U.S. wind power enjoys a rebirth as solar's obstacles mount
Nichola Groom for Reuters: A year after Congress extended generous tax credits for renewable energy projects, the U.S. wind industry is thriving.
Solar power companies, meanwhile, are hunkering down for a rough 2017.
The tax credit renewal has boosted the long-term outlooks for both industries. But in the short term, the subsidies are far more attractive for wind power, which has spurred utilities to launch wind projects while they scale back or delay solar installations.
Advances in wind turbine technology are also opening up new locations for development and driving a wave of spending to upgrade existing projects.
In the last few weeks, power companies with large renewable holdings - including Southern Co, NextEra Energy Inc and Xcel Energy Inc - have announced plans to invest billions of dollars in wind.
"We're making a pivot now away from solar," Southern Chief Executive Tom Fanning told a meeting with Wall Street analysts in October. Cont'd...
Science Plant a Wind Tree in your neighborhood to generate energy from low-speed wind
Bruce Brown for Digital Trends: These trees do more than just add ambiance. Harnessing the wind to generate electrical energy usually brings to mind thoughts of huge land- or ocean-based wind farms consisting of huge towers with two or three blades, each more than 100-feet long, on the top. The size, weight, noise, and vibration of industrial wind turbines restrict their use to large open spaces. Newwind, a French startup, has developed a much smaller, urban-space-friendly “Wind Tree,” reports Electrek.
The Wind Tree, which produces sufficient energy to power small buildings or streetlights, is designed to connect to a nearby energy storage system. The trees are each about 30 feet tall and 26 feet in diameter, and weigh approximately 5,500 pounds. Each tree has 54 Aeroleafs mounted vertically on tree branches. The Aeroleafs are 3.2 feet high and, spinning at optimum speed, are capable of generating 65 watts each. So, a tree with 54 leaves has an energy-generation capacity maximum of 3,510 watts (3.5kW), about the same as a small home solar installation. Cont'd...
How to Manage Snow on Solar
The snow melting on your panels actually acts as a lubricant between the snow mass and the panel surface, which makes the solar panel a completely frictionless, slick surface that's the perfect candidate to allow that snow mass to come barreling off your roof.
The Solar Industry Has Paid Off Its Carbon Debts
Robinson Meyer for The Atlantic: Think of all the energy that goes into making a single solar panel. Quartz and copper must be mined. The raw materials must be converted into wafers, then encased in protective material. And after panels leave the factory, they must be shipped all over the world.
Now imagine these consequences spread over four decades—the environmental cost of the solar industry. Given all the research, development, and production time that goes into making any one panel, a skeptical solar-buyer might wonder: Has the solar industry on the whole really saved any energy at all? To that concern, a new analysis answers: Yes.
The solar industry probably paid off its long-term energy and climate “debts” in 2011, a study published this week in Nature Communications finds. Cont'd...
Nearly half of residential distributed solar power is owned by private companies
Lucas Mearian for ComputerWorld: About 44% of all solar power that's installed on residential rooftops, known as distributed solar capacity, is owned by private businesses, such as SolarCity or Vivint Solar, according to new government data.
Distributed solar capacity in the U.S., which includes all solar power capacity other than utility-scale installations 1 megawatts (MW) or larger, increased to 12.3 gigawatts (GW) as of September, according to new figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). In comparison, a cumulative 11.6GW had been installed in the U.S. by the end of 2015. Cont'd...
Arcadia's Community Solar Program
A customer can subscribe to as little as single panel or enough to zero-out their utility bill.
Solar and Renewable Energy Trends in 2017
The global transportation fleet is turning electric faster than anyone could have imagined only a year ago.
Using Geographic Information Systems to find Solar Sites
GIS technology allows us to query, analyze and visualize information in an incredible number of ways, and as with all technology these days it is evolving rapidly.
Offshore wind energy system combines sea water and wind to create electricity
Megan Treacy for TreeHugger: We've seen our share of interesting wind power designs, but often the technology can't come anywhere close to matching what the traditional horizontal axis wind turbines can do. There's a reason that when we think of wind energy, we think of giant masts with rotating blades and it's because that design is incredibly effective -- just look at Scotland and other areas around the world that now get a majority of their electricity needs from wind power.
The design isn't without its flaws; those rotating blades do pose a hazard to birds and bats and the cost of manufacturing and installing all of those giant parts can be expensive. When it comes to offshore wind power in the U.S., that has been a major roadblock. The energy generation potential is huge, but so is the cost.
An energy start-up company called Accio Energy -- yes, a Harry Potter reference -- thinks it has a solution to that problem, one that will generate as much if not more energy from offshore wind than a traditional wind turbine, but at half the cost. There are no moving parts, instead Accio's technology consists of large permeable panels on masts that let the ocean winds blow right through. Cont'd...
The World's Largest Solar Plant Is Now Online in India
Avery Thompson for Popular Mechanics: The world's largest solar power plant has just been completed in Kamuthi, in Tamil Nadu, India. The new plant adds 648 MW to the country's generating capacity.
The Kamuthi Solar Power Project takes the title of world's largest solar plant from the Topaz Solar Farm in California, which was completed two years ago and has a capacity of 550 MW.
The Kamuthi Solar Power Project was built in only 8 months, and cost $679 million to complete. It contains 2.5 million individual solar panels, covers an area of almost 4 square miles, and is expected to power 150,000 homes. Cont'd...
Reducing Wind Energy Costs through Increased Turbine Size: Is the Sky the Limit?
Berkeley Lab study shows significant potential for further turbine scaling.
Microinverters from Darfon Solar
With the advent of rapid shutdown, we see a move to more Module Level Power Electronics (MLPE).
Tesla powers a whole island with solar to show off its energy chops
James Vincent for The Verge: Tesla completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity this week, and, to celebrate, the company has announced a major solar energy project: wiring up the whole island of Ta’u in American Samoa. Previously, the island ran on diesel generators, but over the past year Tesla has installed a microgrid of solar energy panels and batteries that will supply "nearly 100 percent" of power needs for Ta’u’s 600 residents.
The project seems intended to show off the potential benefits of the SolarCity acquisition, with Ta’u’s microgrid comprised of 5,328 solar panels from SolarCity and Tesla, along with 60 Tesla Powerpacks batteries for storage. But buying SolarCity remains a risky move for Tesla, with the purchase including billions of dollars of debt for a company that's far from profitable (SolarCity spends $6 for every $1 it makes in sales). Nevertheless, Tesla CEO Elon Musk describes the acquisition as "blindingly obvious" — a necessary step in his so-called "Master Plan" to integrate clean energy generation and storage. Cont'd...
Integrated Energy Systems
Opportunities for solar installers to offer storage as an integral part of their solutions are opening up everywhere, from mitigating the impact of power outages, the increase in distributed renewable generation at times of low use, the rising costs of base and peak power and the trend of some states to reduce or eliminate net metering programs.
Power to the people: Solar panel sales to soon surpass leasing
Lucas MearianĀ for ComputerWorld: Ā Direct ownership of solar power panels will overtake third-party ownership next year as more consumers are choosing to buy, rather than lease, their panels.
According to GTM Research's latest report,Ā U.S. Residential Solar Financing 2016-2021, 55% of all U.S. residential solar capacity installed in 2017 will be purchased by customers paying either in cash, or through a solar loan financing arrangement; that number is expected to grow to 73% of all solar systems installed in 2021. Ā Cont'd...
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Solar & Wind - Featured Product
LG Solar Unveils NeON R with Enhanced Aesthetics and Energy Savings
The NeON R module features "Back Contact" cell technology delivering an entirely black panel that is aesthetically pleasing and energy efficient. The cell's seamless, surface blends perfectly into nearly all rooftop designs while the module's electrodes are positioned on the rear of the cell. Using LG's N-type cell structure, the panels produce 365W of energy, up to 7.3kWp, compared to 5.8kWp of the p-type cell. The module's new design minimizes LID, thereby delivering a longer lifespan and increased energy output.
