15 Solar & Wind Power Stories Not To Miss (Bonus Stories)

For an insane number of solar & wind stories CleanTechnica hasn’t covered, check out this Google Doc. If you’re somewhere in between being as cleantech-obsessed as me and feeling sad when you get to the end of our daily posts on solar and wind power, simply check out these top solar and wind stories from around the interwebs.

Solar

1. Solar-Powered Mobile Phone Charging Stations & Solar Candles Offer Big Savings: “Solar power is now cheaper than power from fossil fuels in most of the developed world. It is especially competitive in off-grid markets. There are still huge barriers to deployment — financing, common expectations to “soon be connected to the grid,” and bureaucracy – but several firms are finding a way to connect people with cheap and clean solar power.”
2. Saudi Industrial Giant Invests In Australian Dye Solar Cell Developer: “Australian dye solar cell producer Dyesol says its immediate and medium term future is assured after the National Industrialization Company of Saudi Arabia, a $5 billion conglomerate better known as Tasnee, agreed to invested $4 million as part of an R&D agreement that could lead to the construction of demonstration projects in the Middle East.”
3. Pay As You Go Solar: A Promising Model For Developing World Electricity?: “While the price of electricity derived from solar power is dropping, solar power systems themselves are still pretty pricey in terms of upfront costs. As such, social enterprises working to electrify rural communities in the developing world have tended to think small: systems designed for providing light and phone charging power. For people with no electricity otherwise, the addition of small amounts of power can make a tremendous difference in the quality of their lives, at a price they can afford.”
4. Solar Power Feed-In Tariff For Poland In March?: “Poland is about ready to put into place a solar feed-in tariff policy similar to that used to propel solar power growth in Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Japan, and other leading solar power countries.”
5. $5.6 Million In Electricity Savings At California Schools In 2012 Thanks To Solar Power: “World-leading solar panel manufacturer SunPower has installed solar power systems at 92 California public schools (K-12). In 2012, the total savings from these solar power systems came to $5.6 million.”
6. Arpin Renewable Energy & eNow Form Partnership To Provide Solar-Powered Systems For Moving Trucks: “Arpin Renewable Energy has joined with eNow, a Rhode Island-based company which supplies energy solutions to the transportation industry, to provide Arpin Van Lines agents and owner-operators access to cleaner running moving trucks.”
7. How Affordable Solar Changes Everything For The Consumer: “The price is right: Does affordable solar change everything? That was the provocative title to a session at the excellent 2nd Summer Study on Energy Efficiency and Decentralised Energy in Sydney last week, and provided some fascinating insights into just how close we are to a solar revolution in this country. Indeed, we may already be at the start of it.”
8. Solar Choice PV Price Index – March 2013 (Australia): “Previous Solar Choice Photovoltaic (PV) Price Indexes for 2013 reveal an industry in transition. Solar PV Prices in January were significantly more expensive than in December 2012, as a result of the early closure of the Solar Credit Scheme on 1 January 2013. The updated installer prices for February show an attempt to continue the downward price trend that has been the industry norm since State and Federal Incentives were introduced.”
9. Germany’s January Solar Installations Totalled 275 MW: “The German Federal Network Agency (aka Bundesnetzagentur) has released official solar power installation data for January 2013. The total for the month came to 274.673 MWp. That’s about half of what was installed in January 2013 (but still a good amount compared to what most countries are installing).”

Wind & Solar

1. Graph Of The Day: Why Baseload Power Plants Will Disappear: “Anyone who has observed recent developments in Germany, and to a growing extent in Australia, will have noted the rapidly changing dynamics of electricity markets caused by the growth in renewables. So much so, that according to this graph of the day, the concept of baseload power may be redundant in Germany within a decade.”

Wind

1. Making The Economic Case For Offshore Wind: “In his State of the Union address last month, President Barack Obama touted the growth of the American renewable energy sector that has occurred during his time in office—particularly the doubling of ‘the amount renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar.’ He pointed out that ‘Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America.’ These metrics are proof that the renewable energy sector is capable of boosting economic growth while moving us away from the dirty energy sources of the past.”
2. What’s 1 Megawatt Of Wind Energy? (Infographic): “What is a Megawatt of wind energy? Have you questioned that after reading about a new utility-scale installation on CleanTechnica? That happened to me, so I decided to research wind power and create an infographic. It addresses how many watts some of our common appliances need and how many watts the average American household uses each year. Included is the amount of megawatts the US currently produces, and which states produce the most megawatts.”
3. Smart Grid Project In Texas Will Test Utility-Scale Energy Storage For Wind Power: “Samsung SDI, an affiliate of Samsung Group, and Xtreme Power, a privately held Austin, TX company, [last month] announced that they have been selected by the Center for the Commercialization of Electric Technologies (CCET) to install a 1MW/1MWh Lithium Ion based Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) system at the Reese Technology Center in Lubbock, Texas as part of a Smart Grid Demonstration Project (SGDP). The $27 million demonstration project jointly funded by CCET partners and the US Department of Energy as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 managed by CCET.”
4. Graph Of The Day: Are Wind Farms As Useless As Some Say?: “Critics of wind farms often cite the timing of wind energy – and its apparent mis-match with peak demand, as one of its greatest deficiencies. This Graph of the Day, however, shows that it is often not the case.”
5. China’s Offshore Wind Market Expected To Grow To $16 Billion: “Despite the considerable challenges and bottlenecks faced by China’s offshore wind power market, the country’s efforts in technologies for development of offshore wind power have remained strong. Thanks to years of coordination and cooperation between the government and domestic offshore wind power players, the first batch of offshore wind power license projects, most of which have been idle for more than two years, are likely to go online in 2013.”

---

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.

---