Industry news

Advanced Energy Industries, Inc. today announced it has acquired HiTek Power Group (HiTek), a privately-held provider of high-voltage power solutions. Based in the United Kingdom, the company offers a comprehensive portfolio of high-voltage and custom-built power conversion products ranging from 100V to 500kV designed to meet the demanding requirements of OEMs worldwide. These products target applications including semiconductor wafer processing

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roTek Devices, Inc. has introduced a new voltage suppressor component to provide power bus circuit protection using features such as a rated stand-off of 78V, bidirectional configuration, and a package weighing just 9.8 grams. ProTek Devices’ 2700SM78CAN also provides 2,250kW of peak pulse power per line (typical = 8/20 microamps). In addition, the new component provides a peak pulse current

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A new report by investment analysts from Citigroup says that in the US “the Age of Renewables” has begun. This is confirmed by the most recent public announcements from First Solar and SunPower, two of the largest solar power producers in the US, which both continue to see solar costs coming down rapdily. Analysts from McKinsey have become convinced that

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This week, both Beijing, China’s national capital, and Shanghai its leading financial city, launched pilot emissions trading systems. These pilots will run for two years, until the end of 2015.  They join the city of Shenzhen, on the Hong Kong border, which launched a pilot carbon market in June this year. Guangdong, Hubei, Tianjin and Chongqing are also planning to

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This week, ministers and delegates gather in Bali to try to thrash out a new multilateral trade deal. It seems likely that a deal, if it materializes, has been reduced to addressing trade and customs procedures, rather than the core issues of reducing tariffs and trade barriers. Given this minimalism, it is high time to think about the benefits of

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The Australian national science agency CSIRO has undertaken a study into how the electricity grid in Australia could develop over the coming decades. Giles Parkinson, editor-in-chief of the Australian website RenewEconomy, discusses the four scenarios that SCIRO explores: “leaving-the-grid”, in which one-third of Australian consumers go off-grid; “prosumer” , which is similar but has active utility companies that lead the

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The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) is seen as the most authoritative set of energy scenarios in the world. Yet when we test the forecasts for the growth of renewable energies in the WEO’s main scenario against reality, we find that the WEO consistently comes out too low. Each year from 2006 on the WEO has had to increase

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The new Director General for energy at the European Commission, Dominique Ristori, faces the difficult task of “selling” EU leaders his proposals on a climate and energy strategy for 2030. Initially foreseen at the European Council on 20 and 21 March, a decision has been postponed to October. In this interview with Energy Post Brussels correspondent Hughes Belin, Ristori outlines

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Start-up companies like Sheerwind, Saphon Energy and Makani (bought by Google) are experimenting with revolutionary wind turbine designs. But for now most of the progress made in the wind power sector comes from more conventional technological innovations, such as lower weight, taller towers, improved blade designs, and better logistics, writes Ari Phillips of ClimateProgress. These R&D efforts have led to

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China’s renewable energy revolution is powering ahead, with the year 2013 marking an important inflection point where the scales tipped more towards electric power generated from water, wind and solar than from fossil fuels and nuclear. This means that its energy security is being enhanced, while carbon emissions from the power sector can be expected to soon start to fall.

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