Recently in Solar
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.
Solar:
Valley fever, a respiratory infection spread by fungal spores that live in soil, has been diagnosed in 28 workers at two San Luis Obispo solar project construction sites. The stricken workers were employed at the California Valley Solar Ranch and Topaz Solar Farm, which occupy the arid Carrizo Plain in the eastern part of the county.
Solar:
Construction has launched on a solar project its developers are calling the world's largest, on more than 3,200 acres straddling the Kern-Los Angeles county line in the Antelope Valley.
Solar:
Follow the energy industry long enough and you learn that certain people in that industry usually have things to say that are both interesting and entertaining.
Solar:
Despite the rhetoric, the real world rapidly undermined the project.
Commentary:
Both Germany and California set solar power production records this week, but it hardly seems fair to Germany to mention California's milestone in the same paragraph.
Solar:
The state leads the nation in raw numbers of solar-power-related jobs, and Proposition 39, which was approved by voters in November, could create another 21,000 green jobs.
The Grid:
We can run our grid on renewable power effectively, say the authors of a study released this month, without massive storage capacity. The key is building out about three times as much renewable generating capacity as the grid needs to meet peak demand.
Wind:
A Maryland-base company wants to build two 2,250-foot-tall solar wind generating tunnels in the Arizona desert that would use downdrafts to provide a gigawatt of renewable energy to the grid. The towers, which would be the second-tallest structures in the world, would occupy public land just outside San Luis, AZ and use desalinated water from the Sea of Cortez to generate the downdrafts.
Solar:
Japan expects to install more solar capacity this year than California has in the last 20.
Solar:
Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Federal government must consult with Tribal governments on a "government to government" basis when a federal agency project runs the risk of affecting historic or cultural features important to the Tribes.
Commentary:
It's a little far afield from the Golden State, but ReWire got an emailed press release last week that piqued our interest. The release, concerning a water pipeline project in New Mexico, made the claim that powering that pipeline with solar and hydroelectric power would make that pipeline "eco-friendly." But something about the release raised our skepticism.
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
