.

The TAU researchers investigated UV wavelengths within between the 220-280 nanometre (nm) scale, and found that any wavelength between 254 and 270 nm effectively cleaned the water. Those in the same region were also best for keeping membranes clear of bacterial build-up in desalination plants, they reported. Special lamps that emit a multi-wavelength UV spectrum — more advanced than the single-wavelength UV lamps found in home water systems — were used.

The UV "zap" also prevented bacterial re-growth in the water after UV inactivation. "The best way to control and kill these micro-organisms was to damage their DNA," says Lakretz. "The damage that the UV light causes has no known negative effect on the water," she adds.

In addition, the prevention of biofilm formation by bacteria was UV dose-dependent. The researchers reported less bio-fouling when a bigger dose of UV light was applied to the water around the film.

A light to save lives

Anat Lakretz

The approach is even more helpful against parasites that aren’t adversely affected by chlorine treatment, such as Giarrdia and Cryptosporidium, two harmful parasites that cause severe diarrhea and can lead to death. Children, the elderly and those in developing nations are particularly vulnerable. "Sewage leakage into water supplies poses a big problem in terms of bacterial contamination, and is something UV light could remediate," says Lakretz.

Small amounts of chorine or other oxidants will still be necessary to make sure that residual bacteria don’t enter the water further along the distribution pipeline. But Lakretz says this new approach to disinfecting water while controlling biofouling can also reduce the amount of carcinogenic by-products that chlorine produces.

The Tel Aviv University team is part of the MAGNET consortium, an Israeli research-oriented project aimed at researching and commercializing “clean” technologies.

Merging science and Jewish thought

By Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel 21C 
April 21, 2010

He may be an impressive innovator in solar energy, and a captain of industry, but Arnold Goldman is also a thinker whose unusual goal is to bring science together with philosophy.

Builder of Jerusalem – solar energy leader Arnold Goldman.

Serious philosophers rarely make good businessmen. But solar energy innovator Arnold J. Goldman is no navel-gazer. Goldman heads Jerusalem-based BrightSource Industries and its California-based parent, BrightSource Energy, which is contracted to deliver more than 2,600 megawatts of solar electricity in California using new technology demonstrated at Goldman’s Solar Energy Development Center in the Negev, the largest solar energy facility in the Middle East.

Goldman, 67, was named a "Builder of Jerusalem" by Jerusalem-based educational institution Aish Hatorah, which also acknowledged his early role in founding solar energy pioneer Luz International; subsidiary Luz Industries Israel; and Electric Fuel Corporation, a vehicle battery developer.

Ever since the Rhode Island native was 16 and living in the San Fernando Valley he has been seeking higher truths in the beauty of mathematics, he tells ISRAEL21c. Later, Goldman’s search broadened to embrace Jewish thought.

"From the age of 14 I had worked at an assortment of odd jobs when I had time, including stretching springs across couches," Goldman remembers. "The summer I was 16, I was selling mops. I woke up one night feeling miserable and came to the conclusion that if I had to work most of my life, at least I wanted it to be valuable."

Meshing knowledge with real-world achievements

His future wife, Karen Fried, urged him to channel his intellectual curiosity away from academics into what he now defines as "Jewish thinking" – meshing pure knowledge with measurable real-world achievements. After earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of California-Los Angeles in engineering with a minor in philosophy and economics, and a master’s in computer science at the University of Southern California, Goldman went into business.

"I was trying to get into lines of work that I thought would expand my knowledge base so that I could gain a big enough comprehension of how reality worked," Goldman recounts. "I decided that computers and communications were a focal point for integrating thoughts into places where they could be processed. I wanted to start a business and learn how to put together groups of people."

Goldman first spent five years in computer development in the military industry. He was an innovator in the use of integrated circuits on projects such as the Minuteman rocket system (the Minuteman is a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile designed to attack ground targets), and then moved to defense contractor Litton Industries, where he tackled assignments for its subsidiary, Royal Typewriter.

Gathering a group of scientists from the California Institute of Technology and Xerox, in 1972 he started Lexitron, the United States’ first word processing company. "I felt if you could make electronics simple, people would do it," Goldman tells ISRAEL21c.

Through it all, the thinker kept attending philosophy classes and began writing a book, A Working Paper on Project Luz, which provided the philosophical basis for Luz International.

An irresistible coincidence

At a night class in 1976, a Catholic priest recommended the works of Jewish medieval scholar-physician-philosopher Maimonides. Two weeks later, an aunt Goldman hadn’t seen for 20 years sent him a brochure about a class on Maimonides being offered at LA’s University of Judaism. It proved to be an irresistible coincidence.

"Karen and I went, and it was the first time I found a philosopher in whose stream I belonged," says Goldman. "I found out I had been doing ‘Jewish thinking’ all along."

As his book-in-progress assumed a Jewish flavor, the family relocated to Israel, planning to stay for two years so that Goldman could finish it there. They never left. The concept of Luz – the biblical locale of Jacob’s dream ladder connecting heaven and earth – fuelled Goldman’s "need to create an environment to integrate science and consciousness." And that environment was a community that used solar energy.

The community didn’t pan out as well as its solar energy aspect did, "But I discovered that the company itself was a community," Goldman recounts. Luz Industries grew to employ 500 people in Israel and thousands in California, where between 1984 and 1990 it installed nine solar power stations in the Mojave Desert, accounting for 90 percent of the world’s solar energy generation.

However, because of the large land mass required for equipment that captures the sun’s heat and turns it into electricity-generating steam, Luz’s coffers ran dry when its property-tax exemption expired in California.

Goldman poured his energies into a new book, Moving Jewish Thought to the Center of Modern Science, and founded several small companies to explore how linguistic dynamics integrate consciousness into physics. "I was interested in the play between speech, thought and language, and quantifying their impact on that which is created."

Israelis can "bury their ego in the objective"

The effects of the 1997 Kyoto Protocols on clean energy combined with rising fossil-fuel prices provided the opportunity for Goldman to resurrect Luz. "Utility companies and investment bankers in California were willing to talk to me, so we were able to deal with very creative ideas for a next-generation system," explains Goldman, who holds numerous patents and is the recipient of international prizes such as the International Solar Energy Society Achievement through Action Award. "No big system in the world had ever before produced more energy than it consumed."

Luz II, a wholly owned subsidiary of BrightSource, handles research, development, logistics and project engineering for the advanced solar-thermal technology of BrightSource plants in Europe and the US. Though it may seem illogical to base his business in Israel, Goldman says he could not have accomplished what he did elsewhere.

"I was trying to do something broad and complex, and it’s hard for people to get their mind around all the elements. Israelis are intellectually curious and have experience in so many areas and that allowed us to put in place a big multidisciplinary conversation and build a learning model based on my specifications in something like six months. It would have taken three or four years in the States. Israelis show incredible dedication and are able to bury their ego in the objective," he says.

Goldman, the father of five and grandfather of 10, takes a serious interest not only in Aish HaTorah – whose founder, Rabbi Noach Weinberg, was a fan of his writings – but also in the Jerusalem College of Technology, where he is a member of the international board of governors. ‘I am looking into doing ecological education within a Jewishly rich curriculum," he declares. "I want to put together Jewish thought and science."

Source: Israel 21C

enlarge

This is a schematic diagram of the light-trapping elements used to optimize absorption within a polymer-embedded silicon wire array. (Credit: Caltech/Michael Kelzenberg)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2010) — Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons. The solar cell does all this using only a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells.

“These solar cells have, for the first time, surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials,” says Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor, professor of applied physics and materials science, and director of Caltech’s Resnick Institute, which focuses on sustainability research.

The light-trapping limit of a material refers to how much sunlight it is able to absorb. The silicon-wire arrays absorb up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight. “We’ve surpassed previous optical microstructures developed to trap light,” he says.

Atwater and his colleagues — including Nathan Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry at Caltech, and graduate student Michael Kelzenberg — assessed the performance of these arrays in a paper appearing in the February 14 advance online edition of the journal Nature Materials.

Atwater notes that the solar cells’ enhanced absorption is “useful absorption.”

“Many materials can absorb light quite well but not generate electricity — like, for instance, black paint,” he explains. “What’s most important in a solar cell is whether that absorption leads to the creation of charge carriers.”

The silicon wire arrays created by Atwater and his colleagues are able to convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons — in technical terms, the wires have a near-perfect internal quantum efficiency. “High absorption plus good conversion makes for a high-quality solar cell,” says Atwater. “It’s an important advance.”

The key to the success of these solar cells is their silicon wires, each of which, says Atwater, “is independently a high-efficiency, high-quality solar cell.” When brought together in an array, however, they’re even more effective, because they interact to increase the cell’s ability to absorb light.

“Light comes into each wire, and a portion is absorbed and another portion scatters. The collective scattering interactions between the wires makes the array very absorbing,” he says.

This effect occurs despite the sparseness of the wires in the array — they cover only between 2 and 10 percent of the cell’s surface area.

“When we first considered silicon wire-array solar cells, we assumed that sunlight would be wasted on the space between wires,” explains Kelzenberg. “So our initial plan was to grow the wires as close together as possible. But when we started quantifying their absorption, we realized that more light could be absorbed than predicted by the wire-packing fraction alone. By developing light-trapping techniques for relatively sparse wire arrays, not only did we achieve suitable absorption, we also demonstrated effective optical concentration — an exciting prospect for further enhancing the efficiency of silicon-wire-array solar cells.”

Each wire measures between 30 and 100 microns in length and only 1 micron in diameter. “The entire thickness of the array is the length of the wire,” notes Atwater. “But in terms of area or volume, just 2 percent of it is silicon, and 98 percent is polymer.”

In other words, while these arrays have the thickness of a conventional crystalline solar cell, their volume is equivalent to that of a two-micron-thick film.

Since the silicon material is an expensive component of a conventional solar cell, a cell that requires just one-fiftieth of the amount of this semiconductor will be much cheaper to produce.

The composite nature of these solar cells, Atwater adds, means that they are also flexible. “Having these be complete flexible sheets of material ends up being important,” he says, “because flexible thin films can be manufactured in a roll-to-roll process, an inherently lower-cost process than one that involves brittle wafers, like those used to make conventional solar cells.”

Atwater, Lewis, and their colleagues had earlier demonstrated that it was possible to create these innovative solar cells. “They were visually striking,” says Atwater. “But it wasn’t until now that we could show that they are both highly efficient at carrier collection and highly absorbing.”

The next steps, Atwater says, are to increase the operating voltage and the overall size of the solar cell. “The structures we’ve made are square centimeters in size,” he explains. “We’re now scaling up to make cells that will be hundreds of square centimeters — the size of a normal cell.”

Atwater says that the team is already “on its way” to showing that large-area cells work just as well as these smaller versions.

Their research was supported by BP and the Energy Frontier Research Center program of the Department of Energy, and made use of facilities supported by the Center for Science and Engineering of Materials, a National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at Caltech. In addition, Boettcher received fellowship support from the Kavli Neuroscience Institute at Caltech.

Adapted from materials provided by California Institute of Technology.

1. Kelzenberg et al. Enhanced absorption and carrier collection in Si wire arrays for photovoltaic applications. Nature Materials, 2010; DOI: 10.1038/nmat2635

TAU’s nanosized “forest of peptides” can be used as the basis for self-cleaning windows and more efficient batteries.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2009) — A coating on windows or solar panels that repels grime and dirt? Expanded battery storage capacities for the next electric car? New Tel Aviv University research, just published in Nature Nanotechnology, details a breakthrough in assembling peptides at the nano-scale level that could make these futuristic visions come true in just a few years.

Operating in the range of 100 nanometers (roughly one-billionth of a meter) and even smaller, graduate student Lihi Adler-Abramovich and a team working under Prof. Ehud Gazit in TAU’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology have found a novel way to control the atoms and molecules of peptides so that they “grow” to resemble small forests of grass. These “peptide forests” repel dust and water — a perfect self-cleaning coating for windows or solar panels which, when dirty, become far less efficient.

“This is beautiful and protean research,” says Adler-Abramovich, a Ph.D. candidate. “It began as an attempt to find a new cure for Alzheimer’s disease. To our surprise, it also had implications for electric cars, solar energy and construction.”

As cheap as the sweetener in your soda

A world leader in nanotechnology research, Prof. Gazit has been developing arrays of self-assembling peptides made from proteins for the past six years. His lab, in collaboration with a group led by Prof. Gil Rosenman of TAU’s Faculty of Engineering, has been working on new applications for this basic science for the last two years.

Using a variety of peptides, which are as simple and inexpensive to produce as the artificial sweetener aspartame, the researchers create their “self-assembled nano-tubules” in a vacuum under high temperatures. These nano-tubules can withstand extreme heat and are resistant to water.

“We are not manufacturing the actual material but developing a basic-science technology that could lead to self-cleaning windows and more efficient energy storage devices in just a few years,” says Adler-Abramovich. “As scientists, we focus on pure research. Thanks to Prof. Gazit’s work on beta amyloid proteins, we were able to develop a technique that enables short peptides to ‘self-assemble,’ forming an entirely new kind of coating which is also a super-capacitor.”

As a capacitor with unusually high energy density, the nano-tech material could give existing electric batteries a boost — necessary to start an electric car, go up a hill, or pass other cars and trucks on the highway. One of the limitations of the electric car is thrust, and the team thinks their research could lead to a solution to this difficult problem.

“Our technology may lead to a storage material with a high density,” says Adler-Abramovich. “This is important when you need to generate a lot of energy in a short period of time. It could also be incorporated into today’s lithium batteries,” she adds.

Window Cleaner a thing of the past?

Coated with the new material, the sealed outer windows of skyscrapers may never need to be washed again — the TAU lab’s material can repel rainwater, as well as the dust and dirt it carries. The efficiency of solar energy panels could be improved as well, as a rain shower would pull away any dust that might have accumulated on the panels. It means saving money on maintenance and cleaning, which is especially a problem in dusty deserts, where most solar farms are installed today.

The lab has already been approached to develop its coating technology commercially. And Prof. Gazit has a contract with drug mega-developer Merck to continue his work on short peptides for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease — as he had originally foreseen.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by American Friends of Tel Aviv University.

Posted By Maurice Picow On December 6, 2009  In Cleantech, Science & Technology |

A Seambiotic algae farm grows biofuel

Seambiotic’s been teaming up with NASA ^[1] to to create a biofuel suitable for sending astronauts into space (?), and now this company is once again making news in a new venture with the China Goudian utility company ^[2] to grow micro algae for use as a biodiesel fuel to power electrical power stations all over China.

Founded in 2003, Seambiotic ^[3] develops and produces marine microalgae for the nutraceuticals ^[4] and biofuel industries by using flue gas from electric power plants.

Seambiotic’s success in utilizing an organic substance that is found in abundance in the world’s oceans and in fresh water sources as well, may one day solve much of the world’s energy needs as well as provide food products for the earth’s continuing increasing population.

The new venture with one of China’s largest utility companies, which operates more than 100 power stations, will build its first commercial farm on 12 hectares (30 acres) in Penglai, a city in Shandong Province ^[5].

The $10 million farm will utilize carbon dioxide being expelled from the power station in Penglai. It is expected to be operational some time in 2010.  On Seambiotic’s website, ^[6]the growth of microalgae requires an abundance of solar radiation in a wide range of temperatures. The algae is best grown in shallow ponds where both light and temperature play a part in the algae’s growth, they say, which is then “fed” by an abundance of carbon dioxide. In this case, by using the flue gases ^[7] from coal-burning power stations, which are abundant in China.

By utilizing the carbon dioxide that otherwise would escape into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, these “greenhouse gases ^[8]” are channeled into the algae cultivation ponds to stimulate algae growth.

Algae as both a food source and as a bio fuel has been the subject of many projects all over the world, utilizing one of the earth’s most abundant plants that has been  supplying much of our oxygen as well as being food for marine life as part of their food chain.

Being able to utilize this natural wonder product to provide food products for both animals and human beings, as well as an environmentally cleaner bio fuel, may one day reduce or even eliminate the need for using oil and coal as a fuel source, as well as reduce the problems of global warming. This good news in advance of the Copenhagen climate change talks which begin this week.

Photo: ^[9]www.seambiotic.com ^[3]

::www.cleantech.com/news ^[10]

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A recipe to save the Western world from the tyranny of oil and fossil fuels: Substitute alternative liquid fuels for oil, build electric and flex-fuel vehicles, produce domestic renewable energy sources and implement energy efficiency – but examine health risks assiduously before doing so.

Those were the conclusions of a distinguished panel of experts who addressed a crowd in Jerusalem on Sunday night at the American Jewish Committee building as part of a larger US initiative – the Jewish Response to the Energy Challenge (J-REC), which held a simultaneous conference in San Francisco. The event also marked the launch of the AJC’s Access program.

Though the solution seems simple enough when summarized in a paragraph, each one of the panelists advocated a different No. 1 priority for Israel and the US during a discussion of the “Israel-US Partnership for Clean and Secure Energy Solutions.”

Still, all agreed that Israel and the Jewish people were uniquely situated to have tremendous influence on policy, as well as the technological discoveries and their implementation.

Dr. Isaac Berzin, the keynote speaker, insisted that the key to ending Iran-sponsored terror by Hamas and Hizbullah was to end the world’s reliance on oil. Berzin, founding director of the Institute for Renewable Energy Policy and an expert in the use of algae to produce fuel, explained that Iran used Chinese money from its oil sales to send Hamas and Hizbullah shiploads of arms.

He argued that it was essential specifically to replace oil, not just develop clean energy. While solar energy produced electricity, it did little to wean the world off of oil, he said. Alternative liquid fuels, such as algae, could replace oil. He advocated shifting from “hunting and gathering” our fuel to growing it in the form of energy crops.

Berzin has a $100 million algae biodiesel project in conjunction with the US Department of Energy and APS, an Arizona power company.

Dr. Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, spoke from the panel table about the dangers of oil.

“Green is the color of the environmentalists, and it is also the color of the people who want us dead, like the Iranians. Oil is a strategic commodity. Why? Because the entire transport sector can only run on gasoline. Whoever fuels the transport sector controls the world economy,” Luft said.

“The first order of the day is to change the vehicle platform,” he argued. “Why were countries still buying oil at $150 a barrel? Because that’s what our cars, trucks, ships and planes run on. We must allow fuel competition on board the vehicle. It can happen today – it costs $100 to convert a car to become flex-fuel compatible.”

Luft – the author of a new book with Anne Korin, Turning Oil Into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice – pointed out that 95 percent of oil reserves would soon be in the hands of five or six countries in the Middle East. None of them are friendly with Israel.

However, Israeli Clean Energy Alliance chairman Hezi Kugler disagreed that the focus should be solely on oil.

“Energy security is about the control of fuel sources – not just oil, but natural gas too, which is in the hands of countries hostile to Israel,” the former director-general of the National Infrastructures Ministry told the crowd.

While nothing in and of itself would make the difference environmentally, he said, “all the breakthroughs together can make a huge difference.”

Astorre Modena, general partner, Terra Venture Partners, championed energy efficiency as the single most effective short-term step.

“Israel is good at bringing smarts to any process – that was the basis of the Israeli hi-tech revolution,” he said. “Now it’s time to bring smarts into the ‘dumb’ energy sector.”

In the longer term, Israel should become a beta site for clean energy and clean fuel, Modena added. Speaking for one of the few venture capital funds investing in Israeli cleantech, Modena said there wasn’t enough money being put into the field.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem law Professor Richard Laster advocated the precautionary principle and restraint, saying it was all very well to come up with new ideas and solutions, but they should be strenuously examined before being implemented.

“Take the cellphone – does anyone really know what using it will do to us? We need another 20 or 30 years to know. It’s better to be safe than sorry,” he declared.

After the experts’ top priorities were laid out, a lively debate ensued about whether all of the options should be pursued at once, or just one should be tackled.

Luft declared, “You can’t strip oil of its importance through energy efficiency. You don’t change the playing field by going on a diet.”

However, Kugler championed energy efficiency as an important environmental step.

“It’s about maintaining economic growth using less electricity,” he said. Electricity production accounts for 55% of Israel’s greenhouse gas emissions, as well as serious air pollution.

He noted that the National Infrastructures Ministry had put a lot of effort into specific programs like green building, regulations for energy-efficient appliances, and other programs that would lead to Israel’s importing a lot less fuel.

At the same time, Kugler slammed the lack of government progress smoothing the way for solar energy production. Fast land allocation processes, expedited licensing and feed-in tariffs were supposed to have been in place by mid-2009, he said, and “none of that has happened.”

Kugler also described Israel’s alternative energy goal of 10% by 2020 as “very modest compared with other countries’ efforts.”

Finally, Berzin and event co-chair Lisa Wolf suggested that clean energy could be a uniting factor between the Jewish Diaspora and Israel. Panel moderator Ze’ev Gross called environmental conservation a Jewish value handed down from the very beginning, when Adam was charged by God with working and conserving the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

At the same time, Luft urged Jewish groups like the AJC and others to put pressure on the US administration and Congress to craft energy policies that reduce dependence on oil. He cited two Jewish US legislators, Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Barbara Boxer, who he said “threw energy security under the bus in favor of environmental concerns” when they crafted the US’s energy policy.

The conference was also sponsored by Presentense and Gvahim.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1257770025577&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

One of the car maker’s oldest and largest plants is being converted to house clean tech companies

Andrew Donoghue, BusinessGreen 11 Sep 2009

A Ford car plant which was recently shut down as part of cost savings by the car maker is being converted into a facility for renewable energy companies.

The facility in Wixom, Michigan, which at the height of production had about 5,000 workers, closed in 2007 with the loss of 1,000 jobs. The site will now be converted into a business park for a series of renewable energy companies, which the backers claim could generate about 4,000 jobs.

Ford said it has been working with energy storage system provider Xtreme Power and solar panel maker Clairvoyant Energy, who will be the first companies to take up residency in the 320-acre site and its 4.7 million square feet of plant space. The two renewable energy providers have invested about $725m (£635m) to redevelop the site, with work expected to begin early next year and clean tech manufacturing expected to get underway in 2011.

“The Wixom Assembly Plant served Ford well for half a century and we wanted to ensure it served Michigan well into the future,” said Ford executive chairman Bill Ford. “Thanks to the collaborative efforts of two visionary energy companies and the leadership of state and local officials, we are transforming our Wixom facility into one of the largest renewable energy parks in the US. I can’t imagine a better way to use this facility – for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.”

Although Ford and the other companies involved discussed their role in developing the site, the backers also admit that state and local incentives were key to the project including refundable battery and photovoltaic tax credits, Michigan Economic Growth Authority employment tax credits, Renaissance Zone tax incentives and brownfield tax credits.

Xtreme Power systems, which develops technology to integrate renewable energy onto the electricity grid, will use more than one million square feet of the site.

“This move is significant on both ends of the spectrum,” said Carlos Coe, president and chief executive of Xtreme Power. “It underscores a significant shift toward the accelerated commercialisation and adoption of strategic renewable energy technologies, due in large part to the deepened commitment on the part of local, state and federal policymakers to support companies like ours.”

For its part, Clairvoyant Energy says it will have the capacity to produce more than 2.5 million solar panels a year at the Wixom site, which the company claims could equate to the need for one large coal plant every year.

“Clairvoyant Energy is fully energised to respond to the call to create the green jobs of tomorrow – today,” said David Hardee, chief executive of Clairvoyant Energy.

The Wixom Assembly Plant was one of Ford’s largest and oldest manufacturing sites, producing 6.6 million vehicles during its 50 years of operation. Production began in 1957 when Wixom became Lincoln Division’s new national headquarters and the sole producer of all vehicles for the Lincoln Division.

“Over the years, Wixom Assembly produced the Lincoln Continental, Town Car, LS, Mark VI, VII and VIII, as well as the Ford Thunderbird and Ford GT,” Ford said in a statement.

In May, Ford announced that it would invest $550m in converting a Michigan plant currently used to manufacture SUVs into a factory specialising in small, fuel-efficient cars that will also produce its first electric vehicle.

Documentary film maker Michael Moore covered the plight of sacked Michigan car workers in his 1989 film Roger and Me.

Permalink: http://www.businessgreen.com/2249323
This article was printed from the BusinessGreen.com web site

By Karin Kloosterman , Israel 21C,  September 2, 2009

A growing desire to be energy independent — as a nation and individuals — is fueling the growth in demand for alternative energy

By Crystal McMorris, Midland Daily News,  August 6, 2009

    If you think roof-top windmills, solar-powered cottages and robust manufacturing in Michigan are the stuff of fairy tales, you weren’t at Wednesday’s Alternative Energy Forum.
    Leaders in several alternative energy fields updated about 100 people on the growing demand and emerging technologies for energy from wind, sun and the earth itself, and how the state is poised to benefit from public and private investment in "green energy."
    The forum, sponsored by the Sierra Club and Citizens Exploring Clean Energy, was arranged by University of Michigan senior Shawn Kinkema and held at Essexville Garber High School.
    "I believe Michigan has the tools to reinvent itself," said Kinkema, an environmental studies major from Essexville.
    Cedric G. Currin has been involved in this reinvention since the first time "alternative" energy was a hot topic in the 1970s. His company, Currin Corp., of Midland, makes solar panels which are used, mainly, to power to rural areas beyond the grid in national parks, for example, and isolated areas of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
    Currin said the solar power industry has grown about 40 percent per year for the past three years or so.
    "You can’t think of a greener way of getting power," Currin said, holding up one of his company’s solar panels, about the size of a record album. "It makes no noise. Nothing is moving. It is virtually free of any maintenance. And it lasts for a long, long time — 50 to 100 years."
    Solar power has its problems, however, Currin noted, which explains why so few homes in Michigan rely on solar power as their sole or primary energy source. Panels produce DC current, while our homes are set up for AC current, requiring conversion. Power needs to be stored, too, since the sun’s not always shining.
    And a solar system costing $20,000 to install will save only about $200 a year in electrical costs.
    But a growing desire to be energy independent — as a nation and individuals — is fueling the growth in demand for alternative energy, Currin noted. Concern for the environment is another driver, he said. Under the current energy system, each Michigan household causes five tons of carbon dioxide to be emitted from coal power plants, he said.

    "Some day, our grandchildren will ask us what we did to help," Currin said.
    Solar panels aren’t the only item people are putting on their roofs to tap clean power. Mini wind turbines are also turning up atop businesses and homes to turn brisk breezes into cheap kilowatts.
    Matt Hewitt, representing Affordable Green Energy of Essexville, expects demand for the small-scale wind turbines his company imports to grow as local governments adjust zoning laws to allow for them.
    "Our units are designed for home and business use," he said. "Small wind is different than its cousin, big wind. These are quieter than an air conditioning unit."
    Affordable Green Energy recently installed two small turbines for Bay Carbon on the edge of the Saginaw River in Bay City. The 5-kilowatt turbines sit atop 40-foot tall poles. Rooftop models for homes are only about 9.5 feet tall and 300 pounds and spin on a vertical axis that allows capture of the updraft from the roof, Hewitt said
    Such a unit would cost about $25,000 to install, and the company offers a variety of financing and leasing programs, he said.
    Pat Flory of Answer Heating and Cooling in Freeland discussed his company’s hottest green product: geothermal energy systems. Tubes run through the dirt beneath a home and yard to gather subterranean heat and use it to not only heat homes, but cool them, as well. In new construction, Flory said, such systems add about 33 percent to the cost of a high-end climate control system.
    "Heavy, damp clay soils are best," he said, though the company will work with whatever dirt is there as long as there’s a field of about 50 by 200 feet to work with. Geothermal technology, Flory said, has been around since the 14th Century.

Copyright © 2009 – Midland Daily News

by Rochel Sylvetsky, Arutz Sheva, 25 June 09

(Israelnationalnews.com) It was an Israel lover’s dream come true: A new way of generating renewable energy using concentrated solar radiation was created at the Weizmann Institute, developed in cooperation with the AORA solar technology company located in the development town of Yavne, brought to fruition by Torah observant investors from abroad and launched in Kibbutz Samar 20 kilometers (13 miles) north of Eilat.

Overseas guests, including dignitaries and businessmen from Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Chile and Australia, mingled with the smiling Israelis, including AORA chief executive officer Chaim Fried’s family from Har Bracha, government representatives and kibbutz members at the event on Wednesday.

Yehoshua Fried, founder of construction-management firm EDIG, of which AORA is a member, began his speech with the traditional blessing over something new and continued with a quote from the week’s Torah portion.  He thanked American investor Meir Reiss and Canadian Director of Corporation and Consultant to Management, Zev Rosenzweig, who believed in his dream and made it into reality. Fried recalled how he pioneered in the field 15 years ago along with Chief Technology Officer Dr. Pinchas Doron, but had to abandon his plans until the need for clean, renewable solar power was recognized.

Rosenzweig spoke of the special feeling he and Reiss have, as committed Jews, in helping the Jewish State utilize its brain power, strengthening its economy, providing local jobs and benefiting the world in general. Udi Gat, Eilot Regional Council Chairman, expressed the hope that his region would become the “Sun Valley” of the clean energy world as California’s “Silicon Valley” is to the cyberworld.

The new environmental friendly power station incorporates innovations that make it particularly advantageous in comparison to other technologies. It does not use water as do steam operated turbines, it can be constructed in several months rather than the years it takes to build other solar power stations, and it can supply energy 24 hours a day by using fuel to generate electricity when there is no sunlight.

It is the only modular system in existence, perhaps its greatest advantage, allowing the purchase and operation of as many 100-kilowatt modules as needed.  A modular system can continue operation even if one or several modules need repair and the size and relative price enable it to be practical at a local level as well as a large area. Each module can provide for 50-70 households, making it attractive for developing countries with outlying villages. Over 70 percent of the materials are Israeli products, providing income for local firms.

The system consists of 30 tracking mirrors (heliostats) situated on a half-acre of land that track the sun and redirect its rays towards the top of a 30-meter high tower housing a solar receiver and gas turbine. The first tower, designed by the pioneering Israeli architect Chaim Dotan to resemble a yellow flower, is placed so that it can be seen with its top glowing in the sun when traveling on the road to Eilat.

The patented special solar receiver in the tower uses the sun’s energy to heat air to 1000 degrees Celsius and directs this energy into the turbine which converts it into electric power. This can be attached to the national grid and the Minister of National Infrastructures, Binyamin Ben Eliezer, has already signed the license allowing that.

Contracts for “concentrated solar power stations” were signed with Australian and Spanish businessmen at the launching itself. As for the Israeli consumer, it remains only for the Israeli government to decide what to charge for the cheaper, cleaner electricity generated by our home grown “Power Flower”.

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