15Nov

How Much Can You Really Save with Solar?

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How Much Can You Really Save with Solar

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I just returned from the Solar Power International (SPI) show, an annual event for the solar industry, and there were a few things I kept hearing over and over.

One was: “It’s simple: People can live better with solar.” The second was: “The price of electricity will rise over the next decade.”

Over the last 40 years, Americans have been fortunate to have largely consistent electric rates. But as utility providers need to replace aging systems and fuel costs rise, experts predict that homeowners will soon need to pay more for electricity.

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14Nov

Naturally Daylit Guangzhou South Railway Station is a Critical Stop in China’s High Speed Network

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Naturally Daylit Guangzhou South Railway Station is a Critical Stop in China’s High Speed Network

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China is diligently working on the development of its high speed rail network, and one of the four most important stations is the Guangzhou South Railway Station. This strategically located station provides connectivity for the whole of the Pearl River Delta, which has a population of 120 million people – trains link all other major cities in the area in less than 30 minutes. The TFP Farrells-designed station maximizes daylighting to reduce its energy needs, and it was built to accommodate an increased flow of passengers in the future.

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14Nov

California Approves Solar Contract Despite High Cost

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Should consumers pay more for renewable energy in order to promote a certain technology? That’s an interesting question raised by California regulators on Thursday, when they approved what they acknowledged to be a pricey contract for Abengoa Solar to sell power to Pacific Gas & Electric.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted 4-1 to approve the 25-year contract, which will allow Abengoa to build the 280-megawatt solar farm called Mojave Solar in southern California. The company already has secured construction permits from state and federal regulators, as well as a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to help pay up to 80 percent of the project’s cost.

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14Nov

Setting sun: solar panels feed-in tariff halved

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Householders who are in the process of having solar panels put on their roof have six weeks to complete the job or face seeing the predicted income they generate slashed after the government said it was cutting feed-in tariffs by 50%.

Despite pledging to be “the greenest government ever”, the Tory-led coalition last week shocked the renewables sector by announcing that only installations completed by 12 December would get the full payments they were promised. Hundreds of householders who had signed contracts to have panels fitted have now pulled out and others are expected to follow.

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12Nov

California Now Has 1 Gigawatt of Solar Power Installed

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California Now Has 1 Gigawatt of Solar Power Installed

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Joining the ranks of 5 countries other than the U.S. that have hit the 1 gigawatt solar milestone (Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and the Czech Republic), California has now installed its 1st gigawatt (or 1,000th megawatt) of rooftop solar installed.

To put that into perspective, 1GW of solar can power up to 750,000 homes and is equal to about 2 coal-fired power plants.

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11Nov

Will solar power eventually cost less than coal generated electricity?

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Why we are asking this now?

Solar energy does not require any introduction as a potential source of renewable energy. Sunlight is plenty through out the year in tropical and subtropical regions. And these regions consist all most 50 percent of total land mass in the world. So, if solar energy is harnessed efficiently along these areas, energy generation would become lot greener in future.

However, today’s solar technology has too many problems starting from capturing sunlight to storage and distribution of generated electricity. For power generation, generally, two types of technologies are used – photovoltaic and solar thermal type. And both the technologies are expensive to install. Photovoltaic cells are made of expensive silicon compounds while the thermal type system requires huge parabolic structures to concentrate heat.

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11Nov

A Light Wave of Innovation to Advance Solar Energy: Researchers Adapt Classic Antennas to Harness More Power from the Sun

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Some solar devices, like calculators, only need a small panel of solar cells to function. But supplying enough power to meet all our daily needs would require enormous solar panels. And solar-powered energy collected by panels made of silicon, a semiconductor material, is limited — contemporary panel technology can only convert approximately seven percent of optical solar waves into electric current.

Profs. Koby Scheuer, Yael Hanin and Amir Boag of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Physical Electronics and its innovative new Renewable Energy Center are now developing a solar panel composed of nano-antennas instead of semiconductors. By adapting classic metallic antennas to absorb light waves at optical frequencies, a much higher conversion rate from light into useable energy could be achieved. Such efficiency, combined with a lower material cost, would mean a cost-effective way to harvest and utilize “green” energy.

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10Nov

Operating a 30-megawatt solar farm from one PC

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Within a few days, Nick Thiel will take control of about 110,000 high-end solar panels pumping 30 megawatts of power onto the grid from a former potato and carrot farm.

Thiel is operations manager of the San Luis Solar Ranch, a 300-acre facility in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, a high-desert area considered ideal for solar power generation. I visited the solar ranch during a week-long expedition of energy-related locations in New Mexico and southern Colorado organized by the Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources.

The SunPower solar panels, which cover 220 acres themselves, are expected to be “energized” this week and the plant officially commissioned by operator Iberdrola Renewables next month. Utility Xcel Energy, which is purchasing the power from the farm, estimates it will supply about 7,500 homes during peak times.

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5Nov

Investment in U.S. Cleantech Up 73% This Quarter: $1.1 Billion Went to Clean Energy Projects

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Venture capitalists have invested $1.1 billion in the cleantech sector this quarter. That’s up a remarkable 73% compared to the same quarter last year. In other words, no matter how many shoddy ‘scandal-making’ news segments the media tries to spin out, they can’t bury the facts: The clean energy sector is one of most promising, fastest-growing industries in the nation, and investors remained undeterred to finance it.

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17Oct

German Trains Will Run on 100% Renewable Energy by 2050!

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Germany has made many remarkable strides towards sustainability in the past few years – they were the first nation to announce the abolition of nuclear power, the entire country already runs on 20% renewable energy, and now Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway operator, has announced plans to run all of its trains on 100% renewable energy by the year 2050. The German railway currently uses 2% of the country’s total electricity, so their goal will have a powerful impact upon the nation as a whole.

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