THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for May, 2010

Living in the Bay Area, I’m used to the abundance of great green start-ups blazing new trails nearby, whether its Berkeley pioneering PACE, Emeryville where Amarys boils up its Algae, San Francisco where 1BOG is perking in a cool SOMA warehouse, Silicon Valley with all those cleantech businesses, even Fremont now has a new Tesla factory… but doesn’t every region have that town most unlikely to make it into green news?  Sleepy, rural, oil stained, fast food, big box-riddled Vacaville is that town.

Yet it is Vacaville, I read in Wired, that is pioneering – despite having fewer than 100,000 inhabitants – the nation’s very first Level 3 DC rapid charger for electric vehicles!

A visionary EV enthusiast as city transportation manager put Vacaville out front on this, in a move sure to make this particular pink-roofed Vacaville Sonic Burger off 1-80 at Davis Street a new destination spot for the Bay Area. (more…)

While some Arizona legislators seem to have a bit of trouble deciphering the U.S. constitution, the state’s utility companies are wide awake when it comes to shifting out of fossil fuels and adopting renewable energy.  Tucson Electric Power (TEP) has joined the rush to renewables with an announcement that it will purchase the electrical output from solar, landfill gas, and wind installations, which when completed will total almost 160 megawatts or enough to power about 30,000 homes.

The greatest amount will come from ten new solar power installations, which together will account for 107 of the 160 MW.  TEP anticipates completion of these along with the wind and landfill gas projects in 2011 or 2012.

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The contrast could not be more extreme.  This week, as British Petroleum’s undersea oil gusher continued to flow uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling the Louisiana coast and threatening other states, Independent Natural Resources, Inc. announced that it has passed a critical milestone in constructing a new wave energy installation in the Gulf off the coast of Freeport, Texas.  The installation, engineered by INRI’s wholly owned subsidiary Renew Blue, is designed to use clean, renewable wave energy to power a desalination plant.

The project will use the SEADOG Pump system, which uses no blades or turbines to extract power from waves.  CleanTechnica has followed Renew Blue’s wave energy project since last fall, and overcoming this latest hurdle – obtaining a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – could open the door to numerous other wave energy projects in the future.

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Britain would start exporting domestic waste converted into fuel pellets to mainland Europe as it struggles to recycle the growing amount of household waste.

The generation of domestic waste seems to have exceeded the capacity of the British municipalities to recycle them. In addition, with limited land the solution of landfills is also completely exhausted. Thus the municipalities have decided to turn the domestic waste into fuel pellets and export them to neighboring countries like Germany and Holland.

Europe is a big importer of energy resources which has been proved to be a major strategic thorn in the recent past. Russia consistently flexed its muscles by refusing to supply gas to Europe. This pushed the EU to prepare plans for an unprecedented project in the African Sahara. (more…)

In far less time than it will take BP to drill the relief wells needed to permanently stop the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a community college has installed the largest concentrating solar array in the U.S. It took only two months of construction to install the six-acre array, which will generate about 2.6 million kilowatt hours of clean, renewable, spill-free energy annually.

The new solar array will supply about 30% of the electricity for Victor Valley College, which is part of the California community college system, and it will double as a learning center for new green jobs training programs.  With 109 schools, the system serves about 10% of U.S. students, so the quick conversion to solar at one campus adds a huge jolt of momentum to a trend that is converting college campuses across the country to renewable energy while training students for new green jobs, too.

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