Southern California Edison is asking regulators for approval of 75 new PV contracts, totaling 105.53 MW. All priced at the cost of building a new natural gas plant. Now can we stop saying that solar is too expensive?
Details in their Advice Letter, here (pdf).
Our 2013 Utility Solar Champion Award goes to … drumroll please … The Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO).
Here’s why. The Hawaiian solar market is taking off. Just skyrocketing. Check this article out:
“In 2012, a total of 16,715 PV permits were issued [in Oahu], a figure more than 170 percent of the
General Motors is not in the solar game just so we can tout it on our environmental blog.
There are very real benefits to using solar to power parts of our facilities, not the least of which is the fact that it’s better for the environment.
It can save money, too.
Portable solar power light solutions are the way to go, especially for people living in areas without a grid connection. That’s why we love Luci, the solar light.
Created by Micro Power Design, a self-proclaimed “technology incubator, accelerator and manufacturer
A new study concludes that it would be technically and economically feasible for New York State to meet all of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2030, but researchers say the transition would involve building wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources on a mass scale.
Here’s a good discussion of what I call the “no free lunch” theory of renewable energy: everything we do, whether it’s solar, wind, hydrokinetics, etc., comes with a non-negligible ecological cost. The issue, obviously, is objectively identifying all costs – ecological, financial, and human (e.g., disease and death stemming from various types of energy generation and consumption),
A Greentech Media piece picked up an interesting item: a recently filed class action lawsuit accusing residential solar provider Sunrun of making deceptive statements about the rising cost of electricity to make its solar installations more attractive to consumers.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court,
We hear a lot about grid parity, don’t we? That’s the point at which the cost of energy generated by solar, wind, and other renewables is the same as that generated from conventional sources. The author of this article on Sharp Electronics new 43.5%-efficient solar cell writes: “Sharp shattered the efficiency record with its concentrator triple-junction compound solar cell,
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.
Frequent commenter and alternative fuels expert Ben Thorp responds to my piece on electric transportation the other day, noting:
Energy efficiency … may be the largest issue if saving fossil fuel or the global environment is a major concern. The US utility energy efficiency has been
No company has done greater damage to the image of the American solar industry than Solyndra. It was therefore a source of great delight to me last week as I drove along Interstate 880 through Fremont, CA for what I didn’t see. The signs on the old factory were gone. Those persistent thorns in the side of American solar, had finally vanished, closing
IKEA has expanded its solar power portfolio with the installation of a new system at its has South Florida store in the city of Sunrise. The installation also marks the 35th completed solar project for the company in the U.S., with four installations at four more locations now in progress.
The continuing expansion of renewable energy technologies, advances in energy efficiency, and the rapid shift from coal to natural gas for generating electricity combined to bring down U.S. carbon dioxide emissions last year to their lowest levels since 1994, according to a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.