By John Addison (10/2/07) Like a castle under siege, Solar Power 2007 was such a hot event that registration had to be closed a week prior to the conference opening in Long Beach, California. Over 12,500 people attended last week. There was enthusiasm for high growth and technology advancements in photovoltaics (PV) and in large-scale [...]
By John Addison (9/20/07). Electric light rail is a popular way to whisk millions through cities with speed, ease, and minimal emissions. Per passenger mile, source-to-wheels emissions are far less than people trying to navigate busy cities in their cars. Even if there is a coal power plant supplying the electricity, the efficiency of moving [...]
I’m a big fan of solar power. But as with anything, I like to know exactly what I’m getting. One of the big unspoken issues in the solar sector is the difference between the rated or estimated potential output of a solar system–and the actual production of kilowatt-hours. A range of factors from the margin [...]
18 months ago I did an article on rising solar prices threatening the industry, and I think it’s time to revisit some of those thoughts. “One of the most disturbing things about the solar industry, the rising star of cleantech, has been its recent rising prices. According to the SolarBuzz.com survey, module prices are up [...]
I saw a news article recently on the space walk to do repair and relocation on solar photovoltaic array on the International Space Station. It reminded me to keep in perspective a bit of energy history. The US basically invented the solar industry to help power the space race. And the industry grew out of [...]
Cleantech Blog has commented on the maturation of the solar sector for some time now. About a year ago, Cleantech Blog broke the story about Applied Material’s entry into the solar market with the San Francisco Chronicle. We have also written on solar concentrators, the coming of consolidation in the solar markets, inverter technology, and [...]
About 4 or 5 years ago micro fuel cells were quite a hot topic in cleantech. They were going to power our laptops, cell phones, PDAs, blackberries, hand held multimedia devices, etc. The story ran like this: The digital age and increasing customer demand for more power hungry features like bandwidth, multimedia, et al on [...]
Nick Bruse runs Strike Consulting, a cleantech venture consultancy; hosts the cleantech show, a weekly podcast of interviews with leaders involved in clean technology research, entrepreneurship, commentary and investment; and advises Clean Technology Australasia Pty Ltd and the leading advocate of Cleantech in Australia. It seems we cant go a day at the moment without [...]
I received this brief missive in my email box last night. Fascinating, but true, Nigerian scams appear to be moving into solar. Does that mean solar has grown up? The email read: “Dear sir/Madam, This is to introduce our co. to you that we are in Uganda (East Africa) andwe kindly request you to give [...]
I had a chance to talk with David Hochschild, the outgoing Executive Director of PV Now about his thoughts on the solar industry and recent changes. PVNow is an industry association that, among other things, helped lobby for the net metering and the solar initiative in California and increased RPS standards in Texas and New [...]
Two interesting cleantech reports came out in the last couple of days. One talking about the problem, the other the solution. On the problem side, as reported in USA Today, a team of researchers working at Texas A&M found that increased pollution in Asia, primarily from the rise of industrialism in China over the last [...]
Is the time right to invest in alternative energy? We’ve seen a lot of this before in the 1970s and 1980s. Solar and biomass hot, big regulatory pushes, and then companies and investors lost a lot of money when things changed. We’re still a bit skeptical. We’re also all about not getting pulled in to [...]
