solar

SolarStrong, a project to install rooftop solar panels at 120,000 military homes, will see the light of day after nearly being derailed by political infighting in Washington.

Solar installer SolarCity today said it has secured the financing needed to install about 300 megawatts' worth of solar panels at homes on military bases. The company and the project lender, Bank of America's Merrill Lynch, expect this to be the largest distributed solar-energy project to date, requiring $1 billion in financing over the next five years.

The project calls for installing solar panels at the homes of military personnel at … Read more

Morgan Solar has brought on Canadian oil and gas distributor Enbridge as an investor to commercialize its concentrating-photovoltaic panels.

The Toronto-based company today said that Enbridge has invested $9.8 million as part of a $28.8 million round of funding.

Enbridge's primary business is oil and gas distribution but it has invested in a few solar energy projects that use traditional flat photovoltaic panels. Morgan Solar is the first solar technology it has invested in.

The money will be used to expand manufacturing capacity of Morgan Solar's concentrating-photovoltaic modules and trackers.

The company's core technology is … Read more

At a conference this week in San Francisco, executives from the clean-tech industry got together to talk about the state of the photovoltaic market in the United States and what they expect in the future.

The good news? The U.S. isn't Spain. The executives said the market's explosive growth in Spain in recent years was like a huge party, but then came the hangover. In the U.S., they're expecting measured growth, something much more sustainable. Check out more from the panel at the the Greentech Media U.S. Solar Market Insight conference.

This video first … Read more

Talk about walking the walk when it comes to solar energy.

Concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) manufacturer Amonix has built a factory and office space that uses solar panels as the sole power source, the company announced Wednesday.

The 214,000 square-foot facility uses eight of the company's MegaModule CPV solar systems, to serve the entire power need for the production plant and some connected office space. The system supplies "100 percent of the North Las Vegas facility's energy needs," according to Amonix.

Of course, it should be noted that this plant is located in Nevada, an area … Read more

We're getting so many reassurances from NASA these days that the world is not about to be destroyed by some space-borne phenomenon that I'm starting to wonder if there's something the space agency isn't telling us.

Aside from falling satellites--one of which apparently threatened to rain space junk down perhaps a little too close to a couple of heavily populated Chinese cities--there was that aircraft-carrier-size asteroid that didn't, repeat didn't, sideswipe the Earth this past week (though it got closer than the moon).

Now there's the specter of a giant solar flare turning the Earth into a crispy critter sometime next year. But don't worry, our friends at NASA cheerfully assure us in a recent post on the agency's Web site, this version of the apocalypse isn't likely to occur either.… Read more

The U.S. is poised for a big expansion of solar installations as states, municipalities, and companies add more solar in order to fulfill energy portfolio goals.

The growth will spur from many entities attempting to add renewable energy to the mix, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report released this week.

The report cites a prediction from the Solar Energy Industries Association that the U.S.'s global share of solar installations is predicted to triple within the next four years.

While that's good news for the solar industry overall, without the U.S. establishing strongholds this growth won'… Read more

The Department of Energy has decided to invest $60 million over the next three years to develop and commercialize concentrated solar technology, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced yesterday afternoon.

This investment comes out of the U.S. government's SunShot Initiative, a plan to reduce the cost of solar energy in the U.S. by 75 percent in order to make it more cost effective and competitive with other energy sources, according to Chu.

What is interesting about this particular funding is that the DOE seems to have listened to the critics of concentrated solar and gotten very specific about … Read more

Cutting the cost of solar power isn't all about a better solar cell.

General Electric today announced two research projects to make installation of solar panels easier by standardizing the components, such as racking systems for solar panels. The $5.9 million in research is part of the Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative to dramatically cut the cost of solar photovoltaics.

The price of solar electric panels has steadily gone down and is poised to fall more in the face of a global price war in solar. But as much as half of the cost of solar is … Read more

Apple plans to build a solar farm next to its massive data center in Maiden, N.C., according to a Charlotte Observer report.

The company has won approval to reshape the slope of 171 acres of vacant land it owns adjacent to the data center in preparation, according to permits issued in Catawba County. However, the permit offered no details about the solar farm project itself--dubbed Project Dolphin Solar Farm-- including its size, the newspaper noted.

Apple has spent reportedly $1 billion to build a 500,000-square-foot behemoth of a data center in Maiden, N.C., which had the code … Read more