Recently in Photovoltaic (PV)
Photovoltaic (PV):
A team in Australia has developed a way to create inexpensive solar cells using a standard industrial printer, offering the possibility of incredibly cheap photovoltaic cells -- but there are a couple of reasons not to declare the solar revolution over.
Utilities:
A leading energy analyst has forecast the effect of dropping rooftop solar costs on Northern California's largest utility, and that forecast is bleak for the company and its shareholders.
Photovoltaic (PV):
As of this week, California has at least 150,428 rooftops generating electricity, and probably a lot more than that.
Photovoltaic (PV):
We've got a conservative Southern California city and a liberal Northern California city both now mandating rooftop solar on new construction. Who's next?
Photovoltaic (PV):
You'd think California's investor-owned utilities would be all for net metering: it provides them with a considerable amount of solar energy essentially for free, and keeps them from having to sink money into upgrading transmission. But they're fighting it tooth and nail, and a new group aims to challenge their stance.
Photovoltaic (PV):
It's excited a whole lot of people, including some who should know better, but a recently viral "solar window outlet" making the rounds of social media would need to violate a few laws of physics to deliver as promised.
Photovoltaic (PV):
The campaign was kicked off Tuesday to get LADWP to generate 1,200 megawatts of power -- a fifth of the utility's peak demand -- on L.A. rooftops..
Photovoltaic (PV):
Solar advocates like to joke that while oil spills ruin the environment, solar spills are otherwise known as "nice days." But a "spill" from a solar project being built in the desert portion of Los Angeles County may actually have caused significant problems, including personal injury.
Photovoltaic (PV):
If a Korean team's research work holds up in the real world, we can look forward to even cheaper photovoltaic cells that can be applied in plenty of places where currently available PV panels aren't practical -- for example, on large flat roofs that weren't built with heavy solar mounting brackets in mind.
Photovoltaic (PV):
A new report from a leading energy analyst says that grid parity will be a fact of life around the world by 2018.
Photovoltaic (PV):
Industry giant first Solar announced Tuesday that it's acquiring a little-known startup so that it can increase the efficiency of silicon-based PV cells. FirstSolar now relies on a completely different photovoltaic technology, and that this acquisition represents a potential major technological shift for the company.
Photovoltaic (PV):
One of the criticisms that's been leveled at the photovoltaic panel industry is that it can take more energy to make the panels than the panels produce over their usable lifespan.
Photovoltaic (PV):
A proposed utility-scale solar development that so far enjoys wide support among environmentalists is taking a step forward. The Westlands Solar Park, slated to cover 24,000 acres of degraded farmland when it's finally built out sometime after 2020, has started the environmental review process mandated under California environmental law.
Photovoltaic (PV):
The Palm Springs Unified School District does what Coachella Valley strip mall owners should have done years ago. This year, 10 schools will have installed enough solar power generating capacity to meet somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of each their needs.
Photovoltaic (PV):
We've been breaking one California solar record after another, but those numbers don't tell the whole story.
Photovoltaic (PV):
If one Antelope Valley mayor has his way, his city will soon become the first in the nation to require solar panels on all new homes built in the city limits. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris tells ReWire that a decision on the potentially precedent-setting change to the city's zoning laws could come from the Lancaster City Council in as little as two weeks.
Photovoltaic (PV):
We've often said here at ReWire that rooftop solar is a technology that's inherently destabilizing to utility companies, in much the same way that MP3 encoding and similar technologies have destabilized the big corporations in the recording industry. And now the head of America's largest utility company is backing that up.
Photovoltaic (PV):
Solar manufacturers in California produced over 46 million pounds of hazardous waste between 2007 and 2011.
Photovoltaic (PV):
Even though the L.A. Department of Water And Power's new solar incentive program has taken some heat, the new Feed-in Tariff already has more applicants for its first round than were planned for in the whole program.
Commentary:
It was once lauded as the "nation's largest solar project." That was before the developer went bankrupt. Now, the site stands seemingly abandoned, a drift of blowing dust and invasive grass where once there was thriving desert.
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
