Swiss Firm to Use Solar Power for Space Tourism
Financial Tribune: SolarStratos, a Swiss startup, has unveiled an airplane that uses solar power to lift people to the edge of space and return them gently to earth.
The company revealed its “solar plane”, a 28 foot-long aircraft that will be the first manned aircraft entirely powered by solar energy to rise above the stratosphere and bring passengers close to the stars. The solar power airplane has a wingspan of 81.3 feet and weighs 992 pounds.
It will take two hours to ascend to the edge of space some 15 miles above the earth. SolarStratos will stay there for 15 minutes before beginning a three-hour descent back to earth. Cont'd...
Panasonic Commits To Solar Cell Production With Tesla At New York Plant
Alan Ohnsman for Forbes: Panasonic will make solar cells with Tesla at a factory under construction in Buffalo, New York, broadening a partnership between the electric-car maker and Japanese electronics giant that goes back nearly a decade.
The companies said in a joint statement today that they finalized plans to produce high-efficiency photovoltaic cells at the plant, with initial production scheduled for the second half of 2017. Output of the energy modules, for use in solar panels, Tesla’s planned solar roofs and to charge up Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack battery storage units, is to reach 1 gigawatt by 2019, the companies said. Cont'd...
Upcoming Tradeshow, Conference & Exhibition Summary - February - April 2017
Here is a summary of what Tradeshows, Conferences & Exhibitions to look forward to in the coming months.
Instead Of Trump's Wall, Let's Build A Border Of Solar Panels
Homero Aridjis & James Ramey for Huffington Post: President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Mexico to build a wall between our countries. There is indeed a way that Mexico could create a barrier between the U.S. and Mexico, one constructed exclusively on the Mexican side, with substantial benefits for both countries and the planet: a solar border.
Sunlight in the northern deserts of Mexico is more intense than in the U.S. Southwest because of the lower latitude and more favorable cloud patterns. And construction and maintenance costs for solar plants in Mexico are substantially lower. Thus, building a long series of such plants all along the Mexican side of the border could power cities on both sides faster and more cheaply than similar arrays built north of the border.
Solar energy is already being generated at lower prices than those of coal. With solar plants along vast stretches of the almost 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border on the Mexican side, a new high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) grid could be set up to transmit energy efficiently from that long, snaking array to population centers along the border. HVDC power lines lose exponentially less energy over long distances than traditional power lines. Cont'd...
World's first solar panel road opens in Normandy village
Kim Willsher for The Guardian: France has opened what it claims to be the world’s first solar panel road, in a Normandy village.
A 1km (0.6-mile) route in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche covered with 2,800 sq m of electricity-generating panels, was inaugurated on Thursday by the ecology minister, Ségolène Royal.
It cost €5m (£4.2m) to construct and will be used by about 2,000 motorists a day during a two-year test period to establish if it can generate enough energy to power street lighting in the village of 3,400 residents.
In 2014, a solar-powered cycle path opened in Krommenie in the Netherlands and, despite teething problems, has generated 3,000kWh of energy – enough to power an average family home for a year. The cost of building the cycle path, however, could have paid for 520,000kWh. Cont'd...
Three Simple (and Effective) Strategies for Solar Lead Generation
Don't get overwhelmed at the prospect of launching a solar lead generation program: if you focus on the basics, you'll have a great foundation for finding new customers.
Batteries Need to Get Big-Like, Enormous-for Solar Power to Shine
Vaclav Smil for IEEE Spectrum: It would be a lot easier to expand our use of solar and wind energy if we had better ways to store the large quantities of electricity we’d need to cover gaps in the flow of that energy.
Even in sunny Los Angeles, a typical house roofed with enough photovoltaic panels to meet its average needs would still face daily shortfalls of up to about 80 percent of the demand in January and daily surpluses of up to 65 percent in May. You can take such a house off the grid only by installing a voluminous and expensive assembly of lithium-ion batteries. But even a small national grid—one handling 10 to 30 gigawatts—could rely entirely on intermittent sources only if it had gigawatt-scale storage capable of working for many hours.
Since 2007, more than half of humanity has lived in urban areas, and by 2050 more than 6.3 billion people will live [PDF] in cities, accounting for two-thirds of the global population, with a rising share in megacities of more than 10 million people. Cont'd...
Energy Storage Market and Trends
Adding backup power provides a tremendous value to the customers in certain areas with unreliable grid. In combination with other values, this is a trend that is producing a very strong demand - stronger than we initially thought.
Q3 2016 Deal Volume Comparison - Lincoln International
There were 20 completed solar energy transactions in Q3 2016, which represents the same number of transactions recorded in Q2 2016.
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...
Small Power, Big Grid: Part 5
The Emerging Relationship between Distributed Energy Resources and the Transmission System
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...
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