solar
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Los Angeles to slather its rooftops with solar panels
Here's a crazy idea: apply the same incentives that have made Germany the world leader in rooftop solar power to a place that is actually sunny. Also, use the power generated from these panels to zero out the electricity costs of people in low-income housing, so the city has more money for education. Those are […]
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Japan could rebuild faster with renewables, says report
In the wake of severe natural disasters, how is Japan going to get its electrical infrastructure back online? The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability has an answer, and it's anything but business as usual. By deploying a mix of renewables and energy efficiency technology, they argue, Japan's need for electricity could be met three […]
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Google goes all in on solar — to the tune of $168 million
Google has saved you from getting lost, running out of email storage space, and not knowing trivial facts about 90s TV shows. And now it’s going to help save you from a dystopian Mad Max future by investing in solar energy. The company just bet $168 million on solar tech, in the form of the […]
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AZ Court of Appeals upholds Arizona renewable energy rules
In the ongoing and odd ideological battle against renewable energy, the Goldwater Institute has serially tried to invalidate Arizona’s renewable energy rules, saying the Arizona Corporation Commission didn’t have the authority, God and the Constitution demand the mythical unsubsidized coal, perhaps a communist plot hmm?, yadada, etc. The AZ Court of Appeals just told them […]
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How one nerd zeroed out his energy bill with solar panels [VIDEO]
George Musser, a physics editor at Scientific American, has dreamed of powering his home with solar panels ever since he was a little boy. And now he does! In New Jersey, no less. His story is a part of Beyond the Light Switch, a totally rad documentary filmed by Detroit Public Television that criss-crosses the […]
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Solar-powered wind turbines not just a joke
April fools led to a bunch of fake posts that made us die a little inside, and at least one that seemed like kind of a good idea: the solar-powered wind turbine. Turns out that the notion of harvesting the maximum amount of energy from the immediate environment is good enough that the combo of […]
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Like a magnifying glass to ants, concentrating PV a cost-effective distributed solar option
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Concentrating solar typical fills people energy nerds with visions of large fields of mirrors focusing sunlight to make heat/steam/electricity, but concentration technology is also available for photovoltaics (PV). In fact, using lenses to focus sun onto […]
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Solar power from the moon is fake, but also real
Solar panels that transform light from the moon into usable quantities of energy: Fake! Solar panels covering the moon that would transmit massive quantities of energy back to earth using lasers and microwaves: Real! Or at least: proposed with a straight face. I think we can all agree that the slide labeled "Master Plan" pretty much sums […]
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Solar could save Minnesota schools millions
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Currently, Minnesota’s public schools spend approximately $84 million per year on electricity costs, money diverted from the classroom. But a bill to make clean, local energy accessible now (CLEAN) could help the state’s public schools use […]
