First Solar’s utility-scale PV plant has now been up and running, in Blythe, California, for its first full month. Once it got a go-ahead in the summer It only took three months to build.
Private solar installations are really taking off nationwide. In just two years, (about the same length of time it takes to get a pair of 250 MW solar power plants approved in California, for example), homeowners and businesses have added that much power to the Californian grid, just from individual rooftops throughout the state.
People in North Carolina and Virginia must have seen what’s going on in China with high-speed rail and decided they wanted some of that. They are now requesting over $5 billion in funding for high-speed rail. Actually, as a former resident of both North Carolina and Virginia professionally and personally … [continued]
When you look at the entire desert area available in the map of the California desert (below), you see that most of the red dots that signify a solar application under review are actually outside the two areas that Senator Feinstein proposes to set aside.
When the 30% tax credits as cash grants were instituted with the American Recovery Act, I was doing solar estimates for a small start-up in California. I was surprised to find that the 30% tax credit (available as a cash grant for businesses) for solar, was applicable to solar thermal only if it was not used for swimming pools.
A new comprehensive study of the PV market in each US state and the US as a whole comes to some interesting and hopeful conclusions. One finding is that the US might surpass Germany as the leading PV market in the world within the next few years. The report finds … [continued]
In a move that can be seen as indication of the far-reaching global effects of European cap and trade legislation, California has been selected by a British subsidiary of BP; to host one of the first hydrogen plants in the US. Hydrogen Energy International Limited will pioneer groundbreaking carbon-capture and … [continued]
On Friday the California Public Utilities Commission approved a new 500 Kilovolt transmission line from desert areas deep in southeastern California where numerous solar projects have been signed, to urban centers on the coast. As originally submitted the line was to have also carried electrons from sunny Arizona deserts too, … [continued]
Transit use boomed from 2006-2008, but not in traditionally transit-friendly areas. This shows hope for more transit use in traditionally car-oriented places in the US in the future. An analysis of the most recent transit use data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that transit use grew by up to … [continued]
SOLARIG, a company based in Spain that incorporated about four years ago, just began construction of eight photovoltaic parks in Italy this month. The parks will provide 8 MW of energy in total. Over the next few months, it plans to construct photovoltaic projects producing 30 MW throughout different regions … [continued]
