Tag Archives: tech
SolarCity Raises $500M
SolarCity (Nasdaq: SCTY), a provider of distributed energy, just announced a $500 million lease financing agreement with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS). That translates to more than 100 megawatts of solar power. The combined lease is the largest of its kind for U.S. residential rooftops. SolarCity allows consumers to get electricity from grid-tied solar rooftops at [...]
SolarCity Earnings = MEH
SolarCity (SCTY) has been one of the hottest alternative energy stocks since its Initial Public Offering five short months ago. Yesterday it shot up 24% in one day, on the largest one-day volume since it opened, in anticipation of its quarterly earnings release. It is up 95% in the past three months, and has more [...]
In Focus: The Chemicals in Chicago’s Air
Scientists have found that Chicago’s air is infested with chemicals courtesy of airborne compounds that are traveling as far as the Arctic. The chemicals, called cyclic siloxanes, are toxic to aquatic life. Where do they come from? From chemicals in deodorants, lotions and conditioners. “These chemicals are just everywhere,” said Keri Hornbuckle, an engineering professor at the [...]
The Partisan Divide on Global Warming
A huge gulf exists between Americans who accept the reality of climate science and those who do not. According to an October 15, 2012, Pew Research Center poll, Democratic voters are more than twice as likely to embrace the facts on global warming than their Republican counterparts. A growing number Americans, including voters who identify [...]
Lanai: Future Solar Eco Lab
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison purchased close to 98 percent of the 141 square-mile Hawaiian island of Lanai for $500 million four months ago from billionaire David Murdock in June for an undisclosed price. On the island, Ellison owns “two resorts and golf courses, a variety of commercial and residential structures and vast acres of [...]
NREL Achieves 18.2% Efficient Nano Solar Cell
Using a chemical nano-porous etching process, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was able to create an antireflective surface on silicon PV cells without using additional antireflection coating. The method could reduce the cost of adding anti-reflective layers to crystalline silicon-based photovoltaics. Researchers at the laboratory, including Jihun Oh, Hao-Chih Yuan, and Howard Branz developed [...]
Mexican President Felipe Calderon Inaugurates Large Scale Solar Plant
Mexican President Felipe Calderon inaugurated a large-scale solar power plant that he touted as the region’s first, a pilot facility in the northwestern state of Baja California that features 4,000 photovoltaic panels and 1 MW in generating capacity. The current president of Mexico Felipe Calderon Hinojosa has inaugurated a large-scale solar power plant in the [...]
CleanTech PatentEdge Launches First Online Green Patent Database
For over a year now I’ve had the pleasure of using a beta version of CleanTech PatentEdge, a powerful database of green technology patents and published applications. Now you can use it too! IP Checkups, the Berkeley patent analytics firm that created CleanTech PatentEdge, recently announced the official launch of the database. The only comprehensive online [...]
Graphene That Redefines Electric Current
A new joint innovation by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the University of Cambridge could pave the way for redefining the ampere in terms of fundamental constants of physics. The world’s first graphene single-electron pump (SEP), described in Nature Nanotechnology, provides the speed of electron flow needed to create a new standard for electrical current [...]