A Fairbanks developer said Tuesday he hopes he can build a 25-megawatt wind farm near Delta Junction despite limited avenues for public aid.

Mike Craft said his firm, Alaska Environmental Power, is working with Golden Valley Electric Association to study how to best feed wind power into Interior Alaska’s transmission grid.

The work parallels planning by Golden Valley for a separate wind farm near Healy.

Craft told a chamber of commerce audience Tuesday he hopes the integration studies will lead to power-sale agreements between his firm and the utility. He said Golden Valley previously agreed to a smaller, pilot sale agreement following construction of two smaller turbines at the Delta site.

“(It) made it possible for us to come on line with these two turbines. That helped us a lot,” Craft said. He said the turbines, the largest built with state aid, have produced 134,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Craft, a builder and residential developer, started looking to enter the wind power business roughly three years ago. He approached public officials last winter for help with his project and received lukewarm responses but said Tuesday he chose to continue and hopes to install 16 GE turbines near Delta.

Three House Republicans, Joe Barton and Michael Burgess of Texas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, have introduced the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act, which would repeal the section of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that sets minimum energy efficiency standards for light bulbs and would effectively phase out most ordinary incandescents.

While the new standards won’t take effect until 2012, the authors argue that they are having a negative impact. Specifically, they say the standards have led lighting companies to close several incandescent light bulb factories in the United States and send jobs overseas — particularly to China, where most compact fluorescent light bulbs, which are more efficient than incandescents, are manufactured.

Compact fluorescents are likely to be the cheapest bulbs on store shelves after retailers stop selling ordinary incandescents.

“The unanticipated consequences of the ’07 act — Washington-mandated layoffs in the middle of a desperate recession — is one of the many examples of what happens when politicians and activists think they know better than consumers and workers,” Mr. Barton, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement. “Washington is making too many decisions that are better left to people who work for their own paychecks and earn their own living.”

Continue reading: The Battle of the Bulbs

Mention “new lighting technology” and what leaps to mind is probably a compact fluorescent curlicue. Shaped like a soft ice cream cone, it is viewed as a replacement for the ubiquitous 60-watt incandescent light bulb, which looks almost like it did 90 years ago.

But a profusion of light-emitting-diode lamps is about to hit the market, many of them in applications that are awkward or impossible for compact fluorescents.

LED’s are still mostly specialty items sold on the Web. But by the end of this month, the 2,200 Home Depot stores around the United States will stock seven types, including two substitutes for the classic incandescent bulb, one of which my colleague Leslie Kaufman reported on recently.

But those are “not the most compelling use” of LED technology, according to Zachary S. Gibler, chief executive of the Lighting Science Group Corporation, which makes the lamps that Home Depot will stock. Replacing a standard 60-watt bulb, an LED will produce roughly the same amount of light per watt of electricity as a compact fluorescent; its only advantages, he said, is that it is fully dimmable and lasts a lot longer.

Another product his company is marketing is something most consumers can identify, but not name: a round lamp with a face about the size of a silver dollar, with a base consisting of two metal pins, often used for accent lighting in kitchens or retail stores. Called an MR16, it is almost always halogen, which is only slightly more efficient than a standard incandescent. It is much too small to allow for a fluorescent version.

But Lighting Science is selling an LED version. Installed over my kitchen sink, it casts a much whiter light than the yellowish halogen it replaced. It can take a bit of getting used to, but vegetables in the sink seem truer in its light. A 6-watt version can replace a 35-watt halogen, which is a consideration if it’s the light you leave on all night.

Continue reading: LED Lamps Go Where Compact Fluorescents Cannot

The electrics are coming! By the end of the year, at least six battery-powered vehicles will be on the U.S. market. The cars will finally go from revolving on show stands to dealer floors, and we’ll finally know if consumers mean it when they say in opinion polls that they’ll consider an EV for their next purchase. Most of these cars will charge in five or six hours on 220-volt home current, and overnight on 110. Fifteen-minute fast charging (480 volts) may be available at some public stations, maybe even at your favorite big-box store.

Here’s a rundown of the cars headed for showrooms, some from major manufacturers and others from ambitious startups. Four are battery-only cars, one is a plug-in hybrid and the sixth (the Chevrolet Volt) is a unique combination of the two.

Continue reading: 6 Hot New Electric Cars Soon to Hit Show Rooms

With a cap on carbon dioxide an apparent nonstarter in the Senate these days, some clean energy and climate advocates have shifted their sights to a scaled-back but still ambitious goal: passage of a national renewable electricity standard.

Such a law would require utility companies to produce a set amount of electricity from renewable sources by a certain date, spurring the development of clean sources like wind and solar and probably lowering overall emissions nationally. Perhaps most important, some argue that with a strong push by the president, such a measure could actually clear the high bar for passage of 60 votes in the Senate this fall.

Continue reading: A Push for Action on Renewables

A Southeast Alaska hydroelectric project has come in millions over budget, but is expected to bring Juneau plenty of power for years to come.

Alaska Electric Light & Power now is trying to persuade the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to let it raise its rates.

The utility is trying to show that it deserves to collect an extra $15.8 million or more in additional revenue after finishing the project. The utility says it wants $12.6 million at first and the rest can come later.

Continue reading: Hydroelectric project millions over budget

The Golden Valley Electric Association announced  plans Tuesday at its annual meeting to pursue the Eva Creek wind project, a $93 million effort to generate about 24 megawatts of power near Healy.

“After almost a decade of planning, study and research we finally think that we have a project that makes economic sense,” said Brian Newton, the GVEA president and CEO.

He said the final decision on the project is to be made in the next few months. It would be the first wind project by any Railbelt utility and the largest of the dozen or so wind farms in Alaska.

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The methane gas produced by rotting trash smells awful and can even blow up, but Anchorage’s Solid Waste Services has a plan to put that gas to work.

SWS plans to take the gas emitted at the Anchorage Regional Landfill and use it as energy. Estimates say the landfill’s methane could produce about 3 megawatts of power, or enough to power 2,500 local homes. Right now the methane gas is burned off by flares.

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On Tuesday, the village of Unalakleet, seated on Alaska’s northwest coast, celebrated the town’s newest energy force — turbine number six. The awakening of the high-tech wind catcher completes the installation of the town’s new wind farm, which has already saved the village tens of thousands of dollars since the first turbines powered up a few months ago.

Since November, Unalakleet has cut utility costs by nearly $55,000 and generated enough electricity to power 86 homes for an entire year, according the wind farm’s new Web site. The site also claims the wind energy has significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise have been pumped into the atmosphere through more traditional, diesel-only power generation — the equivalent of more than 580,000 miles of driving in the family car. According to our calculations, that’s about 111 one-way trips between Anchorage and Key West, Florida.

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In the US, where 40 percent of homes contain at least one, video game consoles consume 16 billion kilowatt hours of energy yearly. That’s enough to power the entire city of San Diego for about 12 months, say the Natural Resources Defense Council and Ecos Consulting, which conducted a study on the energy-efficiency of various game consoles last year.

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