Newcomers to the power industry are often staggered by the sums of money involved.

For example, US$500,000,000 – half a billion dollars – buys a medium-sized combined-cycle gas plant. Not big, just medium. And it gets worse: that same half billion would buy a relatively small solid fuel plant, especially if you use the latest higher temperature, lower pollution (more…)

U.S. officials are expected to approve by this fall what would be the world’s biggest solar power plant, a 1,000-megawatt project in the California desert that developers say could power 800,000 homes. The Blythe Solar Power Project, which would use concentrated solar thermal technology, is to be built on 7,025 acres of public land in Riverside County, about 10 (more…)

The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan, a report released by the non-profit group Beyond Zero Emissions in conjunction with the University of Melbourne’s Energy Institute, provides a detailed roadmap to power Australia’s with 100-percent renewable-energy by 2020.

The research was published in July (more…)