Author Archives: SolarFeeds
Solar Savings: Tax Credits and Solar
It used to be that solar power took a back seat in the renewable energy world. Now though, solar power is a hot topic for residential home owners and commercial businesses alike. That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise though when you factor in just how beneficial the use of solar power is [...]
Australian Scientists Printing Solar Cells Down Under
Scientists have produced the largest flexible, plastic solar cells in Australia—10 times the size of what they were previously able to—thanks to a new solar cell printer that has been installed at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). The printer is relatively cheap, uses common industrial chemicals and the resulting solar cells have a [...]
Why are Auto Dealers Hating on Tesla?
Tesla has been thriving on much success lately – its stock price is up to $91 since exceeding analyst expectations in its first quarter of profit. It’s getting kudos all over the place for gaining traction on its electric car, including getting 99 out of 100 possible points from Consumer Reports for its Model S Sedan. But there’s one [...]
Ernie Moniz To Lead the U.S. DOE
It’s hard to know what to make of this week’s unanimous Senate vote, confirming Ernie Moniz as the new U.S. Energy Secretary, replacing the outgoing Steven Chu. If you’re a fan of a sustainable energy policy, it’s certainly not a good sign when 100% of Senate Republicans like the way a certain person thinks. Of [...]
Glass and Green Building
A look at today’s architecture and design magazines, or at new construction projects in NYC, confirms that the current material of choice is glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows, 360° views, natural daylight, connecting inside to the outside are the design vocabulary du jour. Glass, and lots of it, is intended to convey modernity, sophistication, and, increasingly, green [...]
How China Will Transform The Energy Industry
When I started in the energy business back in the early 1980’s, the utility paradigm was to continually build more power plants to serve growing customer loads. This lead to environmental and economic difficulties, especially as the cost of completing planned nuclear power plants skyrocketed. At the utility where I worked, Pacific Gas and Electric, [...]
New Project Will Forecast Solar Generation
The California Energy Commission (CEC) has awarded $1.7 million to a partnership between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Cool Earth Solar Inc. (CES) to conduct a community-scale renewable energy integration demonstration project at the Livermore Valley Open Campus. The central idea of the project is to use solar forecasting to make photovoltaic power generation more [...]
In Focus: The Potential of Los Angeles Solar
Drive the freeways, ride the train from San Diego to Union Station, or fly into LAX and you cannot miss the obvious – Los Angeles has tremendous, untapped potential for solar growth. Now a new report from Michelle Kinman at the Environment California Research & Policy Center, seeks to layout the case for Solar in [...]
Tesla Reports Profit, Stock SKYROCKETS
Tesla, the American electric car manufacturer, has been all over the news lately, with its announcement that it has made a quarterly profit for the first time in ten years. In 2011, Tesla reported a loss of $50 million, and in the first quarter of 2012 they were $90 million in the red. However, their [...]