While travelling in New Mexico earlier this month I got a chance to spend the day at Sandia National Laboratories, which kindly made several of its scientists available to talk about the latest developments around solar, wind, battery, water, and fossil fuel technologies. During a walk of the lab’s solar test facility, I saw several Stirling Energy System heliostats, which concentrate solar heat onto a Stirling engine to generate electricity. I learned the engine is manufactured by Ontario-based Linamar Corp., and upon returning to Toronto also learned that Linamar had just signed a 10-year, $3.6 billion deal to manufacture the first made-in-Ontario wind turbine nacelles based on a unique design by startup CWind. Here’s a story on Linamar’s latest green manufacturing activities that appeared Saturday in the Toronto Star.

Also, here’s a story I wrote in MIT Technology Review updating Sandia’s very cool “Sun-to-Petrol” project.

Since Ontario’s feed-in tariff program was launched last week, and with the first applications being accepted Oct. 1, there has been a handful of announcements that suggest the new program — despite controversy around local content rules, wind setbacks and land restrictions for solar — is beginning to achieve its intended effect.

Wind developer AIM PowerGen announced yesterday that it has been purchased by International Power PLC, which said Ontario’s Green Energy Act and feed-in tariff program represented a “good basis for long-term investment” and was a “key driver of our interest in AIM.” The value of the deal was disclosed by IPP as $189 million (Canadian). Said David Timm, vice-president of strategic affairs at AIM: “They very much believe that with the Feed in Tariff  Ontario ‘is open for business’  and intend to make a big commitment in the province.”

Earlier, Canadian Hydro Developers said it had purchased the rights to develop 4,400 MW of wind offshore in Lake Erie. The Ontario government also disclosed it’s in advanced talks with Samsung C&T about bringing wind and possibly solar manufacturing to the province to support their interest in developing renewable-energy projects in the region. GE is also making moves, as are a number of local companies — Everbrite Solar, CWind and Sustainable Energy Technologies.

While the wind side shows some promise, the solar side looks more troubling. (more…)