Published on October 28th, 2009

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has released The Open PV Mapping Project showing the progress of solar installations on private roofs from 2000 to (currently) now, beginning with a flurry of activity in California, then moving to Wyoming, of all places, and WIsconsin. Gradually the states turn yellow and then orange over time as they add more solar power.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on October 27th, 2009

Dell has been a trend-setter when it comes to the incorporation of greener technologies to reduce their corporate carbon footprint and they’re doing it again! Although this time they are following the lead of Google, by installing solar trees in the parking lot of their head office in Round Rock, Texas.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on October 27th, 2009
San Diego Gas & Electric has embarked on a demonstration project to test the commercial viability of a new concentrated solar power system that uses shallow pools of water as a passive cooling system for high-efficiency solar cells. The unique proprietary technology was developed by Pyron Solar of Sorrento Valley, California.
The new technology could be attractive in land-rich areas, and it may also have some application for introducing sustainable energy to more densely developed areas, since its use of high efficiency solar cells enables it to pack more generating capacity into less space. It also may prompt some new exploration of the opportunity to double up solar energy generation with other operations, such as fish farming.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on October 27th, 2009

A contract has just been signed to deliver 600 gigawatthours a year of solar power between the US division of Spain’s giant Abengoa, and PG&E in California. Abengoa Solar hopes to succeed where BrightSource recently failed to overcome local NIMBY issues and Senator Feinstein, in its plan to site a 250 MW solar thermal plant in the made-for-solar Mojave Desert.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on October 25th, 2009
Sharp Corporation has just announced that it has achieved the world’s highest solar cell conversion efficiency using a compound layered design based on the technology used in the solar cells that power space satellites. Mindful of the link between sustainable energy and the future market for consumer electronics, Sharp has been aggressively pursuing solar efficiency improvements that lend themselves to commercial application.
Instead of silicon, compound solar cells use two or more photo-absorption layers composed of different elements. The trick is to find materials that generate the most current with the least waste. Sharp’s innovation is a proprietary technology that enables it to produce a high-efficiency crystalline compound, InGaAs (indium-gallium-arsenide), which boosted the efficiency of Sharp’s previous cells from 31.5% to 35.8%.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on October 23rd, 2009
Solar water disinfection is an idea so simple, it hurts. Now a Georgia Tech scientist may be on to a new high-tech twist that could make this no-cost, zero emission ultraviolet (UV) water disinfection method even more quick and effective.
Solar disinfection is a proven method of killing germs in drinking water by exposing it to direct sunlight in a clear plastic or glass bottle. Dr. Jaehong Kim of the Georgia Institute of Technology has just been awarded a $100,000 innovation grant by the Water Environment Research Foundation for his work in developing a new coating that could be applied to bottles to shorten the solar disinfection process and improve its effectiveness. Though not (yet) practical for large volumes of water, solar disinfection has proven to be a sustainable answer for people in remote locations or impoverished areas that lack the resources to disinfect their drinking water through other means.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on October 23rd, 2009

Solarmer Energy broke the world record for plastic cell efficiency last year. Now, they’ve just broken it again.
The new efficiency record is 7.6% and it breaks 7% for the first time.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
Center of Newport Corporation,
Gang Li,
Newport Corporation,
photovoltaics,
plastic PV,
plastic solar,
plastic solar cells,
PV,
Ruben Zadoyan,
solar,
solar cell efficiency,
solar efficiency,
solar energy,
solar energy efficiency,
solar power,
solar technology,
solarmer,
Solarmer Energy,
Technology and Application Center,
world record
Published on October 22nd, 2009

Just the other day, I wrote that it was a great time to go solar, especially due to the great rebates and discounts on solar technology. Apparently, I jumped the gun and was a few days early. A new report by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — “Tracking the Sun II: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the US from 1998-2008” — shows a significant decrease in solar costs over the last ten years and shows that now is a great time to go solar.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
government incentives,
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,
photovoltaics,
PV,
rebates,
solar,
solar costs,
solar energy,
solar power,
solar technology,
The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the US from 1998,
Tracking the Sun II
Published on October 21st, 2009

Vice President Joe Biden just revealed a plan to make Berkeley First available nationwide. Yesterday at his Middle Class Task Force meeting Biden proposed the way to make solar roofs easy for everyone to afford with virtually free solar panels. If you now pay your current electricity bill and own a home, that’s literally all it takes to go solar under municipal tax assessment financing.
That’s because his plan; detailed in Recovery Through Retrofit simply makes the very successful Berkeley First municipal tax assessment financing a Federal program, called PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy), funded nationwide through the Recovery Act.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on October 20th, 2009
Homeowners in Southern California could now go solar for as little as $10,000 for about a 3.5 KW - 4 KW solar roof.
If you do solar estimates in Berkeley, you start feeling left out that you don’t estimate solar roofs in San Diego. Rebates for our whole state are decided based on optimum solar conditions. That optimal spot? Southern California.
So if you go solar in Berkeley and install the exact same kilowatts-worth of solar panels as someone in San Diego, you won’t get as good a state rebate from your utility. They just have better sun down there, and it’s the standard by which all other sun is judged—at least by the California Solar Initiative’s Expected Performance Ratings.
We’ve made up for that by inventing new ways to lower solar costs—like One Block off the Grid (1BOG)— which aggregates homeowners into groups to reduce solar costs.
But now our own San Francisco-based 1BOG is taking aggregated solar purchasing to sun drenched Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs and Coachella - the very places that already qualify for the best rebates per kilowatt in the state!
Read the rest of this entry »