Integration of Renewable Energy

We are frequently asked for advice, design input and budget cost for a wide variety of highly innovative renewable energy generation projects. You may be looking for an elegant stand-alone renewable energy solution or complex building-integrated solutions, whatever your needs, we aim to provide high quality support and help.

Our services include a large panel of activities:

Site visit and local weather evaluation
Topography and vegetation impact
Research of statistical climatic data
Noise Assessment, Visual Impact
Energy production and potential savings
Comparison of existing Vs. proposed solutions
Connection to the grid, Technical Drawings
Virtual Reality for specific environments, such as the prediction of wind behavior using CFD software
Calculations of carbon footprint reduction
Research of the best supplier for your project
Feasibility studies, Cost estimates
Project management, equipments delivery and installation with partners

Renewable Energy: An important step toward sustainability

Behavioral changes, green building design, and energy efficiency upgrades can minimize the amount of energy we consume in our day-to-day activities. However, we must still consider the source of the energy that we do consume. Renewable energy sources are critical in reducing a buiding's environmental impact beyond what is possible from demand-side reductions alone.

What is Renewable Energy ?

Renewable energy is energy derived from natural resources that replenish themselves over a period of time without depleting the Earth's resources. These resources also have the benefit of being abundant, available in some capacity nearly everywhere, and they cause little, if any, environmental damage. Energy from the sun, wind, and thermal energy stored in the Earth's crust are examples.

World Energy Usage
Chart's data from REN21 2008 global status report on renewables and the BP 2008 Statistical Review

For comparison, fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas are not renewable, since their quantity is finite. While they are produced through natural processes, these processes are too slow to replenish these fuels as quickly as humans use them, so these sources will run out sooner or later.

Why Renewable Energy ?

Using clean renewable energy is friendly to the environment and reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Renewable energy provides many benefits to people, business, and the planet.

Renewable Energy Potential

Nature offers a broad range of renewable energy sources: ocean energy, geo- and solar thermal, photovoltaics, bioenergy, wind, hydropower and solar thermal electricity.

These constant flows of energy amount to about 3,000 times the total present day energy consumption of the whole of mankind. In one day, the sunlight which reaches the earth produces enough energy to meet the current global power needs for eight years.

Today, we have the technology to largely harvest these resources and satisfy a planet hungry for energy.

World Energy Resources
Source: WBGU 2008 (Greenpeace/EREC 2008)

Renewables Benefit the Economy

Renewable energy sources are good for business, providing energy security, economic development, energy price stability, and reduces the global risks of climate change.

Energy Security

Renewable energy provides reliable power supplies and fuel diversification, which enhance energy security and lower risk of fuel spills while reducing the need for imported fuels. Generation close to the point of use also reduce transmission and distribution losses.

Price Stability

Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar do not entail fuel costs or require transportation, and therefore offer greater price stability. In fact, some electric utilities factor this into their retail electricity prices, exempting customers that buy renewables from certain charges.

Economic Development

According to two studies by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), if the U.S. were to supply 10% of its electricity from renewables by 2020 the following would occur:

Consumer savings: $22.6 billion to $37.7 billion in lower electricity and natural gas bills
Jobs: 91,220 new jobs-nearly twice as many as generating the electricity from fossil fuels
Economic development: $41.5 billion in new capital investment, $5.7 billion in income to farmers and rural landowners, and $2.8 billion in new local tax revenues
Healthier environment: reductions of global warming pollution equal to taking from 25 million to 32 million cars off the road

Developing Countries and Renewable Energy Potential

Renewable energy has an important role in providing modern energy access to the billions of people in developing countries that continue to depend on more traditional sources of energy, both for households and small industries.

The number of rural households served by renewable energy is difficult to estimate, but runs into the tens of millions considering all forms of renewables. Micro-hydro configured into village-scale or county-scale mini-grids serves many of these. More than 30 million households get lighting and cooking from biogas made in household-scale digesters. An estimated 3 million households get power from small solar PV systems. Biomass cookstoves are used by 40 percent of the world's population.

The energy that reaches Earth from sunlight in one hour is more than that used by all human activities in one year.

- Professor Partridge