Last week Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released their annual Tracking the Sun report on the cost of going solar across the U.S. The research team found that solar’s price tag has never been lower, and the most significant opportunity for continued price reduction has nothing to do with panels – it’s all about non-hardware “soft” costs like local
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permitting
The U.S solar industry keeps putt-putting along instead of moving full steam ahead. Why? The go-to answer is soft costs. But that doesn’t tell us much.
The term “soft costs” doesn’t even have a universally accepted definition. What does it mean? We can say for sure it doesn’t mean hardware or mounting
Just a week after Governor Cuomo announced the first round of awards under the NY-Sun Competitive PV program, the Governor is back at it announcing that $13.5 million will be made available to help reduce the overall cost of installing solar, specifically non-module costs. The combination of these announcements represents a one-two punch for
President Barack Obama recently pushed for increased energy efficiency in his State of the Union address. His endorsement is a plus, no argument. But it may not be the federal government that drives the industry’s next growth spurt.
Increasingly, the push for clean energy seems to be more grassroots, from the city and community.
It used to be — way back in history, like 2008 — that the biggest barrier to growing solar markets was the cost of the modules. Since then, module costs have come down around 80% — to the point that hardware costs are no longer the largest part of the overall cost of a solar system.
When Rick Buss left his position as city manager of Maricopa, Arizona, to become the town manager of a 2,000-person, economically struggling town called Gila Bend in 2008, some people who know him personally and professionally wondered why.
But with a firm background in both technology
Across the country, the race is on to drive down the cost of solar energy. And a new challenge through the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative could help slash the costs even faster.
We are challenging cities and counties to compete nationwide to cut the red tape that can push up the
This week, the EPA released its Sustainable Design and Green Building Toolkit for Local Governments. The Toolkit
The Toolkit is designed to assist local governments in identifying and removing permitting barriers to sustainable design and green building practices. It provides a resource for communities interested in conducting their own internal evaluation of
When you put 75 solar installers, policy makers and advocates in a room and ask them to discuss policies and tactics for reducing the local cost component of solar energy, what do they say?
We tried it at the end of May at the American Solar Energy Society’s (ASES) annual conference SOLAR 2010, and here is what we learned.
Building Customer Demand
Reducing Cost of Customer Acquisition
Windation Energy Systems has developed an urban-wind rooftop turbine designed for commercial and industrial buildings. Billed as “permit-ready” and “bird safe,” Windation’s 5 kW turbine resembles a commercial AC unit and leverages a proprietary vacuum system to purportedly amplify wind speed and boost energy output. The company’s first installation is expected this quarter in Palo Alto, CA.
CleanTechies aimed four questions at CEO and founder Mark Sheikhrezai.
New photovoltaic projects have grown at a phenomenal rate in Spain in the last several years, reaching around 1500MW of new installations in the last 12 months (from 250MW built over the past 5 years) and accounting for an enormous amount of global PV panel demand. However, the land of eternal sunshine seems to have gone dark these last few months with almost no publicity on new project development.
A quick scan of Greentech media and Greenbiz.com still shows a substantial number of new projects in the California area while Spain-based energias-renovables.com is showing almost no dealflow for new installations. What gives?