Cleantech Buffet: World’s Largest PV Skylight, Support For Energiewende, Girls Dig Dudes Who Own Green Cars …

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Some more cleantech eatin’s:

Solar Power

$8 Billion Hit For Spanish PV Generators

Spain’s PV industry body UNEF says generators will lose a fifth of the payments they could have expected from 2010 to 2020. The reductions are part of the Madrid government’s determination to reduce renewables subsidies.

Big Clean Energy News Just Keeps Coming: “Solar is Most Economical Option,” Says Energy CEO

On the heels of last week’s release of carbon pollution safeguards from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which requires future power plants to deal with their climate-disrupting carbon pollution, news is rolling in from across the U.S. about massive new clean energy projects that are meeting Americas energy demand – and giving dirty fossil fuels a run for their money in the marketplace.

This week Xcel Energy announced it will triple the amount of solar power it offers while also adding another 450 megawatts of wind power. Here’s the best part — they’re investing in clean energy because it’s the most cost-effective option.

World’s Largest PV Skylight Installed in New Jersey, US, by Onyx Solar

The skylight, for Novartis Pharmaceuticals, comprises 820 PV modules and will produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of 600 homes, Onyx Solar say.

Chinese Government Offers PV Manufacturers A Helping Hand

Solar product makers in China continue to reap the benefits of a government eager to prop up a troubled industry. Beijing is now offering tax rebates to manufacturers in an effort to assist the struggling sector.

CSP Progress Report: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Some of the planet’s biggest solar energy plants are about to come online in the U.S., showcasing the promise and potential of both large utility-scale solar energy and in particular concentrating solar power (CSP) technology.

Solar Power International Congratulates Start-Up Alley Semi-Finalists

SPI Start-Up Alley’s impressive panel of industry reviewers have spoken and selected 19 companies to participate in the inaugural year of the Solar Power International Start-Up Alley Challenge. The Challenge, held on Wednesday, October 23 during SPI ’13 in Chicago, is the culmination of the show’s new Start-Up Alley program.

Australian Solar Retailers Told How to Behave

Unfortunately in life, there are always (a minority) of people and companies who just want to make a fast buck and don’t care about the legacy of selling poor quality products and services and the solar industry is no different.

Wind Power

Vestas Receives 129 MW Order For Dutch Wind Project

Vestas will supply 43 V112-3.0 MW offshore-turbines for the Eneco Luchterduinen offshore wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands. Eneco Luchterduinen is owned by Dutch energy company Eneco and Mitsubishi Corporation from Japan. Construction of the project will begin in July 2014.

People For Wind Power

In Scotland, the first 100 percent co-op-owned wind turbine is going up, and in Australia, a new video shows how much locals enjoy the wind turbines on their land.

Transit

ITDP Study: “A Coming Out for Bus-Based Transit-Oriented Development”

In a new report making the rounds this week, “More Development For Your Transit Dollar: An Analysis of 21 North American Transit Corridors,” the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy does two things.

First, authors Walter Hook, Stephanie Lotshaw, and Annie Weinstock evaluate which factors determine the impact of urban transit on development, coming up with some extremely useful and not necessarily intuitive results.

Second, they show that BRT projects — only a few of which exist in the U.S. — can in fact spur walkable development. Then the authors go a step further, asserting in no uncertain terms that good bus projects yield more development bang for the buck than equivalent rail projects.

Inspiro Metro Trains Certified for Warsaw

The new Inspiro type metro trains for Warsaw have been certified to operate in the Polish capital. In February 2011, the Warsaw metro operator Metro Warszawskie Sp. z o.o. ordered 35 six-car metro trains from a consortium of Siemens and the Polish rolling stock manufacturer Newag. This was not only the biggest order Siemens had ever received from Poland, but also the first order placed for complete Inspiro trains, the new metro generation from Siemens.

Bicycling

Citizen Cyclists Are Forward-Thinking (In Lithuania and everywhere else)

Lithuania wants you to like them. They want to show you how progressive, modern and forward-thinking they are. They use a Citizen Cyclist to hammer home the point.

The Future is Here.

This Couple Has Been Biking Around The World For Five Years And 60,000 Miles

Laura Scott of the blog The Locals met this charming couple while biking from Paris to London. They’ve been biking around the world together for more than five years, covering over 60,000 miles and 84 countries. And they’re hoping to keep traveling for at least a few more years.

Bikes-on-Trains Campaigns Seeing Traction

Campaigns to get bicycles on commuter trains are cropping up across the country.

We’ve seen recent success in the Bay Area, and there’s been a national push to get Amtrak on board with increased bicycle services.

This week, we’re seeing more positive movement in Chicago, where the South Shore Line rail is planning to announce a bike program by next spring, according to the Chicago Tribune. Last week, a number of local groups, including the Active Transportation Alliance, sent a letter to the rail line operator’s board, requesting bikes be allowed on the trains beginning next summer, with a pilot program phase in spring.

And The Winners Are…

During the months of August and September, Copenhageners took part in a photo contest, Shop by Bike KBH, to see who could carry the biggest, weirdest and craziest items on their bikes and prove once and for all that we are the world’s coolest bicycle city. Shop by Bike KBH was a component of the ongoing EU-funded project CycleLogistics, which aims to reduce energy used in urban goods transport by replacing unnecessary cars and delivery vans with bicycles, particularly cargo bikes. The contest was an opportunity for everyday citizen cyclists to get involved in the project and win some stylish prizes from Cycle Chic Republic in the process.

Bicyclists United To Pedal Past Mileage Record

The National Bike Challenge charged into the finish line today, uniting almost 35,000 Americans to bike more than 18 million miles this summer. In just its second year, the friendly competition increased the distance traveled for transportation, recreation and fitness in communities nationwide by 50 percent.


Other / Combined

Girls Dig Dudes Who Own Green Cars (UK Poll)

Long gone are the days when the average girl thought a dude with a gas-guzzling pollution-mobile was cool. These days, responsibility, sensitivity, and care for our fellow humans and creatures rises to the top. At least, that’s what a recent UK poll has found.

More Evidence of Popular Support for Energiewende

A survey taken last month and published in the week before Germany’s parliamentary elections over the weekend provides even more evidence that the Germans stand behind their energy transition, though they do believe many things can be improved.

German Wind + Solar Push Power Prices Way Down On Sunday

Based on our best estimate, Germany managed to get 34 percent of its electricity from wind and solar over a 24-hour period on Sunday – measured in gigawatt-hours, not gigawatts. Prices on the exchange were quite negative.

Tweets to the Telegraph

Assaults on the Energiewende continue unabated. Craig Morris says rebuttals are becoming hard to write because the arguments in the original articles do not flow from one to the other.

Hydro One Chooses a Flywheel for Wind Balancing

If a startup wants to work with utilities, it helps to stick to domains in which utilities are comfortable.

“Utilities are very familiar with spinning steel,” said Cam Carver, CEO of Temporal Power, a Canadian startup with an all-steel flywheel technology.

The Ontario-based company is working with Hydro One to provide up to ten 500-kilowatt flywheels for frequency regulation on a feeder that is connected to two 10-megawatt wind farms in southwest Ontario.

Cleantech Finalists: Smart Response to Energy Efficient Lighting

A two-year-old Melbourne-based start up has entered the lighting market, with its product that has the ability to halve energy requirements without the issue of retrofitting.

The First-Ever Bulk Freighter To Pass Through The Arctic Was Carrying Coal

Sometime last week a cargo ship passed through the Northwest Passage into Baffin Bay, along Greenland’s southwestern coast, making it the first bulk carrier ever to make the voyage. This journey was completed by the Nordic Orion, a 225-meter, ice-strengthened vessel loaded with coal in Vancouver, British Columbia and headed for Finland.

Naturally, don’t skip CleanTechnica‘s own stories.


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7324 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan