Oil and solar do mix — and have for a long time. Last month, the oil and solar industry joined hands in an oil field about a century off its prime Chevron owns in Coalinga, Calif., where steam is required to sufficiently thin what oil remains so it can be extracted. The oil company signed a deal with Bright Source Energy to build a demonstration project: Thousands of flat mirrors will reflect concentrated sunlight on a boiler atop a tower, superheating the water to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce high-pressure steam. The mirrors will move throughout the day to track the sun. While the ... Read More
Solar-Powered Plane Helps Renewables Take Flight
June 26, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
As expected, Bertrand Piccard rolled out his sun-powered plane, the Solar Impulse, today from a cloistered hangar in Zurich, Switzerland. It's a strange bird, with a wingspan that recalls an airliner but able to carry only a single passenger, the pilot. Those wings are upholstered in 12,000 photovoltaic cells, which run the 3,300-pound craft while also charging 880 pounds of batteries meant to keep the propellers turning after the sun goes down. That will be necessary to achieve the Solar Impulse's mission — circumnavigating the planet in one fell swoop. (Well, not quite a fell ... Read More
Solar System
June 23, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
Francisco DeVries was familiar with all the grand plans and high-flown talk about solarizing the world's power mix to fight global warming. Then he found himself staring at a problem that seems, somehow, to have repeatedly escaped the climate evangelists' attention. DeVries is a confessed save-the-climate junkie, and his professional credentials include a stint as an appointee in the U.S. Department of Energy under President Clinton. More recently, though, he earned his paycheck as the chief of staff for Berkeley, Calif., Mayor Tom Bates. About two years ago, DeVries was charged with ... Read More
Shining a Light on India’s Rural Poor
May 11, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
About 2 billion people in developing countries worldwide lack electricity, which in turn impacts the health, ecology and safety of rural households. Many are forced to rely on inefficient and environmentally damaging kerosene lamps: Developing nations alone burn 470 million barrels of oil and release about 400 billion pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as a result of using kerosene. Other sources of light fuel include cow dung, precious forest firewood or crop residue. But in a massive new study carried out in Gujarat, one of Western India's poorest states, hit hard by drought ... Read More
Leasing America’s Rooftops for Solar Energy
January 27, 2009 • By • 2 Comments
Solar power, always a popular subject but a tiny piece of America's energy puzzle, could be looking up — literally — as power drawn from America's roofs could provide juice without the carbon, trade balance and security concerns of fossil fuels and the huge upfront costs and land-use hassles of bigger solar projects. Permitting delays for large photovoltaic projects (where sunlight hits silicon chips and creates electricity) are likely to disrupt an industry endeavoring to grow at 50 percent a year. Meanwhile, electricity from large solar thermal farms (in which sunlight heats water to ... Read More
Green Recovery: Welcome to SolarWorld
January 23, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
It was a typically cloudy day last October when Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Rep. David Wu and Sen. Ron Wyden came out to cut the ribbon for the grand opening of the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in North America. Above them, at this 480,000-square-foot facility in Hillsboro — about 20 miles west of Portland — bright yellow-and-blue lettering towered against an overcast sky. "SolarWorld: The sunpowered company." The governor has staked much of his legacy in recent years on attracting to Oregon such companies as German-based SolarWorld AG. So far, it's working. Despite a ... Read More
Reaching the Solar Tipping Point
September 4, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Over the next 10 years, we will likely see the U.S. reach a solar tipping point. Solar energy has always been one of the cleanest and longest lasting of all energy sources. Soon, it may be one of the cheapest. The January Scientific American article, "A Solar Grand Plan" provides a glimpse of the possibilities of large-scale solar farms driving America's energy future. (Currently, solar provides less than 0.01 percent of the electricity the U.S. uses.) Is there a more practical and compelling solution that lets us reach a tipping point more quickly? The "Solar Grand Plan" envisions ... Read More
Making Solar Cells Cheaper — It Could Be Plastics
August 11, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Enough solar energy hits our Earth each day to satisfy all of the world’s energy demands throughout the year. A technology exists — photovoltaics — that is capable of transforming sunlight directly into electricity without any moving parts. The technology has been around for more than 50 years, yet it contributes only 0.1 percent of the all of the energy produced worldwide. High cost has impeded greater market penetration. Silicon, the first material discovered that is capable of converting enough sunlight directly into electricity for practical purposes, has dominated the ... Read More
Solar Grand Plans Start Answering Basic Questions
June 29, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Is the sky falling, or is that just sunshine hitting your head? Some solar researchers are crying that we’re in for real trouble as global warming meets rising energy demand and peak production of oil. They’re also saying that, if we paid attention, we’d see what is really falling to Earth is a tremendous solar resource that, if harnessed, could serve most of the world’s transportation and electricity needs. But vital questions remain, even as $140-a-barrel oil makes the answers more attractive. Who pays for the stiff startup costs? Is the technology feasible on a large scale? ... Read More
Electrifying the Developed World
March 26, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
When governments in developed countries began to fund photovoltaic projects, they missed the uniqueness of the technology and treated it like any other generator of electricity, tending to favor large-scale centralized over building-by-building installations. But the modular nature of photovoltaics allows solar cells to be tailored for the electrical demand on-site, avoiding both the capital costs of building a centralized power plant and the power losses that occur in transmission. Furthermore, photovoltaics, unlike such power plants run by turbogenerators as gas-, nuclear- or oil-fired ... Read More
