News and Events by CCRES November 09, 2012

Croatian Center of Renewable Energy Sources  News and Events November 09, 2012

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Debuts Titan Supercomputer   The Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory Titan supercomputer will be 10 times faster than the previous fastest Energy Department computer. Credit: ORNL The Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on October 29 debuted the Titan supercomputer, a system capable of a theoretical peak performance exceeding 20 trillion calculations per second (or 20 petaflops). Titan employs a family of processors called graphic processing units (GPU), first created for computer gaming, and will be 10 times more powerful than ORNL's last world-leading system, Jaguar. Titan will provide unprecedented computing power for research in energy, climate change, efficient engines, materials, and other disciplines and will pave the way for a wide range of achievements in science and technology. Titan utilizes a Cray XK7 system contains 18,688 nodes, each holding a 16-core AMD Opteron 6274 processor and an NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU accelerator. Titan also has more than 700 terabytes of memory. The combination of central processing units, the traditional foundation of high-performance computers, and more recent GPUs will allow Titan to occupy the same space as its Jaguar predecessor while using only marginally more electricity. See the ORNL press release.   USDA Announces $3 Million in Smart Grid Funding   The U.S. Department of Agriculture on October 19 announced $107.5 million in loan guarantees to modernize and improve rural electric systems, including nearly $3 million in Smart Grid technologies in North Dakota and Wisconsin. According to a 2009 Energy Department report that examined Smart Grid deployment nationwide, Smart Grids have the potential to dramatically change how we manage electricity use in the United States. In August, the USDA reported that it had met its goal to finance $250 million in Smart Grid technologies in fiscal year 2012. See the USDA press release.   Navy's China Lake Solar Plant Begins Operations   SunPower Corp. on October 19 announced the completion of the U.S. Navy's largest solar system, a 13.78-megawatt solar photovoltaic (PV) power system at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California. The power plant is the first federal agency project to be financed through a 20-year term solar power purchase agreement. The plant, designed and operated by SunPower Corp., is generating the equivalent of more than 30% of China Lake's annual energy load, helping to reduce costs by an estimated $13 million over the next 20 years. The 20-year power purchase agreement requires no upfront capital or maintenance obligations from the Navy, matches conventional project financing terms for solar power facilities, and allows the Navy to secure electricity at up to 30% below the rate available through shorter duration 10-year power purchase agreements. SunPower has installed more than 50 megawatts (MW) of solar power systems at government facilities to date. The systems the company has delivered to the Navy and U.S. Air Force alone generate enough electricity to power about 9,000 homes. According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates, the Navy and Air Force systems will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by almost 732,000 tons over the next 20 years. See the SunPower press release. China Lake also has four geothermal power plants that produce up to 270 MW of electricity, or enough electricity for approximiately 378,000 households. The site has been in continuous operation since 1987, and was the Navy's first site to tap thermal energy. See the China Lake Natural Resources webpage.   Interior Announces Lease for Delaware Offshore Wind   The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced on October 23 that BOEM has reached an agreement on the first commercial lease under its "Smart from the Start" initiative for offshore wind energy development. Situated in federal waters, the site covers 96,430 acres approximately 11 nautical miles off the coast of Delaware. The lease grants NRG Bluewater Wind Delaware LLC the exclusive right to submit one or more plans to BOEM to conduct activities in support of wind energy development in the lease area. The company may submit a Site Assessment Plan with a proposal to conduct site assessment activities, such as the installation of a meteorological tower or meteorological buoy. It can also submit a Construction and Operations Plan to propose construction of the actual wind facility and cabling to shore. NRG Bluewater originally proposed a 450-megawatt project off the coast of Delaware, with estimates that the project could generate enough power to supply electricity for more than 100,000 homes. This estimate could change after NRG undergoes additional planning and survey work and submits its plan to BOEM, which will assess the potential plans based on environmental, technical, and other factors before granting approval for construction. The Smart from the Start initiative for the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, announced in 2010, is designed to facilitate siting, leasing, and construction of new offshore renewable projects. See the DOI press release and the BOEM Delaware webpage, which includes a map of the site.

CROATIAN CENTER of RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES (CCRES)   special thanks to U.S. Department of Energy | USA.gov

INCITE Program Doles Out Hours on Supercomputers   What's one recipe for accelerating scientific discovery and innovation? Start by taking a couple of world-class supercomputers, including Titan, which just debuted as the world's most powerful machine for open science. Provide serious processing hours to dozens of brilliant people working on the toughest problems they can find. Plug the programs in and let them cook. When they're done, the result is simulations that astonish the mind, and more importantly, solutions that increase America's competitiveness and may lead to significant scientific advances. In a sense, that's the recipe for success of the INCITE (Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment) program. Since the program made its first awards in 2004, it has provided more than 10 billion processing hours on the Energy Department's fastest supercomputers to scientists across the globe taking on the field’s most difficult challenges. For the complete story, see the Energy Blog.   Croatian Center of Renewable Energy Sources (CCRES)