THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for July, 2010

In just five years of the Recovery Act stimulus, by 2015, we are now on track to produce fully 40% of the world’s batteries for electric vehicles. Currently, we make only 2%.

Before The Recovery Act passage, the US was hardly a world leader in advanced electric vehicles, or in any aspect of the advanced battery technologies that power them. We made only 2 out of every 100 batteries used in them.

Among many other examples we’ve covered here of the green economy stimulus, the American Recovery Act (ARRA) - passed in March the next year to right Main Street after the November Wall Street bailout - included a battery technology stimulus that funded advanced R&D of every aspect of electric vehicle development. Some results?

Nine completely new electric vehicle battery factories will have broken ground by the end of 2010, and 21 more will now make battery or electric vehicle components. (more…)

Have a good idea for energy creation and distribution? GE and 4 prominent venture capital firms are offering up $200 million for winners of its Ecomagination Challenge in an effort to quicken development of a national smart grid. Perhaps you could be the winner?

(more…)

Spain has now opened the largest solar power plant in the world, the La Florida solar plant in Alvarado, Badajoz. With the opening of this massive solar power plant, Spain has also now passed up the United States as the biggest solar power generator in the world.

Spain’s total solar output is now 432MW, 10MW higher than the US (which is at 422MW). (Note that this is power generated, not solar power capacity, of which Germany is the clear leader.)

(more…)

An old Cleantechnica writer (actually, our previous editor), Ariel Schwartz, wrote a great article this week on how a nascent smart grid helped to prevent brownouts and blackouts in New York during a record-breaking heat wave earlier this month.

Although our nation’s electricity grid has a ways to go before we can really call it a smart grid, it is great to see that initial updates and changes are already making a difference.

(more…)

There they go again: right when the U.S. military completes yet another project to reduce CO2 emissions, the fossil fuel industry plays Debbie Downer.  This week’s matchup involved our own U.S. Air Force, which has just announced its latest solar power installation with cheery pride, versus an industry group called “CO2 is Green,” which has just launched a new campaign proclaiming that more C02 is good because “it supports all plant life.”  Hey, whose corner should we be in?

Throughout the last century, the U.S. achieved global military advantage primarily due to fossil fuels, but energy technology changes over time and sooner or later fossil fuels are destined to give way to new energy sources and energy storage solutions that serve modern military purposes far more effectively, and far less expensively. The fossil fuel industry may be entitled to fight for its life but meanwhile the U.S. military is going full steam ahead into a cleaner, safer renewable energy future.

(more…)