Executives Of The Year: SolarCity’s Rive Brothers Are Bright Lights Of Silicon Valley
December 27, 2008 by editor
Filed under Solar News, Solar Programs
Pete Rive, left, and his brother Lyndon have made their company, SolarCity Corp., the No. 1 provider of residential solar power in California. They share the designation of the Business Journal's Executive of the Year for 2008.
FOSTER CITY - Siblings Lyndon and Pete Rive run their company SolarCity Corp. like coaches of a football team.
On offense, Lyndon’s areas of expertise - business development, finance, sales and marketing - are located downstairs at the company’s 28,000-square-foot Foster City headquarters. Upstairs, Pete operates the defense - heavy on the technology, operations, engineering and analytical components.
“Lyndon is more of the extrovert, and I’m more of the introvert,” Pete said.
The brothers, both under 40, have taken their opposite skill sets and split up responsibilities often held by one chief executive.
Sempra Generation Completes North America’s Largest ‘Thin-Film’ Solar Power Installation
December 22, 2008 by admin
Filed under Large Solar Installations, Solar News
Rows of solar panels stand ready to harness the power of the sun at Sempra Generation's El Dorado Energy Solar facility.
Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy, today announced the completion of the company’s first solar energy project, a 10-megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power-generation facility adjacent to the company’s existing 480-megawatt El Dorado Energy power plant near Boulder City, Nev., about 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
The El Dorado Energy Solar project is the largest operational thin-film, solar-power project in North America. Construction began in July 2008, and involved the installation of more than 167,000 solar modules on 80 acres of desert property designated as a renewable energy zone and leased from Boulder City.
California is the US Leader in Solar Installation and Solar Power Usage
California and Solar Power
California, a global leader in solar power, has found many ways to harness the energy of the sun.
Every hour the sun beams onto Earth more than enough energy to satisfy global energy needs for an entire year. Solar energy is the technology used to harness the sun’s energy and make it useable. Today, the technology produces less than one tenth of one percent of global energy demand.
San Jose Debuts 1st U.S. Public Art Project to Use Embedded Solar Technology
December 12, 2008 by admin
Filed under Solar News
San Jose, California will highlight the debut of a new solar photovoltaic embedded glass art project that marries art, technology and solar power. The first installation of its kind in the U.S., this permanent public art project combines photovoltaic cells and art glass in an architectural application and further heightens awareness of the San Jose Green Vision.
Solar art exhibit debuts at the Pearl Avenue Library in San Jose, California
The event will take place at the San Jose Public Library, Pearl Ave. Branch Library, 4270 Pearl Ave., San Jose, California at 2:00 p.m. on Monday, December 15, 2008. On hand for the debut will be San Jose City Councilmember Judy Chirco, Jane Light, Director of the San Jose Public Library and Barbara Goldstein, Director of Public Art, Office of Cultural Affairs.
San Jose, the nation’s tenth largest city, has implemented San Jose’s Green Vision, which sets 10 ambitious goals for environmental protection and economic development. Clean energy is a key component of the 15-year Green Vision, which envisions: Creating 25,000 Clean Tech jobs; Installing 100,000 solar roofs (1/10 of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s 1 million solar roofs for California initiative); Reducing per capita electricity use by half; and moving to 100 percent renewable energy. The San Jose Prize for Green Innovation was created to speed the advancement of clean technologies from the lab to the marketplace and help to further satisfy Green Vision goals.
Wall Street Journal MarketWatch
Eight Energy Suggestions for Obama, From SunEdison’s Founder
December 12, 2008 by admin
Filed under Featured, Technology
SunEdison installs large scale solar arrays, such as this one on the roof of a Kohl’s department store. Ownership of the solar power systems is retained by SunEdison and the building owner purchases the solar electricity from SunEdison. SunEdison in turn profits from their investment by selling the electricity, collecting the rebates, tax credits and also selling the Renewable Energy Certificates generated along with the solar power.
This morning I spoke with Jigar Shah, the founder of SunEdison, whose innovative solar power financing model was described in a New York Times article from 2006.
Jigar Shah, the founder of the solar company SunEdison, has some thoughts on energy policy for the Obama administration.
Mr. Shah - who is no longer with SunEdison but remains a major shareholder - shared a number of interesting suggestions for transforming the nation’s energy profile. Eight of those ideas - which Mr. Shah says he has conveyed to the Obama team, though he does not officially advise them - are outlined below.
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1) Spend $10 billion over the next few years to green the federal government. Put solar panels on rooftops, and introduce other types of alternative energy to power government buildings.
2) Make federal utilities take the lead on pushing renewable energy. The government owns a handful of hydropower utilities, like the Bonneville Power Administration, the Southwestern Power Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority. These utilities, Mr. Shah said, could invest in wind power.
3) Provide more federal assistance to make municipal buildings energy efficient, through the clean renewable energy bond program or other means.
4) Establish California’s energy-efficient building code, called Title 24, as a federal standard.
Solar Energy Fuels Domestic Job Growth: A Blueprint for Job Creation and Economic Security
December 12, 2008 by admin
Filed under Green Collar
The following Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) solar policy report which is to be submitted to President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress was updated on December 11, 2008.
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Solar Energy Fuels Domestic Job Growth:
A Blueprint for Job Creation and Economic Security
(Updated December 11, 2008)
The current economic crisis requires the United States government to make strategic investments in industries that will improve our economy. At the same time, our nation has an opportunity to invest in industries that foster our energy independence, improve our security and reduce our greatest environmental risk - global warming. Increasing the use of solar energy will provide a clean, reliable and domestic source of energy while creating millions of new jobs. Solar is not only the cleanest technology, but solar produces more jobs per megawatt (MW) of installed capacity than any other source of energy. From electricians and roofers to manufacturing line workers and sales agents, an expanded solar energy sector will greatly benefit the U.S. economy with new jobs. However, the growth of solar energy will not happen quickly enough without the right federal policies to stimulate the market and remove fundamental barriers that prevent solar from competing in the electricity marketplace.
We call on President‐elect Obama and the Leadership of the 111th Congress, to make solar energy a fundamental part of our economic and energy policy. This includes establishing the goal of 12.5 percent of electricity generation to come from solar by 2020 and creating 1.5 million new jobs in the solar industry. To achieve this vision, President‐elect Obama and Congress must establish programs that rapidly deploy solar energy, remove market barriers, and educate the public on the benefits of solar energy.
New Five Megawatt Solar Project at San Francisco Sunset Reservoir
December 11, 2008 by admin
Filed under Installations, Solar News
San Francisco's Sunset Reservoir, which can hold about 90 million gallons of water, during a recent major renovation to retrofit for future earthquakes.
New Contract with Recurrent Energy Would Bring State’s Largest Solar Photovoltaic and Nation’s Largest Municipal Solar Project to San Francisco’s Biggest Reservoir by 2010
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Today Mayor Gavin Newsom praised the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) for approving a new contract with Recurrent Energy to generate five megawatts (MW) of solar power atop the recently seismically-retrofitted Sunset Reservoir. The project, which is expected to be completed and generating solar power for the City in 2010, will be California’s largest solar photovoltaic system and the nation’s largest municipal solar project. The project will also increase total municipal solar generation in San Francisco by more than 300%, from the current 2 MW to a total of 7 MW of solar power.
BrightSource Energy Signs Contract With Siemens for Largest Ever Fully Solar-Powered Steam Turbine Generator
December 9, 2008 by admin
Filed under Solar News, Technology
Illustration of BrightSource Energy's first 100MW plant at its Ivanpah Solar Power Complex in California's Mojave Desert
Turbine Generator to Be Operated at BrightSource’s Ivanpah Solar Power Complex
OAKLAND, Calif., Dec 09, 2008 — BrightSource Energy, Inc., developer of large-scale solar thermal energy plants, has signed a contract with Siemens to purchase the steam turbine generator for BrightSource’s first 100MW plant at its Ivanpah Solar Power Complex in California’s Mojave Desert. The purchase marks another key step in BrightSource Energy’s path to construct the state’s first large-scale solar thermal power plant in nearly thirty years.
The contract with Siemens is for the supply of a 123 MW fully solar-powered steam turbine generator. When completed, the turbine is expected to be the largest fully solar-powered steam turbine generator to date.
Getting California Schools Off The Grid
December 9, 2008 by admin
Filed under Solar News
Glendale Community College solar panel installation
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Dec 09, 2008 — Today, California’s State & Consumer Services Agency (SCSA) announced the release of Grid Neutral: Electrical Independence for California Schools and Community Colleges, a step-by-step guide to help California schools and community colleges cut energy costs through on-site electricity generation. The guidebook is the first state-backed, comprehensive program for schools to use to create campuses that generate as much electrical energy as they consume and can be viewed here.
“We pulled together the best environmental experts and financial minds to create an easy-to-follow guide for school officials to invest smartly in green technologies and cut their production of greenhouse gases,” said SCSA Secretary Rosario Marin. “This guide will help officials navigate both the technical and cost phases of going green.”
Joint IBM and Harvard University Online Network for Solar Research
A joint project between IBM and Harvard University is tapping into thousands of computers, in an attempt to discover new solar and energy storage materials. 
The Clean Energy Project uses distributed computing to number-crunch molecular equations.
Users volunteer the processing power of their computers, with a grid server assigning tasks.
The project is part of IBM’s World Community Grid, which assists research projects that “benefit humanity”.
Other efforts include researching new cancer-fighting drugs, improving the nutritional content of rice by examining new protein structures, and trying to prevent the onset of AIDS by blocking HIV protease, the enzyme that makes HIV infectious.
The Clean Energy Project has two goals: finding new organic photovoltaics to provide inexpensive solar cells, and then researching possible polymers for the membranes used in fuel cells.
Heavy in light
Traditional solar cells, made with silicon, are usually heavy and inflexible. Organic solar cells have the potential to be much cheaper, flexible, and lightweight.
However they are not as efficient when compared to traditional cells, and their working life is shorter.
The lead researcher behind the project - Professor Aspuru-Guzik - said that currently solar cells using organic molecules have an efficiency of between 5 and 6%, but that an efficiency of 15% was required to make them commercially viable.
The task is to perform chemical calculations on tens of thousands of organic molecules to determine which show the most promise, utilising the CHARMM molecular mechanics package developed by the Karplus group at Harvard University.
“It would take us about 100 days of computational time to screen each of the thousands of compounds for electronic properties without the power of World Community Grid,” he said.
By distributing the computations among thousands of volunteered PCs, the project could be completed in two years. By contrast, a traditional supercomputer approach would take more than 20 years.
Distribute and conquer
Modern home computers can perform billions of calculations a second. Most of the time, that’s far more power than the average user needs - so even though you’re working hard, your computer is just ticking over. Distributed computing projects make use of this spare computer potential.
Distributed computing is a particularly valuable tool for scientists who have large amounts of data to analyse, or who are modelling very complex systems.
For example, the Folding at Home project, which aims to unravel molecular protein chains is now in its eighth year, and there are now more than 3m computer users working on the SETI@home project looking for signs of contact from alien life.
IBM hope that their World Community Grid can attract a similar number of users.
