solar power
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Making my first clean kilowatt
On May 25, my husband and I generated our first kilowatt of clean, solar electricity from the rooftop of our home here in West Virginia. It was AMAZING — as in, your-first-paper-mache-baking-soda-volcano amazing. As soon as we turned on the system, I kept running back outside to check out the new meter that measures our […]
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Europe’s ‘solar tunnel’ is a high-speed rail line with solar panel topping
Europe’s new rail innovation is the solar equivalent of a Good Morning Burger. We take two miles of Belgian high speed rail tunnel, soak it in rich creamery butter, and then we cover it with a shelter to protect it from nearby old-growth trees, eliminating the need to cut them down. Then we top it off […]
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Smaller generation incites largest renewable energy gains
While seeming counterintuitive, a focus on smaller-scale distributed generation enables more and faster development of cost-effective renewable energy. In April, I wrote about the illusion that we can “move forward on all fronts” in renewable energy development; rather, a bias toward centralized electricity generation in U.S. policy reduces the potential and resources for distributed generation. […]
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How solar power will become cheaper than fossil fuels in three to five years
Are you ready to flip the bird at your utility company? Lord knows you probably will be after you get the bill for what's shaping up to be an especially hot June. Luckily, a whole host of companies working on improving a novel solar technology would like to help you do it. The new tech […]
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Buildings that make more energy than they use gain steam
If every building made more energy than it uses, would all the world's power plants pack up and go home? Maybe education would be fully funded and the military would be forced to have a bake sale! But really: There is a building in Bellenberg, Germany that produces more energy than it consumes, mostly by […]
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How the ‘Arab Spring’ makes massive solar in North Africa more likely
Desertec is a massive project to to build solar thermal plants in the deserts of North Africa — you know, the same North Africa that had all the revolutions just now. But proponents are saying there’s no reason to put the project on hold just because of political unrest. In fact, they say, the economic […]
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Japan to mandate solar panels on all new buildings
What do you do if your country depended on nuke plants for energy, but is now too freaked out about nuclear disaster to trust them anymore? You harness the awesome nuclear power OF THE SUN! At least that’s the plan of Japan’s prime minister Naoto Kan, who announced an energy policy that may require all […]
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Get ready for solar airplanes
There’s nothing that exciting about a plane that uses no fuel and emits no CO2 — I’ve been folding those since the fourth grade. A plane that uses no fuel, emits no CO2, has the same wingspan as an Airbus A340, and can transport people on international flights, though: That’s a big deal. And that’s […]
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By 2015, we could see a new generation of photovoltaic technologies, including 3-D solar cells
Image: Solar3DCross-posted from Climate Progress. Solar photovoltaics (PV) is one of the hottest high-tech areas around. For instance, 3-D technology is all the rage these days. Now, one company thinks it can bring the concept to solar too. Santa Barbara-based Solar3D is working on a silicon “microcell” at the nano scale that uses an optical […]