Recently in Solar
The Grid:
On a cost-effectiveness basis alone, electrical power storage may make a lot more sense for solar energy than it does for wind.
Solar:
The upscale Sacramento suburb of Roseville will buy electrical power from a solar facility more than 260 miles south of the city, in a Kern County town more readily known for oil wells than solar fields.
Government:
The new zone is California's third. All told, that means the Interior department has declared 164,391 acres of the California Desert as Solar Energy Zones.
Solar:
California just broke another solar power record this week: for the first time in its history, more than 2,500 megawatts of electricity from the sun flowed into the state's power distribution grid. And that's not even counting juice from small rooftop arrays.
Solar:
California's largest county now has a year-long moratorium in place on new solar facilities
Solar:
California has long boasted the lead spot among its fellow states in terms of solar power generating capacity. But according to a new report, that's not the case.
Solar:
A ReWire investigation has revealed that since mid-March, two large industrial solar power plants in Riverside County's remote, arid desert may have killed or injured more than 20 birds commonly associated with lakes or wetlands rather than the open desert surrounding the projects.
Government:
Mining interests have had nearly unchallenged access to most public lands since 1872, when Congress passed the General Mining Act and sent it to the white house, where Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law.
Solar:
With the cancellation of one of the biggest solar projects proposed for the California desert, the utility-scale solar boom of 2009 continues to falter. And analysts deep in the energy industry are taking notice.
Solar:
In the first three months of 2013 almost a fifth of the solar installed in the state was put in without subsidies. As prices continue to fall and increasing costs of fossil fuels make solar ever more attractive, has California reached a solar tipping point?
Solar:
An Oklahoma firm has produced a map showing the regional energy scenes across the United States, and the results are interesting -- though some of what's going on in California doesn't really show.
Solar:
Palo Alto, home to Stanford University and a frillion startups, says it will be run on entirely carbon-neutral electrical power by 2017.
Solar:
Responding to what they called a rash of complaints about commercial solar developments in residential areas, officials voted unanimously Wednesday to put a hold on new projects until it can craft a county-wide policy.
Solar:
According to preliminary data the state passed the 2,000 megawatts of solar mark for the first time, with the day's peak at or a hair below 2,100 megawatts.
Solar:
A week after construction at the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 had resumed, a major dust storm downwind of the construction site forced the closure of the Antelope Valley Freeway and injured at least six people.
Wind:
Between May 23 and 26, California broke three records for renewable energy feeding into the grid: two for solar, and one for wind.
Commentary:
Most of California's low-income residents still have to pay their utility bills without help from the sun, but a non-profit solar installer is trying to change that a little bit at a time.
Solar:
Riverside County has cut the fee it wants to charge for utility-scale solar power developments in the county by two-thirds, following a contentious campaign by the solar industry to get the fee rolled back.
Solar:
A new startup has big plans to connect solar installers with rooftop owners using a resource that's almost as inexhaustible as the sun: cheap student labor.
Solar:
Almost all of California's new power capacity coming online in the second half of 2013 will be solar, according to the California Independent System Operator.
News and analysis about renewable energy in California. Blog host Chris Clarke is an environmental writer of two decades standing. He currently lives in Joshua Tree and can be contacted at: rewire@kcet.org.
- Wind Power
- PV and Solar Thermal
- Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI)
- Watts and Watt-Hours, Kilo and Mega
- 'Enough To Power X Thousand Homes'
- The Grid
- Distributed Generation
- Conservation and 'Negawatts'
- Grid Storage
- PACE Loans, Feed In Tariffs and Net Metering
- Base Load and Peaking Power
- Capacity Factor
- Renewable Portfolio Standards
- Biomass
- Transportation and Renewable Energy
- Geothermal
