The 377-megawatt Ivanpah solar thermal power plant achieved a milestone in its development recently, something called the “first flux.” According to Mike Bobinecz, VP Construction Management, BrightSource Energy, “first flux” essentially demonstrates that the plant is ready for operation. Bechtel Corporation, the company constructing the plant is finally at the last stage, … [continued]
What were the top solar power stories of 2012? Here’s my list — chime in below if you think differently or have anything to add. 10. Giant US CSP power plants move along as planned, ready for completion in 2013. While we didn’t see any big CSP power plants … [continued]
I just gave a presentation today to a class of renewable energy graduate students which mentioned solar PV’s tremendous growth over the past several years and its projected growth in the coming years. As the U.S. Solar Market Insight: Third Quarter 2012 report released today shows, the US Solar industry is indeed still … [continued]
We mentioned a horrid piece of solar power reporting from the LA Times this week. BrightSource Energy has a full response to that piece, reposted below (h/t NewEnergyNews): Solar Projects Benefit Counties As other reporters and bloggers have pointed out, Sunday’s Los Angeles Times ran a one-sided and misinformed article questioning the economic … [continued]
Last week, the LA Times ran a horrible piece on solar power plants in California. There was a particular focus on the BrightSource Energy solar project known as Ivanpah. Herman Trabish of Greentech Media posted a good point-by-point response from BrightSource. The piece is called BrightSource Energy Versus LA … [continued]
The project’s completion will see nearly 400 MW of clean, renewable electrical power delivered to California homes and businesses, as well as create thousands of jobs, adding more than $1 billion to US economic activity and state tax revenues and avoiding 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions. […]
BrightSource Energy, which is working on a massive solar power plant in California, the Ivanpah solar power plant (one we’ve written about numerous times over the years), filed to build two more large-scale power plants in California on Friday. These are each supposed to be almost twice the size of Ivanpah, 250 MW compared to 130 MW.
Google is one of the largest clean energy corporate leaders in the U.S. If we had more Googles (and fewer Facebooks or Apples), it looks like we’d have a much brighter future. Hopefully others will follow Google’s lead sooner than later on this front, or even try to one-up it. With a number of recent clean energy project announcements, I thought it might be nice to run down a list of Google’s major projects of the last year or so.
I announced yesterday that Google’s investing $5 million into a solar power project in Germany. That’s big, and it’s Google’s first cleantech investment outside the United States. But before we get too pessimistic and down about our dysfunctional political situation and how it’s limiting our cleantech growth, let’s remember that while a Tea-Party-ruined Congress can’t get much done, a number of states are supporting cleantech quite a bit on their own. One such state, as we all know, is California.
