Located near Arlington, Ore., the project consists of 300-plus wind turbines staggered over 30 square miles in the eastern part of the state. Construction of the Shepherds Flat wind farm began in 2009, and despite controversy over funding and a delay by the Air Force, progressed fairly quickly for a project of such size. The installation has a 20-year power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison, and was one of the first to use the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program.

Besides producing an estimated 2 billion kWh each year, Shepherds Flat is expected to have an annual economic impact of $37 million for the state. Sustainable Business Oregon reports that New York-based Caithness Energy employed more than 400 people to develop and will employ another 45 full-time workers.

In 2007, the state legislature created a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that requires the largest utilities in Oregon to provide 25 percent of their retail sales of electricity from newer, clean, renewable sources of energy by 2025. In addition to wind and solar energy, a recent survey shows that Oregonians strongly favor the development of tidal power resources as well. Ocean Power Technologies plans to deploy at 150-kilowatt “PowerBuoy” off the coast near Reedsport.

Photo credit: Loco Steve/Flickr

The post Massive Google-Funded Oregon Wind Farm Open For Business appeared first on REVMODO.

In 2010, Toyota hinted that its pure-electric eQ, a variant of the iQ minicar, would break all sorts of efficiency records and sell by the thousands. In two years, however, the company has watched multiple issues plague its major competition, the Chevy Volt and Nissan LEAF. Sensing that consumer demand for the eQ might not be as robust as expected, Toyota says it will instead release only about 100 eQ vehicles in the United States and Japan, and then scale back its development plans for EVs.

Toyota’s vice chairman told reporters the company sees many difficulties developing electric vehicles, especially given the limited market for electric cars. “The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society’s needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge,” Toyota’s Vice Chairman Takeshis Uchiyamada told Reuters in Japan.

For now, it appears that the company will remain focused on its existing hybrid and plug-in hybrid options, like the newly expanded Prius family. Earlier this year, Toyota announced plans to release an accessory that will allow the Prius PHV plug-in hybrid to be used as a power generator in an emergency.

So far, Nissan and GM, both of which have invested heavily in their all-electric vehicle offerings, show no signs of adopting Toyota’s cautious approach.

Photo credit: Toyota/Autoguide

The post Toyota Abandons EV Plans to Focus on Hybrid Models appeared first on REVMODO.

We’ve heard it over and over: range anxiety, the fear that electric vehicle batteries can only survive short trips, is a major roadblock to EV adoption. Newer electric vehicles boast stronger, more efficient batteries, and EV manufacturers make bold claims about the mileage each can travel before recharging. The company’s website states that the Nissan LEAF battery should be able to travel at least 73 miles on a single charge (and up to 100 miles depending on speed). It also claims that the battery should retain 80 percent charging capacity for up to seven years. Yet those entering their second or third summers with the car noticed that their mileage per charge is plummeting, and fast. Online complaints quickly reached Nissan’s ears, but the company merely stated that it was investigating the issue and ‘would make things right.’

Months later, EV owners were tired of waiting to see results from this “investigation” so they decided to orchestrate a test of their own. Just days ago, twelve LEAF owners gathered in a Tempe parking lot that featured several charging stations. Some of the vehicles were practically brand new, while others had odometer readings of up to 29,000 miles. Starting with fully charged batteries, each car drove mapped route until their batteries literally ran out of juice. According to a summary published on InsideEVs, the newest of the cars, those with the lowest mileage, lasted about 80 miles on average. Older cars, however, and those claimed to have suffered battery degradation were doing far less than that with one only getting 59.3 miles out of a full charge.

Confronted with the news, Nissan has pointed to the annual mileage and driving style of  LEAF owners as an explanation. Upon an internal investigation, the company found that most of the LEAFs covered much higher mileage per year than the 12,500 miles Nissan used to estimate the rate of battery capacity loss over time. Under these conditions, Nissan’s Mark Perry told Green Car Reports, “The cars and the battery packs are behaving as we expected.” However, that likely comes as small consolation to EV drivers looking for a reliable vehicle that can truly replace their gas powered cars.

Featured photo credit: Dongliu/Shutterstock

The post LEAF Owners Put Nissan On Notice For Weak EV Batteries appeared first on REVMODO.

Amazon’s plan involves building a trio of towers, each 38 stories high, a few blocks south of its still-growing South Lake Union campus. In order to do this, they would have to co-opt city-owned alley space. Additionally, many fear that the company’s 12,000 new employees might have a noticeable impact on area traffic as they make their way to the campus each day. Amazon hopes it can get at least 75 percent of those employees to use public transit instead of driving, but that could still lead to delays and crowded streetcars for locals who normally do the same.

To reduce this congestion, Amazon wants to help the city add a fourth rail car to its existing fleet. The company would foot the $3.7 million bill for the car, and help pay its operating costs for 10 years, allowing service every 10 minutes from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays. Since Seattle’s a pretty bike-crazy town, Amazon figures lots of employees will want to try out their new fixies on the way to work as well. To that end, the company wants to pay an additional $250,000 for the addition of bike lanes on both sides of Seventh Avenue between its buildings, according to Marybeth Turner, a city transportation spokeswoman. Amazon would contribute $150,000 to a future triangular park nearby.

All in all, it seems that Amazon is taking a fairly benevolent route in hopes of getting its new campus approved. But some critics say the $5.5 million is nothing compared to what the company will profit from the new development. John Fox, leader of the Seattle Displacement Coalition, suggests that the city should charge the company more to offset the impact on traffic.

If you live in the Seattle area, and want to know more about how these changes could affect you, the Amazon proposal goes to a public hearing before the City Council’s Transportation Committee at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. A council vote is expected in mid-December.

Photo credit: sillygwailo/Flickr

The post Amazon Offers $5.5M to Improve Public Transit Near New Seattle Campus appeared first on REVMODO.

Believe it or not, these ethereal sky lights actually originate with the sun. Occasionally, solar activity triggers a release of gas, something scientists call a coronal mass ejection (CME). It takes two or three days for these emissions to reach the Earth’s magnetic field, where it generates currents of charged particles upon impact. According to Sten Odenwald, author of The 23rd Cycle: Learning to Live with a Stormy Star, these particles are boosted in energy in Earth’s upper atmosphere, and when they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms, they produce dazzling auroral light.

Normally, the Northern Lights are a special treat reserved only for those in higher altitudes, like Canada, Alaska and the Arctic. During a couple of very specific times of year, however, they become easier to see from lower elevations. One peak season for spotting the aurora borealis is in the weeks before and after the vernal equinox, which marks the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and the other starts right around the autumnal equinox (now!) and lasts through the end of October.

According to Janet Green, a physicist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the times around the equinoxes are when geomagnetic storms — disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field — are strongest.

Unfortunately, spotting the Northern Lights isn’t like an eclipse or shooting star. There’s no precise way to predict when or where the auroral light will be visible. The best advice we found comes from Joe Rao at Space.com:

“If your newspaper, radio or TV reports that shortwave radio communications have been disturbed or interrupted, and especially if they say this had to do with something happening on the sun, or if you’re a trucker and notice unusual skip conditions on your CB radio, then, that night, the next night and even the next, get out away from city lights and look up toward the north.”

Good luck and happy autumn!

Main photo credit: Magdanatka/Shutterstock

The post First Day of Autumn Arrives with Likelier Northern Lights Sightings appeared first on REVMODO.

Called ebuggy, this battery concept looks and works very much like the RideKick bike trailer featured on Revmodo a few months ago. The ebuggy is designed to be towed behind electric cars, like the RideKick is towed behind bikes. Designers envision a series of ebuggy stations located on the outskirts of major cities. EV drivers would pick up and connect the trailer on their way out of town, connecting it to their car’s existing electrical power system in a matter of minutes. When they arrive at their destination, the ebuggy trailer could be returned for recharging at another conveniently located station.

EV drivers could join this battery exchange program and pay a certain fee via an ebuggy card each time they utilize a trailer. An ebuggy kit would have to be installed on the car, including a standard trailer hitch, a power socket and a dashboard user interface. Fees would be automatically calculated and billed, and according to the company, would “always be lower than driving a gas or diesel car.”

Although it sounds unique, the battery swap concept proposed by ebuggy isn’t that groundbreaking. Silicon Valley-based Better Place has been developing a network of battery exchange and recharging stations for a number of years, with operational networks in Israel and Denmark, and Australia and China slated to come on board soon. Still, the Better Place concept requires the use of a specific EV: the Renault Fluence Z.E. With the ebuggy, just about any car could be retrofitted with the equipment necessary to use the backup battery service.

“ebuggy allows the automotive industry to build reasonably priced electric vehicles with a smaller battery, because ebuggy is available for longer distances,” said ebuggy Managing Director Dr. Manfred Baumgärtner. “As a result, electric cars will become cheaper than vehicles with a combustion engine and e-mobility will be able to assert itself rapidly and dynamically.”

Main photo credit: ebuggy

The post ebuggy: An EV Battery Trailer that Could Eliminate Range-Anxiety appeared first on REVMODO.

Remaining in peak physical condition is difficult for astronauts living aboard the space station, since the absence of gravity means very little muscle resistance. Astronauts must use special cardio and strength training equipment in order to give their muscles a workout in a weightless world. Since Williams is the commander of the Expedition 33 crew aboard the space station, which is orbiting about 240 miles above the Earth, she had to set a good example.

After “swimming” half a mile (0.8 km), biking 18 miles (29 km), and running 4 miles (6.4 km), Williams finished with a time of one hour, 48 minutes and 33 seconds.

The space station already had its own treadmill and stationary bike, which use a uncomfortable-looking tangle of harnesses and straps to keep astronauts from floating away while they exercise. To simulate the swimming portion of the race, Williams used what’s called the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) to do weightlifting and resistance exercises that approximate swimming in microgravity.

Speaking to NASA TV from space, Williams said: “I’m happy to be done. It wasn’t easy, and I’m sure everybody in California’s very happy to be done too.”

Sunita, we salute you! Now we’ll never be able to complain about going to the regular, old Earth gym again.

Photo credit: NASA

The post Astronaut Sunita Williams Completes First Triathalon in Space! appeared first on REVMODO.

The EPA’s new rules are enforceable under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) which established the second phase of the Renewable Fuel Standards program. The EISA already specifies a one billion gallon minimum volume requirement for the biomass-based diesel category for 2012 and beyond, so the EPA’s slight requirement increase shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise to the diesel industry.

Biodiesel is a non-petroleum fuel typically made from fats or oils such as soybean oil, but it can also be derived from waste vegetable oils. According to the National Biodiesel Board, it can be blended at any level with petroleum diesel to create a biodiesel blend, and can be used in existing vehicles with diesel engines with little or no modifications.

The move is good news for states like Iowa that depend on the biodiesel industry to buy up their soybean crops. Currently Iowa is the country’s largest producer of biodisel with 13 dedicated facilities and the capacity to produce 320 million gallons on its own every year. Yet, some are still doubtful that using food crops for fuel production is a good use of America’s agricultural capabilities, and there have been questions about whether or not biodiesel is really a cleaner-burning fuel. And, of course, the petroleum industry is unhappy, having previously claimed that the EPA’s mandate makes it more expensive to produce diesel, a cost that’s ultimately passed on to the consumer.

Still, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack seems optimistic that the move will be good for the economy: ”Over the past three years, we have doubled generation from renewable energy and [this] announcement by the EPA will ensure that we are continuing to utilize biodiesel to help meet our energy needs, create jobs and strengthen the rural economy,” he said.

Photo credit: Frontpage/Shutterstock

The post EPA Sets 1.28B Gallon Biodiesel Requirement for 2013 appeared first on REVMODO.

Evatran, makers of the Plugless Power EV charging system, recently announced the addition of two big ticket testers for their prototype device. Google and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) recently joined Evatran’s Apollo Program, the first program to test and demonstrate wireless EV charging capability for passenger vehicles. So far, it looks to be a success.

Unsure about how it’s possible to charge an entire car without a cord? Think about your other wireless electronics. Cordless devices (think home phones and electric toothbrushes) use inductive power transfer to transmit power without a cord. The Plugless Power system works in a similar way: A parking pad is installed on the floor of your garage (or in a parking spot) so it’s automatically underneath your EV when you park. Magnetic fields transfer energy from the transmitting coil in the parking pad and convert it into an electrical current by the receiving coil in the vehicle adapter. When your car is fully charged, the system turns off. And if you need to leave before charging is complete, simply back up and the charging stops.

There’s no need to worry about electrical waves burning your brain every time you enter the garage, since only the compatible coils can make this energy transfer possible — ensuring total safety for anything that comes into contact with the system.

The main purpose of the Apollo Program is to get real-world feedback on the wireless charging system from a variety of commercial clients. Besides the LADWP and Google, which recently added on to its initial first-gen installation, testing partners include the Hertz Corporation, Duke Energy and the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) in Greenville, S.C. So far, the system has only been trialed in the Nissan LEAF and Chevrolet Volt, but Evatran says retrofits for other electric vehicle makes and models are coming soon.

“We’ve received invaluable and candid feedback from our partners, and armed with that feedback, we have now set our sights on releasing an upgraded and refined production product as early as January 2013,” said Rebecca Hough, Evatran’s Chief Operating Officer. The company is now accepting partners for the second phase of the Apollo Program set to launch in the next four months.

Photo credits: Plugless Power

The post Google and L.A. Utility Test Wireless EV Charging System appeared first on REVMODO.

Frayne and Hornstein are the bright minds behind the Solar Pocket Factory, a recently funded Kickstarter project that has the potential to revolutionize the world of microsolar panels. By creating a machine that can automate the microsolar manufacturing process and using the money saved on assembly to invest in longer-lasting materials, the pair claim they can make microsolar panels about 30 percent cheaper than the existing panels, and make them last five times longer in the sun.

After about six months of international exploration, Frayne and Hornstein realized that most microsolar panels were far too expensive and unreliable for the average consumer, and developing nations (which need microsolar badly) weren’t even in the ballpark. They discovered that most of this high cost came from the fact that microsolar panels are often slowly assembled by hand. Even with this painstaking process, 15 percent of the panels never make it out the factory door because they’ve been soldered incorrectly.

The duo realized that through automation, they could speed up the manufacturing process while drastically reducing human error. So, they got to work building a tiny, portable factory that could do just that (see above). Once the machine was happily pressing out microsolar panels, they decided it was time to share it with the world.

Instead of patenting and profiting from their invention, Frayne and Hornstein just want to get it into the hands and workshops of technicians around the globe. So, with about $75,000 in help from Kickstarter backers, they’ve opensourced the specs for most of their projects, and plan to do just that. Keep up with the duo’s solar adventures here.

Photo credit: Frayne and Hornstein/Kickstarter

The post Mobile Microsolar Factory Puts Power in Your Pocket appeared first on REVMODO.