Solar industry manufacturing consortium PVMC and NREL aim to help reduce the installed cost of thin-film CIGS solar PV by 75%, an effort that falls right in line with targets set out in PVMC’s thin-film PV industry roadmap and President Obama’s SunShot Initiative.
Antananarivo, Madagascar: A group of seven elderly women have departed their villages in rural Madagascar for six months training at India’s Barefoot College that will equip them as community solar engineers. The College’s Solar Engineer programme, run in conjunction with WWF, trains grandmothers to provide solar energy to their villages … [continued]
While electric vehicles are probably most tied to “being green,” another key societal benefit is that they increase national security, and the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA) recently released a report about that as well. There are multiple reasons for this. The most commonly touted and obvious one is that … [continued]
Reposted from RenewEconomy: Today’s Graph of the Day is a simple one, and is designed to dispel the myth about energy pay-back times, at least for solar PV. Some anti-renewable commentators and myth-makers would have us believe that solar PV modules do not pay back the energy used to create … [continued]
Two leading solar innovators have teamed up to build the world’s largest solar power towers in California, and we can all thank Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar for that. Abengoa and BrightSource Energy are the two companies involved in the project, a 500 MW (megawatt) utility scale behemoth called the Palen … [continued]
Reposted from RenewEconomy: On May 17, 2010, E.ON, the biggest electricity utility in Germany, opened a brand new 860 MW combined cycle gas-fired power station in Bavaria, which it had built at a cost of $520 million. Less than three years later, having hardly been used and losing money, the … [continued]
Fisker Automotive’s Executive Chairman, Henrik Fisker himself, has stepped down from his position at the head of the company. The surprise announcement was apparently the result of major disagreements within the company with regards to business strategy. The departure of one of the company’s co-founders is interesting, but according to … [continued]
900 megawatts (MW) of new solar energy projects in California have just been approved by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. 750 MW is from the McCoy Solar Energy Project and the other 150 MW are coming from the Desert Harvest Solar Farm. The two new utility-scale projects will … [continued]
As we move step by slow step into a world where renewable energy is more and more a part of our energy infrastructure, the need for energy storage will continue to grow. The reality is that renewable energies such as solar and wind are not as consistent as we have … [continued]
Solar power systems manufacturer SolarWorld announced Wednesday its new Sunmodule Protect glass-glass solar panel, a technological advancement that allows the 35 year old company to provide a 30-year linear guarantee on the panels. “SolarWorld has advanced the cutting edge of solar-technology innovation for decades, and Sunmodule Protect’s launch is the … [continued]
