Mixed Greens: Avatar’s James Cameron goes solar PV

Film director James Cameron says he will install nearly 1MW of solar panels to provide power for his film production company in Manhattan Beach, California. According to CleanTechnica, a total of 3,600 modules will be installed in three arrays at Lightstorm Entertainment, the makers of the film Avatar, which had a strong environmental theme. “We have to do this,” Cameron was quoted as saying. “We have to do this for the future, for our children and we have to do it as a moral responsibility for the planet.”

Meanwhile, in other news …..

Dow Jones reports that Continental Wind Partners and Wind Prospect Group have put up for sale a stake in their proposed 107MW Boco Rock wind project in NSW. It comes just weeks after the developers secured a power purchase agreement for the project from TRUenergy.

National Australia Bank has provided $120 million in financing for a group of wind farms in the UK being built by Terra Firma Capital Partners. The loan will finance the construction and operation of five onshore projects with a combined capacity of 52.5MW. Last month, Macquarie Group provided a $75 million loan to help finance offshore wind parks being developed by Ireland’s Mainstream Renewable Power.

Retailing giant Ikea said it will sell only light-emitting diode (LED) lamps and bulbs in its stores by 2016, in order to help its customers save energy and cut carbon emissions. IKEA Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard noted that replacing the world’s 12b traditional light bulbs with LEDs would cut emissions equivalent to those of the Netherlands. He added that the company also plans to convert all the lighting in its stores, factories and distribution centers to LEDs.

Sumitomo, Japan’s third-largest trading house, bought a 25 per cent take in the 550MW Desert Sunlight solar PV project in California, Bloomberg reported. It bought its stake from GE, which jointly owned the project with NextEra. It is Sumitomo’s first  investment in a US solar farm.

Bloomberg also reported that AT&T has bought 9.9MW of fuel cells from Bloom Energy, adding to the 7.5MW if bought last year and becoming Bloom’s largest non-utility customer.

Meanwhile, Australian fuel cell maker Ceramic Fuel Cells says that 25 of its Blue-Gen gas to electricity fuel cells will be used in Germany’s first commercial, virtual fuel cell power plant.
The virtual power plant, which was officially opened yesterday by Environment Minister Peter Altmaier, is a cluster of distributed electricity generation units, controlled and operated by a central entity using integrated software systems. It can be used to meet peak loads and balance intermittent power from wind or solar, and eases the burden on electricity distribution networks and prevents distribution losses.