In some optimistic, "we can do it" clean energy news...

*  NPR has an article about how Alaska actually has a lot of experience at running successful mini grids to buffer power outages (not always with clean energy, but still.)   One thing I was surprised to read in it was the successful use of flywheel technology to buffer demand:

In 2007, the utility set a goal of 95 percent renewable power. It built a handful of wind turbines, plus a bank of batteries to supplement the community's hydro power. That worked for a while. But then came a new challenge: the Kodiak port wanted to replace its old diesel-powered crane with a giant electric one.

The 340-foot tall shipping crane would be a massive power hog. Demand would spike every time it lifted a container off a cargo ship. When Rick Kniaziowski, the terminal manager for the shipping company Matson, first asked about getting it, the head of the local utility said no.

"His eyes got really big," Kniaziowski says. He was told, "Everyone's TVs are going to brown out, and they're either going to hate you or they're going to hate us.'"

But the utility looked around for a solution, and it found a European company, ABB, that offered a new kind of energy storage: flywheels.

There are two here now. From the outside, they look like a couple of white trailers behind a chain-link fence. But inside, they're cutting edge sci fi. In the corner of each trailer is a "six and a half ton of spinning mass," says KEA's Richcreek. "It's in a frictionless vacuum chamber hovered by magnets."

Here's how it works: When there's excess power on the grid, it spins the flywheel. The flywheel stores that energy as motion, and then pumps it back out the second a big surge is needed. When the crane isn't operating, the flywheels respond to fluctuations in wind power, working with the batteries to stabilize the grid. Kodiak is one of the first places in the world to use flywheels this way.

 *  The BBC has a short video up about the benefits of floating solar power.   I want someone to push my idea that part of the Snowy Hydro 2 project be powered by floating solar panels on the upper dams, powering the pumps that will bring water uphill for later release.   Send me the money now for this great idea!

*  Over at MIT, they are working on very high temperature ceramic pump components, with the idea being that super heated metals (rather than lower temperature molten salts) can be used to store excess renewable energy.

*  In the US, they are finding that improvements in wind turbine efficiency are so good it makes sense to refurbish some wind farms well ahead of their original estimated 30 year life.