THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for June, 2010

Residents of Orange County, Inland Empire, and the southern part of New Jersey have joined Los Angeles to become the newest areas of the U.S. that now have access to a 15% group discount on home solar energy installations. The discount is offered by 1BOG (One Block Off the Grid), an organization that helps you buy solar panels for your home by pre-negotiating the discount with solar energy companies, then putting together groups of potential buyers.  All together, 1BOG is now available to more than 23 million people.

1BOG, which hosts CleanTechnica, has the goal of bringing solar energy out of the margins of U.S. power consumption and into the mainstream.  To that end, the discount system is designed to be user friendly and informative. Joining the group is free, and members receive free guidance on solar energy before deciding whether or not to go ahead with the installation.

(more…)

In H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, tiny organisms found in nature save the world from powerful high tech invaders that have overwhelmed mankind’s powerful high tech weapons, and in a classic case of life imitating art, there they go again.  Microorganisms are playing a big role in the development of sustainable biofuels that could help the U.S. and other developed countries kick the destructive fossil fuel habit.  The latest example is a new discovery from a University of Wisconsin research team that could lead to a low cost, high yield process for extracting energy from cellulosic biomass, using a specially developed strain of bacteria.

Cellulosic biomass includes woody nonfood crops like trees, brush, and certain grasses.  Until now the difficulty has been finding an efficient way to break down the plant cell wall in woody plants in order to extract the sugar molecules needed to produce biofuel.  One approach is to develop new bacteria to do the job and the new research involves one likely candidate, Cellvibrio japonicus, a type of bacteria found in soil.

(more…)

A member of US-CAP, Duke Energy plans to build its own car-charging infrastructure in South Carolina as the Nissan Leaf (all battery-electric) and Chevy Volt (plug-in plus extended range) and other plug-in electric vehicles start to become available in the US later this year.

According to Mike Rowland, Duke Energy’s director of advanced customer technology, speaking to the Electric Drive Transportation Association, Charlotte and Raleigh will be among the dozen or so U.S. cities with the most demand for EVs.

A study last year recommended that with such a massive switch in fuel and infrastructure, that the US needed to plan an organized roll-out with a series of regional hubs with a certain density of public fast-charging stations, and once these are established, to then fill out the infrastructure to include wider regions of the nation.

Unlike the first regional hubs such as California, the Carolinas do not already get a high percentage of electricity from low carbon sources, including hydro and nuclear power. (more…)

From red state to blue, ten governors of states bordering the East Coast of the U.S. have joined forces to endorse the development of wind energy farms on the Outer Continental Shelf.  The list includes Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Virgina.

So much for all that new offshore oil drilling along the East Coast that was supposed to happen.  Though some of the ten governors have refrained from openly opposing Atlantic Coast oil drilling, the “neighbor effect” virtually guarantees that they’re not going to welcome it with open arms. Given the mess that BP’s oil spill has made of the tourism and fishing industries in the Gulf Coast, any new exploitation of East Coast waters for fossil fuels will have to get past ten governors who have put politics aside in favor of an energy source that creates new green jobs and supports existing industries instead of destroying them.

(more…)

The energy pipeline of the future will draw from many sources other than fossil fuels, and one of the most intriguing new alternatives is the use of wastewater to generate electricity and hydrogen.  The process works by harnessing the biochemical reactions in microbes as they feed on human or farm wastewater, or even plain seawater.  Now researchers at Arizona State University have discovered a key to making a microbial fuel cell that can function far more efficiently than earlier versions.

The new process focuses on using wastewater as a feedstock to produce hydrogen, which otherwise relies on natural gas and other fossil fuels for production.  Since hydrogen fuel cells are emerging as  a low-emission alternative to internal combustion engines, the recycling of wastewater to manufacture hydrogen is, sustainably speaking, icing on the cake.

(more…)